London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets Ahead.
Story time. History time.
Before we do anything else…
I want you to meet someone.
Find Andrew Marvell’s portrait in the National Portrait Gallery.
Go on.
I’ll wait.
There he is.
Cherry cheeks.
Bright hazel eyes.
A broad, intelligent face.
He doesn’t look remote.
Or lofty.
He looks like someone you’d enjoy having dinner with.
And just possibly someone who, if you said something pompous…
…would quietly dismantle it.
Today, August 16th, is the anniversary of his death.
Andrew Marvell.
Poet.
Politician.
Traveller.
Satirist.
Member of Parliament.
One of the sharpest minds seventeenth-century England produced.
And, perhaps surprisingly…
A Londoner.
Not by birth.
But by choice.
Here’s a question.
What’s the sexiest poem in the English language?
There are plenty of candidates.
Shakespeare wrote a few.
John Donne certainly had a go.
But if I had to put a fiver on one…
…I’d back Marvell.
“Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.”
Four centuries later those lines still sparkle.
They’re playful.
They’re funny.
They’re audacious.
And underneath all the wit lies a truth that never dates.
Life is short.
Don’t waste it.
Marvell himself certainly didn’t.
As a young man he almost disappeared into history.
At Cambridge he fell under the influence of Jesuits.
His anxious father eventually tracked him down…
…not in some monastery…
…but in a London bookshop.
Rescued by books.
There’s something wonderfully appropriate about that.
Then he was off.
Four years wandering Europe.
Holland.
France.
Italy.
Spain.
He came home speaking four languages.
Not bad going for a lad from Hull.
Back in London he became much more than a poet.
He worked in Whitehall.
Official correspondence.
In Latin.
Imagine that.
By day, government business.
By night, poetry that still catches the breath.
He became an MP.
Fearlessly independent.
He defended John Milton when doing so was anything but fashionable.
He skewered bishops.
Mocked governments.
Made enemies.
He seemed almost incapable of keeping quiet when he saw humbug.
One address especially caught my eye.
Maiden Lane.
Marvell lodged there for years.
Ah, Maiden Lane.
What a street.
Its cup overfloweth.
J. M. W. Turner was born there in 1775.
A few doors away stands Rules.
Established in 1798, it’s London’s oldest restaurant.
And its most characterful.
Dickens knew it well.
His pied-à-terre and the editorial offices of his publication All the Year Round were just a stone’s throw away, in Wellington Street.
And he was only the head of a glittering list of Rules’ distinguished diners.
Generations of famous actors, artists, politicians and journalists broke bread there.
And then there’s royalty.
Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, before he became Edward VII, used to dine there with his favourite mistress, Lillie Langtry.
Rules quietly solved a delicate problem.
They created a second entrance in Maiden Lane and a private staircase leading to an upstairs private dining room.
The future King and his lady could slip in unnoticed.
No running the gauntlet of curious diners.
No craning necks.
No rubbernecking.
Just dinner.
The second doorway is still there.
So is the staircase.
And here’s a little London Walks boast.
On our Inside, Really Inside Covent Garden walk we don’t merely admire Rules from the pavement.
We go in.
London Walks has privileged access.
We’ve got the run of the place for half an hour.
It’s a golden 30 minutes, exploring one of London’s great historic interiors.
And, yup, it’s London Walks and only London Walks that’s got that free pass, that entrée.
But, yes, Rules Restaurant in Maiden Lane.
Both of those names are show-stoppers.
As is the name William Terriss.
The famous actor.
He’s eternally Maiden Lane.
Because he was murdered just outside the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre, almost directly across the street from Rules.
He was knifed to death by a deranged and very jealous bit-part actor.
It’s the most notorious murder in London’s theatrical history.
Right there in Maiden Lane.
Time’s wingèd chariot caught up with William Terriss just yards from where Andrew Marvell lodged.
It’s scarcely two hundred yards long, but somehow Maiden Lane feels like it contains half of London.
I like to think Marvell would have appreciated that.
All those many layers of biography and goings-on in Maiden Lane, that would have been right up Andrew Marvell’s street, so to speak.
Andrew Marvell understood layers.
He understood that cities, like people, reveal themselves slowly.
There’s another Marvell as well.
Not the political bruiser.
The contemplative.
Listen to this.
“Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.”
Just savour that for a moment.
A green thought.
In a green shade.
Seven words.
And the world becomes quieter.
How many writers can do that?
Then came August 16th, 1678.
Marvell died in a rented house on Great Russell Street.
Just west of where the British Museum stands today.
A contemporary doctor reckoned an ounce of quinine might have saved him.
Two days later they buried him in St Giles-in-the-Fields.
So next time you’re on Great Russell Street…
Pause just west of the British Museum.
That’s where Andrew Marvell drew his last breath on August 16th, 1678.
Then make your way down to St Giles-in-the-Fields.
It’s only a few minutes away.
Step inside.
One of England’s greatest poets is there.
Yes, Andrew Marvell.
That’s where they laid him to rest.
Beneath a window.
I rather like that.
Because Andrew Marvell spent his life opening windows.
Onto love.
Onto politics.
Onto nature.
Onto the life of the mind.
The window in St Giles is made of glass.
The windows he opened are made of words.
They’re windows that have never closed.
That’s Andrew Marvell.
And that’s London.
Window after window.
Some of them are made of glass.
Some of them are made of words.
In London, it’s knowing where to look.
And when to look.
So let’s leave the last word to Andrew Marvell.
“Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.”
See you tomorrow.