Fleet Street, still the centre of the newspaper and printing industries,
is reminiscent of the literary associations of many decades. It takes
its name from Fleet Brook which once crossed it at its eastern end. The
stream still exists and now in the form of a great sewer flows under
Farringdon Street and New Bridge Street, emptying into the Thames under
Blackfriars Bridge. It was through Fleet Street in 1448 that Eleanor
Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, walked on her way to St. Paul's
bareheaded, bearing a lighted candle as penance for having made a waxen
figure of the king, that melted before a fire as she would have had his
life slowly waste away.
At the east end of Fleet Street, surrounded by buildings is St. Bride's
Church. It is only a few steps from Fleet Street if you happen to be
familiar with any of the narrow ways that pierce into the centre of the
block. But if you do not know the mystery of the block you will walk all
around the church within sight of its two hundred and odd feet high
steeple without coming to it. The church was built by Wren in 1680. In
the centre aisle is the grave of Samuel Richardson the author who lived
close by in Salisbury Square and who died in 1761. Beside the church in
the present St. Bride's Lane Milton lived with a tailor named Russell.
He moved here in 1640, and here wrote his treatises "Of Practical
Episcopacy," "Of Reformation" and some others.
From 76 Fleet Street Salisbury Court is entered communicating direct
with Salisbury Square. In the house numbered 9 at the southwest corner
of the Square Samuel Richardson, the printer-novelist author of
"Clarissa Harlowe," had his printing office and here Oliver Goldsmith
for a time acted as a reader for him. Johnson was a friend of Richardson
and often came to his printing shop, as did Hogarth the great satirist.
Tudor Street cuts through the very centre of the district once called
"Alsatia" occupying the space between the river and Fleet Street. This
was a cant name for Whitefriars. The neighbourhood had certain
privileges of sanctuary derived from an old convent of the Carmelites or
White Friars and was the abode of lawless classes. Scott immortalised it
in the "Fortunes of Nigel."
Wine Office Court opens from Fleet Street and a few yards from the
entrance is the Cheshire Cheese, the famous low-ceilinged,
sanded-floored dining place of Dr. Johnson, looking doubtless much as it
did in the days when Johnson and Goldsmith so often dined here together.
Goldsmith lived for a long time in Wine Office Court at No. 6 and it is
here he is said to have written the "Vicar of Wakefield." His house has
been replaced by a modern structure and the old Vicar and his daughters
Olivia and Sophia would hardly feel at home now.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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