[Illustration: ST. GEORGE, SOUTHWARK: NORTH-WEST VIEW
Walk with me from the Bridge head southwards, noting the Inns first on the right or the west, and then on the left or east.
We have, first, the Bear on Bridge Head: then, before getting to Ford Lane, the Bull's Head: opposite the market place, the Goat: next the Clement. Opposite St. George's Church we cross over, and are on the east side, going north again: here we have a succession of Inns: the Half Moon: the Blue Maid and the Mermaid: the Nag's Head: the Spur: the Christopher: the Cross Keys: the Tabard: the George: the White Hart: the King's Head: the Black Swan: the Boar's Head. There is a pleasing atmosphere of business mixed with festivity about this street of inns and courtyards: of stables and grooms: of drivers and guards: of coaches and waggons: of merchants and middlemen: of country squires come up on business, with the hope of combining a little pleasure amongst the excitements of the town with a profitable deal or two. There is the smell of roast meats hanging about the courtyards of the inns. There is a continual calling for the drawers, there is a clinking of hanaps and a murmur of voices.
The _strepitus_, however, of the High Street is not like that of Bankside. There is no tinkling of guitars: no singing before noon or after noon: no laughing: the country folk do not laugh: they do not understand the wit of the poets and the players. High Street has nothing to do with Bankside: the merchants and the squires know nothing about the Show Folk.
There was one exception. Among the Show Folk was a certain Edward Alleyn, who was a man of business as well as a conductor of entertainments. He was on the vestry of St. Saviour's: he was also churchwarden, his name appears in the parish accounts of the period. He was a popular churchwarden: probably he had about him so much of the showman that he was genial, and mannerly, and courteous--these are the elementary virtues of the profession. For we find that when he proposes to retire his fellow members of the vestry refuse to let him go.
It is melancholy to walk down the High Street and to reflect that all these inns, most of them so picturesque, were standing thirty or forty years ago, and that some of them were standing ten years ago. One of them is figured in the 'Pickwick Papers.' The courtyard is too vast: the figures are too small: the galleries are too large: but the effect produced is admirable. Now not only are the old Inns gone, but there is nothing to take their place: a modern public-house is not an Inn. The need of an Inn at Southwark is gone: there are no more caravans of produce brought up to the Borough: the High Street has become the shop and the provider of everything for the populations of the parishes of St. Saviour, St. Olave, St. Thomas, and St. George.