Hello my friend,
Welcome to humorously dull history for sleep.
My name is Stephen Dalton,
And it is my hope that as I tell you lots of different facts about particular periods in history tonight,
You find me so incredibly boring that you fall asleep very quickly,
And maybe even with a smile upon your face.
It is humorous history after all.
Tonight I'll tell you the humorously dull history of Victorian London.
Yes,
Victorian London.
Where the men wore top hats.
The women wore seventeen layers of clothing.
And getting dressed for dinner.
Could take longer than dinner itself.
So,
Just before we get started.
.
.
Allow yourself to settle into this moment.
Leave the day that was behind.
Feel the support.
Of whatever you lie upon.
If your eyes aren't closed yet.
Allow them to close.
Whatever has been.
Has been.
It's history now.
Whatever will be.
Will be.
All you have is this moment.
And my voice.
So allow your curiosity to be a part of this pleasant experience as I tell you.
The humorously dull history.
Of Victorian London.
Part one.
In which we take our first walk through Victorian London.
There are certain periods of history.
That seem to have developed their own weather.
Victorian London is one of them.
Say the words Victorian London.
And almost immediately.
The mind produces a street at night.
A gas lamp.
A handsome cab.
And a gentleman in a tarpaulin,
Emerging from some conveniently placed fog.
He is always emerging from the fog.
Nobody in our imagined Victorian London.
Ever seems to be going into it.
And so.
For the next little while.
We're going to spend some time.
In this enormous.
Crowded.
Noisy.
Increasingly modern city.
And see what everyday life is.
Actually felt like.
We'll visit Victorian homes.
And discover how many people it could apparently take to run one.
We'll go shopping in the new department stores.
Travel by omnibus and railway.
Encounter the world's first underground railway.
Eat Victorian food.
Visit pubs and theaters.
Look at work and leisure.
And eventually attempt to understand Victorian social etiquette.
A system under which two people could apparently know each other for six years and still be waiting for the correct person to introduce them.
Because Victorian London.
Is wonderfully contradictory.
It is old and modern at the same time.
There are horses in the streets.
While trains thunder into great railway stations.
There are houses lit by candles.
Beside streets illuminated by gas.
Messages can suddenly travel through telegraph wires at astonishing speed.
Although if you want someone to visit,
Who lives three streets away,
You may still feel obliged to leave a small piece of cardboard at their house first.
This is the calling card.
And we will come back to calling cards.
Because Victorian society developed an impressive number of rules governing small pieces of cardboard.
Who leaves one?
When should they leave it?
Whether a corner should be turned down.
Whether another card should be returned.
Human beings have invented the railway.
They are building enormous bridges.
They are laying cables beneath oceans.
And considerable mental energy is still being devoted to whether Margaret has acknowledged your card.
This is why we're here.
The Victorian period takes its name,
Of course,
From Queen Victoria,
Who comes to the throne in 1837 and reigns until 1901.
She reigns for sixty-three years.
Long enough for someone born near the beginning of her reign to grow old in a world that looks remarkably different.
And London changes at an extraordinary rate.
In 1801,
The wider London area has roughly a million inhabitants.
By the end of Victoria's reign.
Greater London contains well over six million people.
Six million people.
All trying to get somewhere,
Many of them at approximately the same time.
London becomes the largest city in the world.
During much of the 19th century.
And the centre.
Of an enormous empire.
Money.
Goods and people flow through it.
Its docks connected to trade across the globe.
Railways bring passengers into the capital.
New suburbs spread outward.
And London itself.
Becomes a sort of enormous experiment.
In what happens when a city gets much bigger.
Much faster.
Than anybody has really planned for.
The answer,
In many cases,
Is traffic.
Victorian London is packed with horses.
Horses pull private carriages.
Cubs.
Omnibuses.
Cards.
Delivery vehicles.
And practically anything else that needs to move and cannot be persuaded to move itself.
The horse is therefore absolutely central to Victorian transport.
It is also a horse.
And a horse.
As its own views about the working day.
A modern car does not become frightened because somebody has opened an umbrella.
This is one of its quieter advantages.
A Victorian cop journey involves a driver.
A horse?
Weather.
Traffic.
And a road surface upon which everybody has collectively agreed to do their best.
The Handsome Cab,
As it's known.
Which is the Victorian version of a taxi becomes one of the characteristic vehicles.
Of 19th century London.
It is relatively light and maneuverable.
With the driver sitting high behind the passengers.
You hail one in the street.
There is no up.
There is no little map showing a tiny horse moving towards you.
You look for a cab.
You raise your hand.
And if the driver doesn't stop?
There is no screen on which to watch him inexplicably travel in the opposite direction for nine minutes.
Progress has taken different forms.
There are also horse-drawn omnibuses.
Carrying larger numbers of passengers around London.
The omnibus.
Is essentially a bus that has not yet been told about engines.
Roots expand during the 19th century.
And eventually some omnibuses even carry passengers on the roof.
This gives you an excellent view of London.
It also gives London an excellent view of you trying to remain dignified in the rain.
And Victorian clothing is not always designed with public transport in mind.
A respectable middle or upper-class woman.
May be negotiating layers of clothing.
Long skirts and changing fashions in women's dresses.
Men have coats,
Hats,
And various expectations about what a properly dressed gentleman ought to look like.
Everybody is wearing considerably more fabric.
Than seems necessary for catching a bus.
There are no stretchy waistbands.
Victorian civilization has not yet reached that summit.
And appearance matters.
Victorian Britain.
Is intensely conscious of class and respectability.
Closing can communicate wealth,
Occupation,
And social position.
Manners matter.
Speech matters.
Behaviour matters.
A gentleman is expected to behave like a gentleman.
A lady is expected to behave like a lady.
The difficulty lies in remembering what everybody has apparently agreed those things mean.
There are rules about introductions.
Rules about visiting.
Rules about correspondence.
Rules about mourning.
Rules about dining.
Rules about courtship.
Rules about what to wear,
And when to wear it.
There are even different expectations surrounding how long one ought to remain on a social visit.
Stay too briefly,
And you may appear rude.
Stay too long.
And you were definitely rude.
Somewhere between the two.
Is civilisation.
And nobody has set a timer.
Etiquette manuals become popular.
Because people genuinely need guidance through this social landscape.
Which is itself quite funny.
If everybody naturally understood good manners,
There would be no market for a 400-page book explaining them.
The existence of etiquette manuals.
Suggests that Victorian Britain contained a very large number of people,
Quietly terrified they were using the wrong forks.
This is reassuring.
They look so confident in the photographs.
They're not.
Some of them are thinking.
Was I supposed to bow?
London itself is becoming more spectacular.
Grand new buildings appear.
Railway stations rise across the city.
Paddington develops from the 1850s.
Victoria Station comes in 1860.
St Pancras follows later in the century.
With its enormous train-shed and extraordinary Gothic hotel frontage.
Railways transform the capital.
Suddenly,
People can arrive from distant parts of Britain in hours rather than days.
And they do.
Which means London acquires another permanent feature.
People standing in a railway station.
Trying to work out where they are.
This human experience survives every improvement in transport.
You emerge.
There are signs.
There are exits.
Everyone else appears to know what they're doing.
You select an exit largely because three confident-looking people have chosen it.
They live here.
You do not.
You are now further from your hotel.
And then.
In 1863.
London does something extraordinary.
It opens the world to you.
First Underground Railway The Metropolitan Railway begins carrying passengers between Paddington and Farringdon.
A railway underground.
Victorians are traveling beneath London.
While horses are still pulling buses above them.
This is the Victorian age in miniature.
Someone in a top hat.
