With new taxes and regulations being placed on London’s financial sector, come predictions of London’s demise as a global financial centre. But an important part of London’s mythology is of a city which is repeatedly destroyed, yet always rises again. The great fire of 1666 is one of the most famous of these episodes of cyclical apocalypse.
In Annus Mirabilis, written shortly after the fire, John Dryden imagines a rebuilt London rising stronger and more beautiful before. Dryden is apologetic about old London, which was “but rude and low”. Another constant feature of London’s mythology is that it’s ugly, despite its fantastic wealth. But this is through choice. England’s political freedom ensured that monarchs have not enjoyed the tyrannical powers needed to build a model capital, sweeping away the higgeldy-piggeldy rights and houses of their subjects.
When Dryden imagines a beautifully rebuilt London, he isn’t really making a literal prediction about urban planning. Like the New Jerusalem of Revelation (and Blake and Parry’s hymn), Dryden’s New London “With Silver pav’d, and all divine with Gold”, is a visionary depiction of the spiritual truth of London as a city of prosperity and freedom.
Paradoxically, as things turned out in the 1660s, this very strength meant that the rebuilt city was just as unplanned, as “rude and low”, as the old city. The wealthy citizens of London resisted royal projects to re-plan the city (Wren had grand plans for squares and avenues) and simply rebuilt on their old plots. But in the mythology of London, this unplanned jumble is more beautiful than any Parisian boulevard built by dictators. It is a physical manifestation of London’s anarchic strength.
And no doubt, despite the government’s current efforts to re-plan the City’s financial sector, it is this spirit which will once again reassert itself in a New London as old as the City
itself.
‘Me-thinks already, from this Chymick flame, I see a City of more precious mold: Rich as the Town which gives the Indies name, With Silver pav’d, and all divine with Gold. Already, labouring with a might fate, She shakes the rubbish from her mounting brow, And seems to have renew’d her Charter’s date, Which Heav’n will to the death of time allow. More great than human, now, and more August, Now deifi’d she from her fires does rise: Her widening streets on new foundations trust, And, opening, into larger parts she flies. Before, she like some Shepherdess did show, Who sate to bathe her by a River’s side: Not answering to her fame, but rude and low, Nor taught the beauteous Arts of Modern pride. Now, like a Maiden Queen, she will behold, From her high Turrets, hourly Sutors come: The East with Incense, and the West with Gold, Will stand, like Suppliants, to receive her doom.’
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