GREEN LAND FAR AWAY

Garden and colliers or "Geordies" brought their "best Wa
from Tyne and Wear by sail: a prolonged west wind could i
a fuel shortage in the capital. And the wintry streets were
ambulated by tall-hatted coalheavers peddling their wares. Here,
too, the old cries of London were still heard: in winter crossing-
sweepers sat by braziers to gather toll of familiar clients for
keeping their pitch clean. In her rough white cottage in Hyde
Park opposite Knightsbridge, old Ann Hicks sold gilt gingerbreads
and curds and whey and took her modest toll, won by half a
century of prescription, of Park brushwood and hurdles to make
her fire. In the new Bayswater road one could watch haymakers
in the open fields to the north: a little farther on, where the gravel
Oxford turnpike fell into Netting Dale, the pig-keepers who
supplied the London hotels squatted in rustic confusion. In the
cellars of Westminster as well as in the suburbs Londoners still
kept cows: the metropolis' milk supply was mainly home-made
with, so it was hinted, liberal assistance from the pump.1 And.
on any Monday morning herds of cattle were driven by drovers
armed with cudgels and iron goads through the narrow streets
to Smithfield: pedestrians were sometimes gored by the poor
beasts. In Smithfield Tellus kept his unsavoury rustic court: a
nasty, filthy, dangerous country Bastille in the heart of London
and a great offence to sensitive and progressive persons. Vested
interests defended it stubbornly against all assaults: Punch
depicted a proprietary Alderman taking his wife and family
for a walk there. "Oh! how delicious," he declares, "the
drains are this morning!"

How rustic London still was could be seen from its summer
greenery. The west-end was full of trees and green squares and
courts. The fields were half-a-mile away from Buckingham
Palace and Grosvenor Square, and snipe were occasionally shot
in the Pimlico marshes. In St. James's Park long rough un-
trimmed grass ran down to the water's edge, and there were no
railings to keep people from wandering on it. Sometimes on
wintry evenings the scarlet of a huntsman's coat could be seen in
the fading light ascending the slope of Piccadilly or entering the
Albany courtyard. In Chelsea, where the old brown roofs and
twisted high chimneys of the houses almost tumbled into the un-

1Cynics sometimes went further. " A great^z// of chalk occurred at Merstham on the
Brighton Railway . . .; a corresponding fall of milk took place in London on the
following day."—Punch, /, sost 6th Nov., 1841.