Can descend beneath the street.
Board a train powered by steam.
Travel through tunnels under the city.
Emerge at the other end.
And then go home to a house.
We're getting enough hot water for a bath.
May require a small domestic campaign.
Technological progress does not arrive evenly.
It wanders around improving whatever it feels like.
And the underground is popular.
Thousands of passengers use it from its opening days.
The early experience is rather different from the modern tube,
As it's known today.
Steam locomotives operate underground.
Ventilation is imperfect.
And stations and tunnels can become,
Well,
Smoky.
Yet people use it,
Because Londoners have already discovered one of the great rules of urban transport.
You can complain about it every day.
And still be on it tomorrow morning.
That relationship.
Is established remarkably early.
Above ground.
The streets are full of other characters.
There are newspaper sellers.
Flower sellers.
Quarters.
Messengers.
Cab drivers.
Shopkeepers,
Policemen,
And countless workers making their living in public view.
Street cries are part of London sound.
Church bells ring.
Wheels rattle.
Bors's clutter.
Trains arrive.
Factories operate.
Construction continues.
London is not.
Quietly,
Victorian,
We have made it quiet later.
We put it in period dramas and add a gentle fog.
The actual city is busy getting something delivered.
And the shops are changing too.
During Victoria's reign.
Shopping begins developing into something increasingly recognisable to us.
Large stores offer a widening range of goods.
And spectacular displays.
Turn shopping into an activity that can be enjoyed for its own sake.
This is a dangerous development.
Previously.
You need something.
You go up.
You acquire it.
You come home.
Victorian Retail.
Begins exploring a much more sophisticated idea.
What if you went out?
Without needing anything.
Department stores and elaborate shopping districts.
Encourage browsing.
Particularly among the growing middle classes.
Large windows display goods attractively.
People walk past.
They look.
They enter merely to see.
And somehow a parcel comes home.
Humanity has entered modern retail.
There is also an expanding world of entertainment.
Theaters thrive.
Music halls become enormously popular.
Pubs are everywhere.
Arks offer space for walking,
Riding.
And being seen walking.
And writing.
Museums and exhibitions attract enormous crowds.
The Great Exhibition of 1851.
Draws millions of visitors to the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park.
The Crystal Palace itself is an astonishing structure.
Of iron and glass.
Built to display industry,
Technology,
And goods from Britain and around the world.
Victorians come to marvellous machinery and manufactured objects.
Which means that even in 1851,
Humanity has already discovered the pleasure of spending an afternoon looking at things it has no intention of buying.
And somewhere among all this movement.
Is the Victorian home.
We will spend plenty of time there in later parts of this episode.
Because the Victorian home is a world in itself.
If you are well see.
There may be servants.
Quite a few servants,
And each servant may have a particular job—cook,
Housemaid,
Parlor maid,
Footman,
Butler,
Ladies' maid,
Valet,
Coachman,
The larger the household,
The more specific the jobs become.
At a certain point.
You begin to suspect that the principal occupation of the wealthy Victorian is generating employment by needing things brought from another room.
Even the bell system can become elaborate.
A bell rings downstairs.
Somebody looks at a board to see which room rang.
Then a servant goes upstairs to discover what is wanted.
The wealthy have essentially invented.
Notifications.
Accept the notification as a human being climbing stairs.
And all of this exists beside another London.
Clerks travelling to offices,
Shop workers,
Factory workers,
Domestic servants,
Dark workers.
Builders and thousands of people.
Living ordinary lives.
In an extraordinary city.
That is the London we're going to wander through tonight.
We'll have tea.
We'll go on the underground.
We'll work out what everyone is wearing.
We'll learn why leaving somebody a card can become socially complicated.
We'll see what people do for entertainment.
And we'll look inside the Victorian home.
Eventually we'll reach the evening.
When the gas lamps are lit.
And London becomes the city we think we remember from films.
Even though none of us was there and along the way.
We'll try to answer some important questions.
How many servants does it take to make one wealthy person comfortable?
How long can you visit somebody before you've stayed too long?
Why does dinner require so much cutlery?
And,
Perhaps most importantly,
If Victorian society was so concerned with correct behaviour.
How did anybody ever relax?
Because beneath the top hats,
Calling cards,
Corsets,
Railway stations,
And elaborate rules.
Victorian London contains exactly the same creature.
We have encountered throughout all of these stories.
A human being trying to get home.
Trying to make enough money,
Trying not to embarrass themselves at dinner.
And occasionally pretending they know where they're going because somebody is watching.
Part two.
In which London wakes up.
Although some people have been awake for hours.
Morning arrives in Victorian London without the assistance of a phone.
This presents an immediate problem.
If you need to be awake at 7.
There is no small glowing rectangle beside the bed,
Waiting to play a noise you selected yourself,
And will eventually come to hate.
Mechanical alarm clocks exist during the Victorian period,
Although they are not yet the cheap universal bedside objects they will become.
And if you are wealthy enough.
There is another solution.
Someone else wakes up first.
This is going to become something of a theme.
Let us begin our Victorian morning in a comfortable London house.
Perhaps we're somewhere in the middle decades of victorious reign.
In the home of a prosperous professional or businessman.
The family has money.
Although we're not going to give them 27 servants and a ballroom.
Because most comfortable Victorian households aren't Downton Abbey with slightly worse plumbing.
The bedroom is likely colder than ours.
A fire may have been lit.
Depending on the household and season.
But central heating in the modern sense.
Is not waiting patiently behind the walls.
Victorian houses rely heavily on fireplaces.
And a fireplace.
As a characteristic modern heating feature that radiators have unfortunately lost.
It needs somebody.
Somebody has to bring the call.
Somebody has to lay the fire.
Somebody has to light it.
Somebody has to remove the ash.
The Victorian fireplace is warm and attractive.
And has successfully concealed an entire job description inside it.
If you're the gentleman of the house,
However,
You may simply wake to discover that the fire exists.
This must do extraordinary things to your understanding of physics.
Every morning warms.
You never see coal.
You never see ash.
You simply emerge from beneath the blankets and the room has somehow entered into an arrangement with you.
Elsewhere in the house somebody has been up for ages before the family begins breakfast.
Servants in a prosperous household may already be cleaning grates,
Lighting fires,
Carrying water,
Preparing food,
Opening shutters.
And generally restoring the house from the unacceptable condition of having contained sleeping people.
Elsewhere in the house.
Somebody has been up for ages.
This is one of the secrets of the comfortable Victorian home.
The family wakes up in a house that has already begun functioning.
Fires are lit,
Grates have been cleaned,
Curtains are opened,
Water is being carried.
Breakfast is underway.
Various objects that were dirty yesterday.
Have reconsidered their position overnight and are clean again.
None of this happened by itself.
The servants have been awake.
A housemaid might rise very early to begin cleaning fireplaces and lighting fires.
Before the family comes downstairs.
There is a peculiar skill involved in doing a large amount of noisy physical work.
While creating the impression that you were never there.
You have to remove ash.
Gary Coole move things,
Clean things.
And somehow avoid waking the gentleman sleeping twelve feet away.
Who will later come downstairs.
And perhaps remark that he slept well.
Wonderfully.
Good.
Everyone's delighted for him.
The larger and wealthier the household.
The more elaborate this hidden machinery becomes.
There may be a cook.
Housemaids,
Parlormaids,
A butler.
A footman.
Perhaps a lady's maid or a valet.
The exact arrangement varies enormously according to wealth.
And the jobs have boundaries.
The butler has responsibilities.
The cook has responsibilities.
The housemaid has responsibilities.
As responsibilities.
