A CITY OF TRANSFORMATIONS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 626, 17 April 1874, Page 3

A CITY OF TRANSFORMATIONS.

From an article, hoade 1 as above, which appeared in the Graphic, describing the alterations recently made and others contemplated in the City of London, we extract the following : “Why, even Garroway’s has disappeared. The hammer that sounded in its decorous upper rooms is heard no more in Chance Alloy ; the famous crypt is shattered, and the scent of East India Madeira scarcely lingers there, since the last dozen of that celebrated wine was excavated, and the estate sales were 'removed to die London Tavern. .Who knows how' long it may be before Thrcadncedle street itself may be a name and no more ? It was but yesterday that the old V Fleece and •S”n ” stood there, next door to Mr Bannister’s, the Queen’s butcher, whence great City magnates took steaks and chops in their pockets or wrapped in a newspaper* and carried them into the famous old tavern; to ha,ye them broiled on the great gridiron, watching the savoury frizzle with expectant eyes. Mr Bannister went to King-street, Cheapside, hut even there the transformations are going on ; Prudent Passage is threatened, Honey Lane Market is but a vestige of the old resort where a trine supper was served every' Friday, in defiance of the advice of a once popular comic song ; Mason’s Hall Passage may vanish from our midst, even as that devious precinct known as “somewhere at the back of the Bank ” is vanishing ; and ■ Throgmorton-street is showing symptons of breaking up towards the purlieus of I ittle Ball Alley and the dingy region of Loudon Wall. Where are the men who once haunted that queer old under-ground tavern which made “ ti.o tap ” beneath the former auction mart in Bartholomew Lane ? Strange stories might have been heard there in the bubble days and during the time of the railway crises. Seedy and sad-eyed old fellows, who crept down the sawdusty stairs to pet an Abernethy biscuit and half a pint of warm porter, had been promoters and directors, driving their tilbury’s, and with Comet Hock every day for dinner. Many of them carried sheets of paper and bent quill pens in their hats, and were ready to write you a prospectus and help you to float a scheme for a small consider ation. Some few of the younger ones might have been met afterwards when “things had come round” doing a stroke of jobbing in Capel Court, and comparatively prosperous ; hut the greater part of them disappeared when the old place came down, and the Jewish itinerant picture dealers, who sold highly' varnished sunsets and lambent sea-pieces, carried off their galleries of fine-art from the wall near thej steps of the London and Westminster Bank in Lothhury. Places and men are alike transitory, hut, on the whole, the men outlive the places now, and a sturdy hand of true Londoners y'et stand by some of the old institutions that are at present untransformed, Only the other day them was a noble demonstration made by six representatives of popular educat ion, who attended to hear the morning lecture on Gcemetery at Gresham College. It is true that the lecture was in La (in, and that somebody had to he fetched from the City of Loodon School or elsewhere to read it in the absence of the Professor, who had perhaps not counted on the thirst for knowledge developed by recent legislation, but four out of the six sat it out, while the other two presumably went to beat up recruits for listening to the evening lecture on the same subject, which, as it was in English, actually attracted twenty or thirty enthusiasts.”