Where is the road now?

While reading Vanity Fair today, I remarked on the route of the coach carrying Becky through greater London to reach Queen's Crawley at the of Chapter 7. 

We start in Mayfair at the fictional Great Gaunt Street, which is supposedly based on Hill Street.

the carriage at length drove away --- now, threading the dark lanes of Aldersgate, anon clattering by the Blue Cupola of St. Paul's, jingling rapidly by the strangers' entry of the Fleet-Market, which, with Exeter 'Change, has now departed to the world of shadows -- how they passed the White Bear in Piccadilly, and saw the deew rising up from the market-gardens of Knightsbridge -- how Turnham Green, Brentford, Bagshot were passed -- need not be told here.

Oh, but it must be told, musn't it? Else why else tell it to us? I dig into the route, some of which I already know from my knowledge of historic London:

1. Leaving the Crowley house on Great Gaunt Stree in Mayfair. We start smack in the middle of Westminster, which is the city within Greater London that is just upstream on the Thames from the old City of London.  The river makes a great bend to the south there, as one goes upriver. Right near the bend, in ancient times a small stream one entered the Thames, and as it did so, the stream split, making an eyot, which the name of a island formed in just this manner, by a river or stream splitting before it enters into another larger stream.

This island appears to have been a sacred place to the pagan Celts. It was at this island where the ancient Celtic road network crossed the Thames, or rather, the ancient Britons operated a ferry across the great river, allowing passage to the southern part of the island. Having conquered the island, the Romans had little use for this particular crossing. Instead they made their own, in the form of a wooden pontoon bridge down river, near the one of the last discernible hillocks on the north side of the river.

This bridge was strategic in that it allowed the Romans a short cut to the north side of the Thames estuary on the North Sea, and in particular to Camulodunum, the hilltop settlement of one of the most powerful Celtic tribes. It shaved several miles off the crossing upriver at the eyot. 

The Romans garrisoned the hillock and eventually it became a Roman city with walls and gates. This is what is meant by the "City of London"---the ancient Roman walled city. Within three hundred years, it had the largest Roman forum north of the Alps. The bridge apparently has continued to exist to this day, being rebuilt many times even through the Dark Ages, and is called London Bridge.  London was born Roman and the bridge was its primary purpose. The city was built to protect the bridge and secure the route northward.

2. Aldersgate. The carriage containing Pitt Crawley, Becky Sharp, and the others going eastward, and enters the old City through the ward by this name. Aldersgate was one of the gates in the old Roman walls. It existed through medieval times as was the one used by James Stuart to enter the City as king after the restoration. It was torn down and rebuilt in 1617, damaged in the first of 1666, and finally torn down for good in 1761, over half a century before the events of the story. Nevertheless the name survives even today.

The carriage then passes Fleet-Market (presumably on present day Fleet Street in the City, named for the River Fleet, a tributary of the Thames) and the Exeter 'Change. Both of these had been demolished by the time Thackeray wrote his novel, as he himself notes. 

3. Picadilly, Knightsbridge. But, here's where the route doesn't make sense to me. Why did they go into the City of London, and then suddenly we are in Picadilly, which is back in Westminster? They have backtracked to the west. Then they are at Knightsbridge, which is further west in Westminster. (I have found memories of purchasing a beefeater teddy bear for my nieces at the Harrod's department store at Knightsbridge in November 2000.)

3. Turnham Green, Brentford. Now we are going further upriver into West London.

4. Bagshot. Finally we have crossed the Thames (where?) and in Surrey, the county south of London. This is an interesting little place. From Wikipedia, I learned:

Bagshot is a large village in the Surrey Heath borough of Surrey, England, approximately 27 miles southwest of central London. In the past, Bagshot served as an important staging post between London, Southampton and the West Country, evidenced by the original coaching inns still present in the village today.

Coaching inns for travel to the West Country? Now you are talking. This is interesting. The West Country includes Cornwall. At once I realize that were I to make a trip to Cornwall, I would, after arriving in England, stay several days in Mayfair perhaps.  One could officially begin the tour on the eyot in Westminster that was once sacred to the Celts, where their ferry once crossed the river. and where today one finds Westminster Abbey, which has been the location for coronation of the kings of England for over a thousand years.

Then I'd follow the route of Vanity Fair, going into the City, to experience the ancient Roman fortress that is now the financial district (located where the old Roman forum once stood), and the location of the great edifice of St. Paul's that dominates the river near the latest incarnation of the old bridge.

Then I go back upriver through Westminster, stopping in Picadilly and Knightsbridge, and passing through Turnham Green and Brentford before making my way to Bagshot. There I would stay in the night in one of the old coaching inns before proceeding towards the West Country.

Thackeray, in his whimsical way, indulges us with a nostalgia for the days of coach travel. By the time he wrote Vanity Fair, this way of life had vanished and been replaced within living memory by the rail travel. Aha! I say to myself. This is part of the core significance of the story---life before the railroad.  That is very interesting to me. Here is his description of the lost way of life:

Where is the road now, and its merry incidents of life? ..the honest pimple-nosed coachmen? I wonder where they are, those good fellows? and the waiters, yea, and the inns at which they waited, and the cold rounds of beef inside, and the stunted ostler, with his blue nose and clinking pail, where is he, and where is his generation? ....who shall write novels for the beloved reader's children, these men and things will be as much lengend and history as Nineveh, or Coeur de Lion...For them stage-coaches will have become romances -- a team of four bays as fabulous as Bucephalus or Black Bess. Ah, how their coats shone, as the stablemen pulled their clothes off, and away they went---ah, how their tails shook, as with smoking sides at the stage's end they demurely walked away into the inn-yard. Alas! we shall never hear the horn sing at midnight, or see the pike-gates fly open any more? 

It reminds me of the American nostalgia for the mid century road experience (i.e. Route 66 culture), one that was replaced by the coming of the Interstate highway system.