Everybody knows broadly what everybody else ought to be doing.
Which means the Victorian household has already achieved one of the essential characteristics of the modern workplace.
Being extremely aware.
When somebody else isn't doing their bit.
Meanwhile,
Upstairs.
.
.
Our Victorian family is beginning to wash.
And washing is where the 19th century asks us to appreciate the pipe.
A bedroom wash stand.
Might hold a basin and a jug.
Water is brought upstairs.
And washing can be done there.
Hot water,
Naturally.
Us to be heated first.
Then somebody has to carry it.
Upstairs.
Water is one of those substances.
That seems pleasantly weightless when it comes out of a tap.
Put it in a bucket.
And it reveals its true personality.
A proper path can involve considerably more organisation.
In homes without a fixed bath and pipe-tot water.
A portable bath might be brought into the bedroom or a dressing room.
And filled by hand.
Imagine announcing this casually.
I think I'll have a bath.
Downstairs?
This information begins moving through the household.
A buzz.
People are using water.
People are carrying water.
A large object has appeared in your bedroom.
By the time you get into it.
The bath has become a team achievement.
Indoor plumbing does improve throughout the Victorian period.
Especially in wealthier homes.
Bathrooms and water closets.
Become increasingly common as the century progresses.
Although adoption varies greatly from house to house.
That variation is important.
Victorian London is not one single level of technology.
One household has a flushing toilet.
Another does not.
One has piped water.
And others still relies on water being carried.
One street is illuminated by gas.
While life elsewhere.
May feel considerably older.
Technology arrives in patches.
Rather like Wi-Fi There is always one room where civilization is inexplicably stopped.
And then everyone has to get dressed.
For a respectable Victorian gentleman.
Getting dressed means negotiating shirts,
Trousers,
Waistcoats Coats neck-wear and foot-wear appropriate to his position.
And whatever he plans to do that day.
Fashions change throughout the century.
But one item maintains an impressive degree of authority.
A Victorian gentleman's hat has a surprisingly active social life.
It goes outdoors with him.
It comes off indoors.
It may be raised when acknowledging somebody.
It has to be removed.
As appropriate moments.
And then,
Crucially,
Remembered.
Because if you visit somebody else's home.
.
.
Your hat may spend the evening in the hall.
With several other remarkably similar hats.
This creates a possibility.
That modern life has largely eliminated.
You can accidentally go home as another man.
From the eyebrows upward.
Imagine having performed beautifully all evening.
Introductions correct.
Conversation pleasant.
Dinner is successfully negotiated.
You have laughed exactly the right amount at a story you didn't enjoy.
Then you leave,
Wearing Mr.
Henderson's hat.
And unfortunately.
Mr.
Henderson's Hut.
Is noticeably better than yours.
Now you cannot even claim an innocent mistake.
Without sounding disappointed when you give it back.
Ah,
Yes,
Of course.
This is yours.
Pause.
Lovely,
Huh?
You return it.
Your own heart is waiting.
It has somehow become worse during the evening.
And Victorian social life contains plenty of these small hazards.
Because clothing isn't merely about keeping warm.
Appearance communicates respectability.
And social standing.
And there are expectations about what should be worn at particular times.
And on particular occasions.
This means getting dressed can involve a question.
That still survives today.
How smart is everyone else going to be?
This question has ruined afternoons for generations.
Too formal?
And you arrive looking as though you've misunderstood the event.
Too casual.
And everyone else appears to have received information.
That was deliberately withheld from you.
The Victorians simply have more buttons involved.
Professionable Women matters can become considerably more elaborate.
There isn't one single Victorian style.
Because Victoria rains for more than 60 years.
And fashion spends that entire period refusing to sit still.
Skirts expand and contract.
Sleeves change.
Corsets alter shape.
Decorative elements appear.
Become indispensable.
And then presumably become embarrassing.
Surprisingly soon afterwards.
By the 1850s.
The cage crinoline becomes fashionable.
This is a framework of hoops worn beneath the skirt.
Allowing the dress to spread outward dramatically,
Without requiring quite so many heavy petticoats.
In one sense.
This is practical.
In another sense.
You are now wider than you remember being.
Victorian women learn perfectly well how to move in these clothes.
We wouldn't.
That distinction is important.
A woman who has worn a crinoline for years.
Knows how to sit down.
But a modern person into one.
And give her a drawing-room containing several delicate tables,
And the room should be informed in advance.
She enters.
Fine.
Turns slightly.
Still fine.
Becomes confident.
This is a dangerous state.
She forgets that she now continues for another 18 inches in every direction.
A small table disappears.
Nobody mentions it.
She backs away apologetically.
The table returns.
A vase does not.
Part three.
In which London goes underground.
The early London Underground.
Also gives London a new social situation.
Being trapped in a small compartment with strangers.
The Victorians are ready for this.
They've spent years developing elaborate rules to avoid unnecessary intimacy.
With people they have actually been introduced to.
A stranger.
Should present no difficulty whatsoever.
Many early metropolitan railway carriages are divided into separate compartments.
Much like railway carriages above ground.
Passengers sit facing one another.
On bench seats.
And there are first,
Second and third class fairs.
Because even beneath the streets.
Class has followed everyone down.
There is something wonderfully Victorian about this.
London has performed an extraordinary feat of engineering.
Rich and poor.
Are travelling beneath the same city.
Propelled along the same rails.
Arriving at essentially the same moment.
But the railway.
Would still like to know exactly.
How important you are.
Before you sit down.
First-class passengers pay more for greater comfort.
Second class sits somewhere in the middle.
Performing the difficult historical role of being neither particularly luxurious nor reassuringly cheap.
Third class is the inexpensive option.
And attracts many working passengers.
And so we can imagine the morning compartment's filling.
A clerk gets in.
A tradesman gets in.
Someone has a newspaper.
Someone else has no newspaper.
And therefore has to decide where to look.
This is harder than it sounds.
You cannot stare directly at another passenger.
You cannot spend.
25 minutes examining your own shoes without beginning to look troubled.
You might look at an advertisement.
You've read it.
That took 12 seconds.
Now what?
The invention of public transport.
Creates an entirely new human requirement.
Looking at nothing.
Convincingly.
Londoner has become extremely good at it.
Newspapers are particularly useful.
A newspaper.
Gives the Victorian passenger somewhere legitimate to put his face.
He opens it.
Now he is occupied.
You may be reading about Parliament.
He may have been on the same paragraph since Baker Street.
Nobody can prove anything.
The newspaper also creates territorial difficulties.
Open a large Victorian newspaper in a crowded railway compartment.
And you have made a decision affecting several people.
The gentleman beside you.
Is now reading the back of it.
Not deliberately.
It has simply arrived.
He now knows something has happened in Belgium.
He didn't ask.
Your newspaper has informed him.
And different classes of passenger naturally bring different expectations.
A first-class compartment.
Might contain prosperous businessmen.
Or a gentleman heading into the city.
Third class might contain clerks,
Artisans,
And other workers travelling at lower fares,
Yet once the train is moving.
Everybody shares certain problems.
The train stops unexpectedly.
Nobody knows why.
Class cannot help.
A first-class passenger may be delayed more comfortably.
But he remains delayed.
He checks his what?
This achieves nothing.
He checks it again.
Still nothing.
This is another behaviour the railway gives us remarkably early.
Consulting a timepiece.
As though the second inspection might reveal.
That the first one was mistaken.
A gentleman might sigh.
Another passenger might look up.
And there it is.
A decision.
Do they speak?
British history hangs in the balance.
Seems to have stopped.
Yes.
A tremendous exchange.
Both men have contributed.
