It is important to emphasise that London was tiny by modern-day comparisons — a population of about forty thousand. Grandeur and the gutter were twinned in confined, crowded, sometimes dangerously infected places in which you did not risk drinking the water. A page at court would most likely be sent on messages and little missions all over the city and be able to savour all the variety of life on offer, life then being much lived on the streets. Dickens, the great fictional cartographer of London, is prefigured in Chaucer and both were steeped in the place.
