Salve [sal-weh] from London.
Or ex Londinio, if you’re going to be grammatically correct about these things.
It’s Latin for Greetings from London.
Literally, salve means, ‘to be well’ or ‘to be in good health.’
So, loose translation – very loose – Good morning from London. Hope you’re in good health.
Anyway, it’s April 13th.
A fine April day.
Oh, to be in England,
now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf…
That’s Robert Browning,
homesick and dreaming of England in April.
And look, if you like your April in London a little older,
a little older,
a little more earthy,
little more medieval…
here you have it:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes…
That’s Geoffrey Chaucer.
The first great English poet. Those are the opening lines of the first truly great English poem, The Canterbury Tales. And did you catch that first line?
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote…
Aprille…April.
Here’s that opening in modern English?
When April with its sweet showers
Has pierced the drought of March to the root,
And bathed every vein in that life-giving liquid
From which the flower is born…
When the west wind, Zephirus, with his gentle breath
Has stirred life in every wood and field…
The tender shoots pushing through…
Middle English – as Chaucer’s English is technically known – or modern English – it’s the same story.
April.
Life returning.
The sap rising.
And you can hear it in the words.
Take Chaucer’s Middle English word: droghte.
The drought of March.
In Chaucer’s day, it would have been sounded.
Not “drought” as we say it now.
More like – as I said it just then – “droo-khtuh.”
You can feel it in the throat.
Dry.
Constricted.
Parched.
And then… “roote.”
Open. Flowing. Life coming back.
Those little vowel endings, the final “e”s…
they’re doing work.
That’s what we mean by an inflected language.
The word carries its meaning in its shape, in its ending, in its sound.
A bit like Italian.
Sulla strada da Ostia a Roma guidavamo…
On the road from Ostia to Rome we were driving…
English used to be more like that.
In Chaucer’s day, it still was.
You can hear it.
You can feel it.
And how about the rest of that April line. Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote…
Shoures is showers.
Soote is sweet.
When April with its sweet showers.
Shoures – lovely sound – like the sound of rain itself. Chaucer isn’t just describing April. He’s sounding it.
But, hey, I’ve started a hare here. Or perhaps you could say, I’m putting the cart before the horse.
Let’s back up.
Do you ever wonder where Literary London is?
Some people would say Bloomsbury.
Fair enough.
Truth be told, here at London Walks say that ourselves.
We’ve even got a walk we call Literary London there. In Bloomsbury.
And other London neighbourhoods also throw their hat in the ring.
Hampstead has a very strong claim to being Literary London.
So does Kensington.
And then there’s historical London, what we call the City today. The oldest part of London.
Writer after writer born there.
John Donne.
John Milton.
Robert Herrick.
Thomas Grey.
Thomas More.
Samuel Pepys.
To say nothing of taverns frequented by writers. Think of Francis Beaumont’s great lines about the Mermaid Tavern, “what things have we seen, done, at the Mermaid, heard words, so nimble and so full of subtle flame, as if everyone from whence they came, had meant to put his whole wit into a jest, and resolved, to live a fool the rest of his dull days.”
And that’s not to mention the apparatus and the stage hands of the written words, printing presses, printers, publishers. The whole great machinery of words grinding into life.
All good cases.
All respectable.
But no.
On balance, I think not.
You want the well spring – and beating heart – of literary London,
you need to cross the river.
Go south.
Go to Southwark.
London’s oldest suburb. As old as London itself. Founded by the Romans.
Southwark.
Can you hear it? Southwark. South-wark. South-work. The south works. That’s what the the placename Southwark means.
The South works over on the other side of the river. Just over London Bridge.
Anyway, yes, Southwark gets my vote for our purposes here to do. That’s where I’d put my money.
It’s the well-spring. The beating heart. The heart and soul of Literary London.
And here’s why.
Back we go, about six and a half centuries. A poet sits down in an upstairs room in a little house just behind what is now Southwark Cathedral. It’s one day in the 1380s. Quill in hand. Ink on the table. He dips the quill pen in the ink and writes a line of English poetry. His name is
John Gower. He’s still there. He’s buried in Southwark Cathedral.
And you can make a pretty good claim for that moment being the beginning of English poetry as we know it.
And hard by there, about the same time, at the Tabard Inn…
the great opening scene of Geoffrey Chaucer’s masterpiece. Chaucer and Gower are contemporaries. But Chaucer’s work is so much better known we call him the father of English poetry.
So, let’s show our hand properly here.
Geoffrey Chaucer.
His masterpiece: The Canterbury Tales.
Southwark.
An inn yard.
A group of travellers gathering.
April in the air.
And a journey about to begin.
Now fast forward a couple of centuries
Same neighbourhood, just along the river a bit, a wooden O goes up. Yes, The Globe Theatre.
And from that stage, the words ring out.
The words of William Shakespeare.
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears…”
“All the world’s a stage…”
“To be, or not to be…”
The greatest poetry this infinitely rich tongue of ours has ever pronounced. Written for that theatre in Southwark.
Spoken there.
Some works indeed. Literary works. Over in London’s South works.
And then, a few centuries later still, a boy walks these streets.
A deeply troubled boy.
His father is in prison there in Southwark. Locked up in the Marshalsea, the debtor’s prison there. The family have moved into the prison with the father. All except for the little boy. He’s living by himself in a room in Camden Town. Walking three miles into central London. Working twelve hours six days a week at a blacking factory in an old, tumbledown, rundown building by the water’s edge. Pasting labels on bottles of shoe polish. Does his twelve hour day and then walks back to that little room in Camden. A despairing little drudge. Twelve years old. On his day off he walks over the river, walks through Southwark to the prison. Spends the day with his family in the prison. You’ve almost certainly guessed by now. That little boy grows up to be Charles Dickens.
And Southwark never quite leaves him.
So.
Gower.
Chaucer.
Shakespeare.
Dickens.
Not Bloomsbury.
Not Hampstead.
Not Kensington.
Southwark doesn’t just host literature.
It starts it.
And all of that is just by way of introduction.
Because today’s story begins there.
At the Tabard.
On that fine April day.
Some six and a half centuries ago.
A group of travellers.
About thirty of them, counting Chaucer himself.
And they’re a cross-section of medieval England. Medieval London.
All walks of life.
A knight, fresh from the wars.
A miller, broad, brawny,
and not to be trusted near your purse.
A prioress, delicate,
well-mannered,
anxious to be thought refined.
A merchant, forked beard,
talking a good game about trade.
A pardoner,
selling forgiveness for a price.
And the unforgettable Wife of Bath.
Gap-toothed.
Bold.
Five husbands behind her.
And quite ready, thank you very much, for number six.
They gather.
They take stock of one another.
And their host, Harry Bailie, has an idea.
Let’s make a game of it.
Each of us tells a story on the way to Canterbury.
And another on the way back.
Best tale wins.
Simple as that.
And out of that simple idea…
comes a masterpiece.
A tapestry of voices.
Stories comic,
bawdy,
pious,
sharp,
human.
A whole society, talking.
Laughing.
Arguing.
Revealing itself.
And it all begins there.
In Southwark.
In April.
With people setting out.
Which, when you think about it, is not so very far from what we do at London Walks.
Every walk is a journey.
We see what’s there.
We tell the stories…
Some of them moving, some of them funny. All of them revelatory.
So there you are. That’s today’s roll out. Your daily fix.
This… is London.
This… is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
See you tomorrow.