There is nothing further to add.
The train has indeed stopped.
One man returns to his newspaper.
They may now consider themselves practically acquainted.
There are women travelling too,
Of course.
And railway travel creates plenty of contemporary discussions about propriety and safety.
Compartments could put unrelated men and women together.
In a relatively enclosed space.
And Victorian society.
Already capable of becoming concerned about a man and a woman occupying the same postcode.
Finds plenty to think about here.
Some railway companies introduce ladies-only compartments.
These are for women another option when travelling.
Although women certainly continue to travel in ordinary compartments as well.
And etiquette follows everybody onto the railway.
You don't need an official rule book.
To understand that there are ways to behave.
Don't take up too much space.
Don't bother strangers.
Don't make yourself objectionable.
Don't behave as though the compartment belongs to you.
These principles remain surprisingly current today.
The railway carriage is becoming a tiny,
Temporary society.
But let's actually look around it.
Because the Victorian underground carriage is not yet the long open tube car we're used to.
And the early Metropolitan Railway.
Carriages are much more like the mainline railway compartments of the period.
Wooden-bodied coaches divided into separate compartments.
There isn't one long aisle through the train.
Once you're inside your compartment.
These are your people for the journey.
You have been assigned a small group of Victorians.
Good luck.
The early carriages are lit by gas.
Imagine stepping into one in the evening.
Polished wood.
Upholstered seating in the better compartments,
Small lamps burning above.
Perhaps advertisements,
Newspapers open.
Hats everywhere.
And several strangers carefully avoiding becoming involved in one another's lives.
It would feel much more like entering a little railway room.
Than stepping onto a modern tube train.
And getting down to the early Metropolitan Railway.
Isn't initially the Great Descent we associate.
With the deep tube.
The first line is comparatively shallow.
Much of it is constructed just beneath existing roads.
Using cut and cover methods.
Early stations such as Baker Street.
Are therefore reached by ordinary stairs.
Rather than by plunging hundreds of feet beneath London.
There are no escalators in Victorian London.
The first escalators on the underground.
Won't arrive until 1911.
At Earl's Court.
If you're waiting for the Victorian gentleman to.
.
.
Step gracefully onto a moving staircase.
You'll be waiting until Edward VII has already come and gone.
The Victorian Gentleman Walks The Victorians are very good at this.
We occasionally forget how much walking previous generations simply absorbed into the day.
Without counting it,
Recording it.
Celebrating it.
Or receiving a small digital medal.
Because they had reached ten thousand steps.
They just got home.
And perhaps that's the best place to leave the Victorian underground.
With Londoners simply getting used to it.
What begins as an astonishing idea putting a railway beneath the city.
Gradually becomes part of an ordinary Tuesday.
People to send the stairs.
Buy their tickets.
Find their compartment.
Open a newspaper and go to work.
Within remarkably little time,
One of the greatest engineering achievements of the age.
Has accomplished the most British transformation imaginable.
It has become something people use every day.
Without feeling the slightest obligation.
To be impressed by it.
Part 4 in which we meet the woman.
Everyone keeps calling the age after.
In June 1837.
An 18 year old girl wakes up at Kensington Palace.
And discovers she is Queen of the United Kingdom.
This is quite a morning.
Most 18-year-olds would struggle to absorb important information before breakfast.
Victoria is informed in the early hours that her uncle King William IV has died.
And that's the crown.
Now belongs to her.
She meets the senior men who have come to see her.
Conducts herself remarkably confidently.
And begins her reign.
And one of the consequences is immediate.
For Victoria.
Rather satisfying.
She can move out.
Victoria's relationship with her mother the Duchess of Kent.
Has become extremely difficult.
She has grown up under a restrictive system.
Devised largely by her mother's advisor.
Sir John Conroy intended to keep the young princess dependent upon them.
Victoria dislikes Conroy intensely.
This is putting it mildly.
So,
Becoming queen.
.
.
Does at least solve one problem rather efficiently.
No difficult conversation.
No searching for a flat.
No discussion about whether she can afford the deposit.
She is the Queen.
She moves to Buckingham Palace.
And Victoria is the first monarch to use Buckingham Palace.
As the official royal residence.
The palace she enters in 1837.
Is not quite the Buckingham Palace we know today.
Work has been going on for years.
And there are practical problems.
The chimneys smoke.
Ventilation is troublesome.
There are reportedly hundreds of windows.
And plenty of rooms.
Yet various aspects of the building aren't functioning particularly well.
Which is reassuring.
Because there is something wonderfully human about moving into a palace and discovering that the chimney doesn't work.
You can be Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.
You can have ministers waiting for you.
There are guards outside.
Someone still has to look at the chimney.
And Victoria loves her new independence.
She's young.
She's energetic.
She enjoys music and dancing.
She attends balls and the theatre.
She has a lively sense of humour.
And is capable of laughing heartily.
This is worth mentioning.
Because the Victoria who survives in popular imagination.
Has apparently just been told that the restaurant has stopped serving breakfast.
She looks permanently unimpressed.
Some of that impression comes from later photographs.
When Victoria is older.
And has endured profound loss.
Early Victoria is a very different character.
She dances.
She enjoys society.
She stays her place.
She is passionate.
And sometimes extremely temperamental.
And her diaries.
She writes enthusiastically about people she likes.
And rather less enthusiastically about people she doesn't.
Victoria has opinions.
Strong ones.
If Victoria dislikes you.
There is very little danger of her accidentally giving the impression that she doesn't.
Then Prince Albrecht arrives.
Victoria has actually met her German cousin Albert.
Before becoming queen.
But when he visits again in 1839.
Things become considerably more interesting.
She is delighted by him.
Albert is handsome.
Intelligence.
And serious.
Victoria falls very much in love.
And because she is the reigning monarch.
There is a slight reversal of the usual 19th century arrangement.
Victoria has to propose to him.
Albert cannot formally propose to the Queen.
This must have removed at least one source of anxiety from his visit.
No carrying a ring around for three weeks.
No waiting for the correct moment.
No suddenly kneeling while Victoria wonders whether he has dropped something.
The queen handles it.
They marry in February 1840.
And Victoria is extremely happy with Albert very happy We know this partly because she says so repeatedly.
Victoria's Journals.
Are not the work of a woman attempting to maintain an air of romantic mystery.
She thinks Albert is beautiful.
She thinks he's wonderful.
She admires his appearance.
She admires his mind.
She enjoys being married to Tim.
Albert has done extremely well.
There is,
However,
One part of life Victoria enjoys considerably less.
Pregnancy.
Unfortunately,
Victoria and Albert proceed to have nine children.
Nine.
Victoria is not especially fond of babies either.
This creates an interesting family dynamic.
She loves Albers enormously.
Albert keeps having a particular consequence.
Their first child,
Victoria,
Is born in 1840.
Then Albert Edward than Alice?
Alfred.
Louise.
Arthur.
Leopold and Beatrice.
After Beatrice,
Victoria and Albert have what can only be described as a substantial family.
Nine children eventually produce forty-two grandchildren.
And those descendants begin marrying into royal and noble families across Europe.
At which point the family tree becomes difficult to approach casually.
You cannot simply ask.
And how are you two related?
There may be a pause while somebody fetches paper.
Victoria eventually becomes known as the Grandmother of Europe.
Which sounds wonderfully cosy.
Until you imagine actually being the grandmother of Europe.
Ordinary grandmothers have birthdays to remember.
Victoria has grandchildren in Britain,
Germany,
Russia,
Greece,
Romania,
Spain,
And elsewhere.
Many of them acquiring titles as they go.
A family wedding is no longer merely a wedding.
It is potentially foreign policy with cake.
And imagine trying to remember everybody properly.
This one is a prince.
That one has become an empress.
One of the Alberts has married one of the Victorias.
Another Victoria is related to the first Victoria through someone else called a Victoria.
The 19th century European royal families are extremely fond of recycling names.
There are only so many times you can write Albert onto a family tree.
Before the family tree begins withholding information.
Victoria herself keeps extensive journals throughout her lifetime.
And they reveal a woman considerably more emotional and opinionated.
Than the severe public image suggests.
She records enthusiasm.
Irritation.
Affection.
And dislike.
She can be extremely direct in her private reactions.
And I rather like the arrangement.
Victorian society has created an elaborate system.
In which everyone must behave correctly in front of the Queen.
Bow.
Courtesy.
Use the correct form of address.
Don't speak until appropriate.
Don't turn your back improperly.
Then everyone leaves.
And Victoria gets her diary.
There are no online reviews.
You simply have to spend the rest of your life wondering how many stars the queen gave you.
And Zen.
In 1861.
Albert dies.
At only 42.
Victoria is devastated.
She withdraws substantially from public life and mourns him for the rest of her life,
Continuing to wear black.
It changes her.
And it also changes the Victoria History Remembrance.
When most of us picture Queen Victoria.
We don't picture the 18 year old who enjoyed dancing.
We picture that photograph,
Black dress,
White cap,
Expression suggesting that somebody has just attempted to explain casual Fridays.
Victorian photography contributes to this impression.
Portrait photography is formal.
Exposures require stillness,
Especially earlier in the period.
And smiling for photographs isn't yet the convention it later becomes.
History has preserved Victoria's serious face.
Extremely efficiently.
Imagine if somebody reconstructed your entire personality.
From your passport photograph.
That was Stephen.
He disliked everything.
Now,
Stephen was trying not to blink.
Victoria does have a sense of humour.
She enjoys entertainment.
And can laugh heartily.
There are even surviving photographs from later in life.
In which her expression is much warmer than the famous stern portraits.
But history has made its selection.
History wants Victoria displeased.
And Victoria remains queen for so long.
That eventually she seems less like a person occupying the throne.
And more like something Britain came with.
Prime Minister's change.
Governments change.
London changes.
Victoria remains.
Someone born when she becomes queen in 1837.
Can reach old age,
Having known nobody else on the throne.
By her diamond jubilee in 1897.
She has reigned for sixty years.
Crowds gather in London.
The Empire celebrates.
And the elderly woman at the centre of it.
Has lived through a transformation that would have been almost unimaginable.
When she first entered Buckingham Palace.
She became queen in a London dominated by horses.
She lives long enough to see electric lighting.
Telephones.
Underground trains.
And even motor cars beginning to appear.
And Zen.
In January 1901.
Victoria dies at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.
Aged AC-1 a rain.
Has lasted more than 63 years.
And somehow.
A name.
Remains attached to almost everything around it.
Victorian London.
Victorian Houses.
Victorian Novels.
Victorian clothes.
Victorian furniture.
Victorian morality.
Victorian architecture.
Victorian plumbing.
You can know virtually nothing about Queen Victoria.
And still walk into an estate agent and confidently announce Oh,
Original Victorian features.
Victoria herself.
Has been gone for more than a century.
Her name.
Is still selling houses.
Not bad for an 18 year old who mainly wanted to move away from her mother.
Part five.
In which everybody tries to behave properly.
Victorian London as rules.
Not merely laws.
Laws are comparatively easy.
Don't steal a horse.
Don't break somebody's window.
Don't murder the vicar.
Most people can get through an afternoon without accidentally doing any of those things.
Social rules are more dangerous.
Because you can break one while trying extremely hard to be pleasant.
You can call at the wrong time.
Speak to the wrong person first.
Introduce the wrong person.
To the wrong other person.
Stay too long.
Leave too early.
We're the wrong thing.
Ask the wrong question.
Fail to acknowledge somebody whom you ought to acknowledge.
A criminal generally knows when he's committing a crime.
A perfectly respectable Victorian woman can apparently cause an incident by leaving a piece of cardboard incorrectly.
Let us attempt to spend a day being polite.
We will need concentration.
One of the first things we'll need.
Is a calling card.
Among the middle and upper classes.
Particularly during the 19th century.
Visiting has become surrounded by conventions.
A person's card bears their name.
And can be left at another person's home to announce a call.
This sounds straightforward.
It isn't going to remain straightforward for long.
Suppose.
.
.
Mrs.
Thompson wishes to call upon Mrs.
Henderson.
Mrs.
Thompson arrives at the Henderson residence.
A servant answers.
Mrs.
Henderson may be at home.
Where she may be.
Not at home.
If you know what I mean This does not necessarily mean Mrs Henderson is physically absent from the building.
This is important.
Not at home.
Can mean she is.
Not receiving visitors.
Mrs.
Henderson may be upstairs.
She may be 15 feet away.
She is.
Nevertheless.
Not at home.
This is a remarkable achievement.
Modern technology has tried to recreate it with the little green dust beside your name.
The Victorians managed us.
With a servant and confidence.
Mrs Thompson does not shout into the hallway.
I can see her coat.
She accepts the situation.
She leaves her card.
The card itself participates.
In an entire language of visiting.
Conventions vary across time and place.
And Essex manuals don't always agree on every detail.
Which is perhaps the most Victorian thing imaginable.
There are rules and even the people writing the books about the rules are capable of disagreeing.
About the rules.
Very reassuring.
Now Mrs Thompson goes home.
Mrs.
Henderson as her card.
What happens next depends upon their relationship and circumstances.
Calls may need to be returned.
Cards may be left in response.
And slowly.
To adult women.
Who would presumably quite like to have tea together.
Become involved in administration.
There must have been occasions when somebody stood in her drawing room,
Holding a card,
And thought,
I cannot remember what stage we're at.
Did she call because I called?
Or did I call because she called?
If I call now.
Is this a new call?
Nobody move.
I'll check the cards.
And calls themselves are not necessarily intended to occupy the entire afternoon.
Four more social calls are often relatively brief.
This creates another difficulty,
Leaving.
There is a perfect amount of time to stay.
Nobody announces what it is.
You have to feel it.
Five minutes may seem abrupt.
Three hours and you've effectively moved in.
Somewhere between these extremes.
Lies good breeding.
So you sit.
T perhaps appears.
Conversation occurs.
And after a suitable interval.
One person has to perform that ancient social maneuver.
Of indicating that they're about to leave.
Without simply standing up and saying,
I've had enough of this.
There are phrases.
Small movements.
Perhaps gloves become involved.
The body begins preparing for departure.
Before the conversation officially knows.
We still do this.
Someone says.
And suddenly.
Everybody understands.
That a coat will soon be required.
Well.
May be one of the hardest working words.
In the English language.
Introductions of their own conventions.
Status,
Age,
And gender can affect who is introduced to whom.
The basic principle in formal society is not simply to point at two people and say,
Argrit,
Charles,
There.
There is an order.
And until an introduction has taken place.
Approaching a stranger socially.
May be much more restricted than we would expect today.
This creates wonderful possibilities at a crowded gathering.
There is someone six feet away.
Whom you would very much like to meet.
You cannot simply walk over.
You need someone who knows both of you.
Unfortunately.
That person is talking to an elderly colonel.
The colonel has begun his story.
It is clearly not his first telling of the story.
Your entire romantic future is now dependent upon how long the colonel was stationed in India.
The person you wanted to meet leaves.
The kernel continues.
By the time he reaches 1846,
Your children have ceased to exist.
Eventually perhaps you are introduced Now conversation can begin.
Conversation itself has expectations.
Good manners discourage subjects likely to cause discomfort or embarrassment.
You shouldn't monopolize attention.
You shouldn't boast.
You shouldn't pry excessively into personal affairs.
The ideal conversationalist is interested without interrogating.
Amusing.
Without performing.
Knowledgeable without lecturing.
Attentive.
Without staring.
This is quite a demanding job.
Or somebody who has only come for tea.
And there is no emergency phone.
Today.
When conversation briefly dies.
Everybody has access to a small device.
Containing essentially all human knowledge.
Victorians have the mantelpiece.
You cannot suddenly become extremely interested in the mantopies.
For 40 seconds.
Everyone knows what you're doing.
Somebody must speak.
So.
.
.
Dangerous.
How do you know the Hendersons?
Saved Courtship makes all of this more complicated.
For respectable middle and upper class young women in particular.
Interactions with unmarried men can be closely watched and governed by expectations of propriety.
Circumstances vary enormously by class.
And across Victoria's long range.
But reputation matters.
A young couple may not have endless opportunities to be alone together.
Family is nearby.
Friends are nearby.
Servants are nearby.
Everybody is nearby.
The 19th century has somehow achieved.
Constant supervision.
Without a single security camera.
Imagine trying to flirt while someone's aunt is sitting eight feet away doing needlework.
The ant appears entirely occupied.
She is not.
The ant has heard everything since Tuesday.
A Gentleman Course.
He sits in the drawing room.
The young woman sits.
Mother shits.
Perhaps a sister sits.
And continues with whatever she is making.
The gentleman now has to communicate romantic interest using sentences that can survive committee review.
Have you enjoyed the weather?
Very much.
I'm glad.
Ant's Needle continues.
Passionate stuff.
Of course.
Real Victorian courtship is much more varied than the stereotype.
People meet at dances,
Dinners,
Churches.
Through friends and family.
At work.
And in countless ordinary circumstances.
They write letters.
They fall in love.
They make terrible decisions.
History changes many things.
Attraction remains administratively Resistant.
Letters can provide privacy.
That conversation does not.
And a leisure.
As enormous importance.
When communication is slower.
You write it.
You send it.
Then you wait.
There is no indication that the recipient is typing back.
Nothing.
Silence.
Perhaps tomorrow.
Perhaps the next day.
Perhaps you have ruined your life.
Breakfast continues regardless.
Then a letter arrives.
The handwriting alone can produce emotion before you've read a word.
And because letters are physical objects,
They can be kept.
Tied with ribbon.
Hidden in drawers.
Read again years later.
Were discovered by descendants.
You immediately publish them.
This is the great long-term danger of romantic correspondence.
You believe you are writing privately to your beloved.
140 years later,
A historian called Nigel is explaining paragraph 3.
Dances offer another opportunity to meet.
Balls and formal dances.
Rules too,
Naturally.
There can be done,
Scott.
Partners.
Introductions.
And expectations.
Surrounding whom one dances with,
And how often.
A dance-card might allow a woman to record the names of partners promised for particular dances.
Which means the Victorians have managed to bring appointments into dancing.
You are having fun.
But it is scheduled.
May I have the next dance?
I'm afraid Mr Pritchard has the next one.
Mr Pritchard.
Is across the room eating something.
He has forgotten.
The dance begins.
There is no notification Mr Pritchard has missed his slot.
Depending on the dance and period.
Couples move around the ballroom.
Under the observation of everybody else.
This is courtship in public.
You may be looking into the eyes of someone you adore.
Your mother is looking at both of you.
Do not become overconfident.
And then there is dinner.
Victorian Formal Dining and become impressively elaborate among the wealthy.
Particularly later in the century.
This is where cutlery begins multiplying.
A simple meal requires a knife,
Fork and spoon.
A formal Victorian table looks at this arrangement and finds it lacking in ambition.
Different courses.
May have appropriate utensils.
Glasses appear.
Plates change.
Servants bring and remove dishes.
Seating itself can mutter.
And somewhere at that table.
Is a guess.
Who does not know.
Which fork to use?
This person has been with us throughout history.
They arrive.
They sit down.
They look left There's several forks.
They look right.
There are knives.
There are spoons.
Is a small object.
Whose purpose is not immediately clear.
Nobody else appears concerned.
The safest strategy.
Is observation.
Do not move first.
This is crucial.
Wait for somebody who looks as though they inherited furniture.
They pick up a fork.
Excellent.
That's one.
Etiquette manuals can provide guidance.
But the simplest rule of working from the outside inwards.
Becomes associated with form or place settings.
Even so.
The possibility of error remains.
You pick something up.
Nobody reacts.
Continue.
The real nightmare would be someone quietly replacing it.
No words.
Just a hand.
Your evening is over.
The new conversation also has its own rhythm.
Servants may be present.
Which introduces an interesting Victorian ability among the wealthy.
Discussing things in front of another human being.
While behaving as though that human being is temporarily part of the wallpaper.
The servant hears everything.
The servant knows who is having money problems.
The servant knows whose marriage is unhappy.
The servant knows that Mrs.
Henderson was absolutely at home.
When she told Mrs Thompson she wasn't.
The servant could destroy the neighborhood.
Instead.
The servant brings potatoes.
This may be the greatest display of professionalism in the 19th century.
Mourning,
Too,
Develops extensive social conventions,
Particularly among the middle and upper classes.
Closing.
Behavior.
And the lengths and degree of mourning.
Can be influenced by one's relationship to the person who has died.
There are stages of mourning.
There are appropriate fabrics and colours.
There is morning jewellery.
There are expectations about withdrawing from social events.
And because the Victorians are Victorians.
There are guides explaining what is appropriate.
Grief itself cannot be organized.
They make a respectable attempt with the wardrobe.
Queen Victoria's decades in black after Albert's death.
Give morning dress an especially powerful public example.
Although most people do not remain in deepest mourning for forty years,
That would make accepting invitations difficult.
Etiquette also governs behaviour in the street.
A gentleman encountering a lady he knows.
Does not necessarily barrel towards her,
Shouting her name from across the road.
There are conventions surrounding acknowledgement and greeting.
And generally.
The lady's recognition matters.
This is sensible.
It allows her to decide whether she wishes to acknowledge him.
It also creates the possibility that she hasn't seen him.
Or she has seen him You cannot know.
She passes.
Did she genuinely miss him?
Perhaps.
He spends the rest of the walk conducting an investigation with no evidence.
We've all been there.
Someone you know passes without saying hello.
Immediately the mind opens a case.
Maybe they didn't see me.
Definitely saw me.
Why wouldn't they say hello?
Did I do something?
By the time you reach home,
A friendship has nearly ended.
Without either person participating.
And perhaps this is where a Victorian etiquette is.
Becomes unexpectedly familiar.
The rules themselves have changed.
Most of us no longer leave calling cards.
We don't require formal introductions before speaking to everybody at a party.
We don't keep dance cards.
A gentleman's hat has largely been relieved of its social duties.
But the anxiety underneath all of it.
Remains remarkably healthy.
Was I rude?
Have I stayed too long?
Should I reply?
Do I need to invite them because they invited me?
If I invite those too.
Do I also have to invite the other two?
They haven't replied.
Should I send another message?
How long do I wait?
Human beings do not appear to require etiquette manuals.
In order to make social life complicated.
We can improvise.
The Victorians merely had the courtesy.
To write the rules down.
Part 6 in which we discover.
That there is more than one Victorian London.
There is a problem with saying that someone lives in Victorian London.
It tells us almost nothing about their life.
Two people can live in the same city.
Under the same queen.
Perhaps only 20 minutes a walk from one another.
And inhabit worlds so different.
That they might struggle to understand each other's Tuesday.
Let's take a walk.
We might begin somewhere prosperous.
Perhaps Belgravia.
Developed during the 19th century.
Into one of London's grandest residential districts.
There are handsome terraces.
Large houses.
Servants coming and going.
Courage is arriving outside.
And somewhere behind one of those windows.
Somebody is worrying about money.
Not necessarily because they have none.
Input,
Because they might have slightly less than the people next door.
This is a very different problem from poverty.
Obviously.
But Victorian society becomes remarkably skilled.
As creating financial anxiety.
At almost every income level.
There is always another rung.
You have a house.
Someone else has a larger house.
You have a maid.
They have too.
You have a courage.
The Hendersons have a courage and a footman.
Damn the Hendersons.
The class in Victorian Britain isn't simply about money.
Birth matters.
Occupation matters.
Education matters.
Accent matters.
Manners matter.
Where you live.
Matters,
Who your family is.
Matters.
And because all these things matter.
People become extremely good at noticing them.
You meet a man.
Within several minutes.
You may have gathered a surprising amount of information.
His clothes.
Is speech.
Is profession.
Is address.
Where he went to school.
Who introduced him.
Nobody has asked.
What class are you?
That would be terribly rude.
Fortunately.
Everybody has been investigating.
And the Victorian middle classes grow enormously during the 19th century.
Merchants,
Manufacturers,
Lawyers,
Doctors,
Teachers,
Civil servants,
Clerks and shopkeepers,
Among many others.
This creates an enormous world of people.
Who were doing reasonably well and would very much like that fact.
To be a parent.
Respectability matters enormously.
The house should be respectable.
The children should be respectable.
The clothes should be respectable.
The curtains should probably also be respectable.
Although the curtains have not been consulted.
And maintaining appearances.
Can cost money.
A family might employ a servant.
Partly because domestic help is genuinely useful.
But having a servant can also say something about the family's position.
Which produces a slightly peculiar possibility.
Of a household employing somebody.
Because it would look bad if they didn't.
The servant may not be particularly well paid,
The family may not be particularly rich,
But there she is.
Everyone has committed to the arrangement.
And then there is the clerk.
I have a soft spot for the Victorian clerk.
London contains thousands of them.
Men sitting at desks in offices,
Copying documents,
Keeping accounts,
Writing letters,
Working for banks.
Insurance firms,
Solicitors,
Merchants and government departments.
The clerk occupies an interesting social position.
He works with his hands.
But only slightly.
He wears respectable clothes.
You may own very little.
Is principal piece of industrial equipment.
Is handwriting.
And appearance can matter enormously.
Because the clerk wishes to distinguish himself.
For manual labour.
So there is the code.
The color.
Perhaps that?
Everything saying.
.
.
I work indoors.
This is important.
A clerk might earn a modest salary.
While still needing to dress appropriately for the office.
And maintain a respectable appearance.
The collar cannot announce that rent is due.
The collar has a job to do.
And perhaps our clue.
Dreams of advancement.
See new clip.
Chief Clay.
Manager.
Partner.
Victorian London is full of people climbing invisible ladders.
Some are climbing up.
Some are desperately trying not to slip down.
And some are standing beside the ladder,
Saying they never cared for ladders anyway.
Now let's keep working.
The streets change.
The houses change.
The rooms get smaller.
And eventually we enter the London.
That Charles Dickens made famous.
Dickens knew these streets extraordinarily well.
He was one of London's great walkers.
Sometimes covering immense distances.
Through the city.
Including his noise when he couldn't sleep.
He observed faces,
Shops,
Courts,
Alleys,
Offices,
Prisons,
Inns and neighbourhoods.
Then transformed them into fiction.
And he had personal reasons for understanding insecurity.
When Dickens was twelve.
His father was imprisoned for death.
In the Marshallsea prison.
Young Dickens was sent to work at Warren's Blacking Warehouse.
Where he pasted labels onto bottles of shoe blacking.
You never forgot the experience.
Imagine the humiliation from his point of view.
He is intelligent.
Ambitious.
Sensitive.
He has been receiving some education.
And suddenly.
At 12 years old.
He's working in a warehouse,
While his father is in a debtor's prison.
Years later.
He becomes one of the most famous writers on earth.
Which must have made school reunions considerably easier.
What are you doing now,
Charles?
Oliver Twist.
Also great expectations.
I'm doing rather well.
Dickens' experience of poverty and insecurity.
Leaves a deep mark on him.
And his fiction repeatedly returns to death.
Workhouses.
Neglected children.
Bureaucracy.
And the enormous gap between comfortable society and people struggling beneath it.
But Dickens doesn't simply give us miserable streets.
Populated by miserable people.
Being miserable professionally.
His London is funny.
It's crowded with eccentrics.
People talk too much.
They misunderstand one another.
They have ridiculous names.
They become obsessed with tiny matters.
They are pompous,
Generous.
Selfish.
Sentimento.
Foolish.
And occasionally magnificent.
This matters.
Because poorer Victorian London.
Isn't populated by an abstract historical category called the poor.
It's populated by people.
They fall in love.
They tell jokes.
They get drunk.
They sing.
They quarrel with neighbors.
They buy things they probably shouldn't.
Their favorite foods.
Children play in streets.
Someone knows somebody who can get something cheaper.
Somebody else knows a man who can fix it.
And there is always a man.
Who says he can fix it.
You absolutely cannot.
That man is immortal.
Many working-class Londoners live in crowded conditions.
Some families occupy one or two rooms.
Lodging houses provide beds or accommodation.
For people who cannot afford homes of their own.
And the word lodging.
Covers a very wide range of experiences.
At the cheapest end.
Privacy can become extremely.
.
.
See you,
Regico.
You are essentially renting the horizontal space required for unconsciousness.
Even then,
London has great Asians.
There are skilled workers who earn relatively decent wages.
Dark workers whose employment can be irregular.
Factory workers,
Builders,
Printers.
Taylors seamstresses.
Domestic servants.
Street Sellers.
Labourers.
Custermongers selling fruit and vegetables from burrows.
Thousands upon thousands of different working lives.
The Custermonger is one of the greatest figures of 19th century London street life.
Barrows loaded with produce move through neighbourhoods.
Sellers call out their goods,
London as a soundtrack.
You don't open an app.
To discover that strawberries are available nearby.
A man informs the entire street.
Whether the street wants strawberries or not.
And street selling requires personality.
You need customers.
You need people to notice you.
You need to make your goods sound appealing.
There is competition.
If three people are selling roughly the same onions.
The onions themselves.
Of limited opportunities for innovation.
The seller must contribute.
Victorian markets are full of noise,
Bargaining.
Movement.
And people who know exactly what something ought to cost.
This last group remains with us.
They approach a stool already offended.
How much?
The price is given.
A small laugh.
Not a happy laugh.
A laugh indicating that the seller has misunderstood the relationship.
Onions and money.
Negotiations begin.
Under the poor law system.
Workhouses provide relief for people who cannot support themselves.
But conditions are deliberately harsh.
The principle is that life inside should not be more attractive than the life of the poorest independent labourer.
Dickens famously uses the workhouse in Oliver Twist.
Oliver asks for more.
That scene has become so famous.
That even people who haven't read the novel.
Know roughly what's happening.
A hungry child asks for another helping.
The adults react as though he has attempted a military coup.
Dickens exaggerates and dramatizes.
Because he is writing fiction.
But is anger at institutions that strip vulnerable people of dignity.
Is real.
And his books become enormously popular.
They are often published in installments.
Meaning readers wait for the next part of a story.
Victorian Britain has its own version of You cannot tell me what happens.
I'm not caught up.
People discuss the characters.
They wait for new installments.
They speculate.
They become emotionally invested.
The technology of entertainment changes.
The person saying,
Don't spoil it.
Survives untouched.
Dickens becomes a celebrity.
He gives enormously popular public readings.
Performing scenes from his work to packed audiences.
And he is a performer.
He doesn't simply stand there murmuring from the page.
He gives characters voices.
And dramatic energy.
Audiences laugh and cry.
This is perhaps the best bridge between the different Londons we've been walking through.
Dickens writes about clerks,
Lawyers,
Debtors,
Gentlemen,
Servants,
Criminals.
Businessmen.
Children.
Eccentrics and people barely surviving.
Everybody is just linked together.
Because that is what London itself does.
It puts extraordinary wealth.
And desperate poverty.
Into the same street.
It creates tiny social distinctions.
And enormous economic ones.
It produces people who spend money to appear richer.
And people who pawn possessions.
Because they need dinner.
It gives us gentlemen worried about etiquette,
And clerks worried about respectability,
And labourers worried about tomorrow's wages.
And yet everybody still has to negotiate the same city.
Rain falls on all of them.
Traffic blocks all of them.
Everybody occasionally gets lost.
Everyone knows something irritating.
And nobody.
Regardless of social class.
Has ever been pleased to discover.
That the person walking towards them.
Is somebody.
They were hoping not to speak to.
You see them.
They see you.
Too late.
Victorian London has many classes.
There is still nowhere to hide on a straight street.
Part seven.
In which Victorian London goes out for the evening.
As evening arrives.
Victorian London does something.
We don't always allow it to do.
It has fun.
This is perhaps understandable.
We've inherited photographs.
Of Victorians looking so extraordinarily serious.
That it's easy to imagine the entire population.
Going home at six o'clock.
Sitting upright in a darkened room and thinking about standards.
They did not.
London has theatres,
Concert halls.
Hubs.
Pleasure Gardens.
Restaurants.
Clubs.
And increasingly,
As the century progresses,
Music course.
And musical is particularly useful.
For correcting our picture of Victorian life.
By the later 19th century.
London has large purpose-built musicals.
Attracting enormous audiences.
On stage there might be singers.
Comedian.
Dancers.
Acrobats.
Comic performers.
And novelty act.
Novelty acts.
Are one of history's great categories.
It essentially means.
.
.
We don't know quite what this man does.
But people seem willing to pay to see it.
Musical audiences can be lively.
People drink.
And join in with familiar songs.
Popular performers become celebrities.
If we've spent the evening.
Imagining Victorians worrying about which fork to use.
We should now imagine several hundred of them.
Yelling the chorus of a comic song.
While somebody brings more drinks.
Much better.
The theatre is enormously popular too.
London's West End is already developing into an entertainment district.
And Victorian audiences go to see drama.
Comedy.
Shakespeare.
Melodrama.
Opera.
And spectacular productions.
Melodrama is particularly popular during the 19th century.
And melodrama does not believe in making the audience work too hard.
To establish who is unpleasant.
The villain is a villain.
The hero is a hero.
There will be danger.
There may be betrayal.
Somebody knows a secret.
Nobody quietly resolves the misunderstanding over tea in Act 2.
Victorian audiences love it.
And theatres themselves become increasingly grandiose.
Going to the theatre can involve dressing appropriately.
Arriving in a courage if you're wealthy,
Seeing people you know,
And,
Importantly,
Being seen by people you know.
This is a recurring feature of human entertainment.
We tell ourselves we're going to watch the performance.
We're also checking who else came.
Boxes in theatres are particularly helpful for this.
Because you can watch the stage while remaining conveniently visible yourself.
The actors are performing.
Several members of the audience are conducting a smaller production of their own.
There are also pubs.
Lots of pubs.
The public house is an important centre of social life.
Particularly for working class men.
Although clientele and character vary enormously from place to place.
People drink beer.
Play games.
Discuss News.
Complain about work.
And encounter people they know.
In other words.
The technology is completely different from a modern pub.
The conversation probably isn't.
Someone is telling a story.
It is too long.
The person beside him has heard it before.
A third person is correcting a detail that has absolutely no effect on the story.
It wasn't Tuesday,
George.
It was Wednesday.
George continues.
Civilization survives.
And London's evenings are becoming brighter.
Gas lighting spreads widely through 19th century London.
Illuminating streets,
Shops,
Theatres and homes.
Later in Victoria's reign.
Electric lighting begins appearing too.
Imagine living through that change.
For most of human history.
Night has been extremely good at being dark.
Then cities begin arguing with it.
Streets after streets.
Acquires artificial light.
Shop windows remain visible.
Entertainment can continue.
People can move around more easily after sunset.
London's day stretches,
And inevitably people begin staying out later.
Give humanity artificial light.
And we do not use it to get more sleep.
We immediately find something else to do.
Restaurants also developed during the Victorian period.
Although eating out depends heavily on class,
Income,
And circumstance.
Hotels and railway stations provide dining rooms.
Restaurants and cafes expand.
Chop houses and other establishments.
Continue older traditions.
And then there are street vendors.
Food can come to you.
Oysters are widely eaten.
Including by ordinary Londoners for much of the century.
There are pies,
Baked potatoes,
Hot chestnuts,
And other foods sold in the streets.
The Victorians of street food.
They simply haven't put it in a small cardboard container with a logo and charged £14 for it.
After the seer.
Perhaps you walk home.
And this is where I think we should leave,
Victorian London.
Not at Buckingham Palace.
Not to his Parliament.
Not at some grand historical event.
Just walking.
The shops are closing.
A cab passes.
Somewhere behind you.
A music hall is emptying.
And people are coming out still talking about the performance.
Someone has had too much to drink.
Someone else is trying to find a cub.
A theatre audience spills onto the pavement.
A newspaper seller is finishing for the night.
And around all these people.
Stands the London.
They have spent the 19th century building.
Much of it is still with us.
The railway stations remain.
The underground remains.
All terraces of Victorian houses remain.
Hubs remain.
Theatres remain.
Museums remain.
Street names remain.
And plenty of Victorian inventions and institutions.
Have become so ordinary.
That we barely associate them with the 19th century anymore.
Thus may be the strangest thing about spending time here.
Victorian London initially feels very distant.
The clues are wrong.
There are horses everywhere.
People leave calling cards.
Queen Victoria has been queen for as long as anyone can remember.
A gentleman's hut has responsibilities.
But after wandering around for a while.
The distance starts shrinking.
People are late for work.
They worry about money.
They want a better horse.
They complain about transport.
They become obsessed with celebrities.
They go out on Saturday night.
They worry that they've offended somebody.
They read stories and desperately want to know what happens next.
They meet someone attractive and immediately become less intelligent.
And they have neighbours they occasionally avoid.
The city changes enormously.
People put railways underneath it.
The Illuminators.
They rebuild it.
They expand it until the London Victoria knew as a young woman.
Would have seemed astonishingly different.
By the time she died.
But the people.
Remain wonderfully recognisable.
And perhaps somewhere.
Late in the 19th century.
A Londoner is walking home after an evening out.
He's tired.
He spent slightly more money than intended.
He has work tomorrow.
His shoes are uncomfortable.
Someone told an extremely long story in the pub.
And he's just realised he's going the wrong way.
For a moment.
Victorian London.
Doesn't seem very distant at all.
It just needs better shoes.
