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JAMES
HENRY LEIGH
HUNT (1784–1859)
CHAPTER IV IN going through Fleet Street and the Strand, we seldom think that the one is named after a rivulet, now running under ground, and the other from its being on the banks of the river Thames. As little do most of us fancy that there was once a line of noblemen’s houses on the one side, and that, at the same time, all beyond the other side, to Hampstead or Highgate, was open country, with the little hamlet of St. Giles’s in a copse. So late as the reign of Henry VIII. we have a print containing the village of Charing. Citizens used to take an evening stroll to the well now in St. Clement’s Inn. In the reign of Edward III. the Strand was an open country road, with a mansion here and there, on the banks of the river Thames, most probably a castle or strong-hold. In this state it no doubt remained during the greater part of the York and Lancaster period. From Henry VII.’s time the castles most likely began to be exchanged for mansions of a more peaceful character. These gradually increased; and in the reign of Edward VI. the Strand consisted, on the south side, of a line of mansions with garden walls; and on the north, of a single row of houses, behind which all was field. The reader is to imagine wall all the way from Temple Bar to Whitehall, on his left hand, like that of Kew Palace, or a succession of Burlington Gardens; while the line of humbler habitations stood on the other side, like a row of servants in waiting. As wealth increased, not only the importance of rank diminished, and the nobles were more content to recollect James’s advice of living in the country (where, he said, they looked like ships in a river, instead of ships at sea), but the value of ground about London, especially on the river side, was so much augmented, that the proprietors of these princely mansions were not unwilling to turn the premises into money. The civil wars had given another jar to the stability of their abodes in the metropolis; and in Charles the Second’s time the great houses finally gave way, and were exchanged for streets and wharfs. An agreeable poet of the last century lets us know that he used to think of this great change in going up the Strand. “Come, Fortescue, sincere, experienc’d friend,
“In the year 1533, that fine street the Strand was an open highway, with here and there a great man’s house, with gardens to the water’s side. In that year it was so ruinous, that Edward III., by an ordinance, directed a tax to be raised upon wool, leather, wine, and all goods carried to the staple at Westminster, from Temple Bar to Westminster Abbey, for the repair of the road; and that all owners of houses adjacent to the highway should repair as much as lay before their doors. Mention is also made of a bridge to be erected near the royal palace at Westminster, for the conveniency of the said staple; but the last probably meant no more than stairs for the landing of the goods, which I find sometimes went by the name of a bridge. “There was no continued street here till about the year 1533; before that it entirely cut off Westminster from London, and nothing intervened except the scattered houses, and a village, which afterwards gave name to the whole. St. Martin’s stood literally in the fields. But about the year 1560 a street was formed, loosely built, for all the houses on the south side had great gardens to the river, were called by their owners’ names, and in after times gave name to the several streets that succeeded them, pointing down to the Thames; each of them had stairs for the conveniency of taking boat, of which many to this day bear the names of the houses. As the court was for centuries either at the palace at Westminster, or Whitehall, a boat was the customary conveyance of the great to the presence of their sovereign. The north side was a mere line of houses from Charing-Cross to Temple Bar; all beyond was country. The gardens which occupied part of the site of Covent Garden were bounded by fields, and St. Giles’s was a distant country village. These are circumstances proper to point out, to show the vast increase of our capital in little more than two centuries.” [ 2] The aspect of the Strand, on emerging through Temple Bar, is very different from what it was forty years ago. “A stranger who had visited London in 1790, would on his return in 1804,” says Mr Malcolm, “be astonished to find a spacious area (with the church nearly in the centre) on the site of Butcher Row, and some other passages undeserving of the name of streets, which were composed of those wretched fabrics, overhanging their foundations, the receptacles of dirt in every corner of their projecting stories, the bane of ancient London, where the plague, with all its attendant horrors, frowned destruction on the miserable inhabitants, reserving its forces for the attacks of each returning summer.” [ 3] The site of Butcher
Row, thus advantageously thrown open, is called Pickett Street,
after the alderman who projected the improvements. Unfortunately
they turned out to be on too large a scale; that is to say, the
houses were found to be too large and expensive for the right side
of the Strand in this quarter; the tide of traffic between the city
and Westminster flowing the other side of the way. The consequence
is, that the houses are under-let, and that something of the old
squalid look remains in the turning towards Clement’s Inn, in spite
of the pillared entrance. Butcher Row, however squalid, contained houses worth eating and drinking in. Johnson frequented an eating-house there; and, according to Oldys, it was “in returning from the Bear and Harrow in Butcher Row, through Clare Market, to his lodgings in Duke Street, that Lee, the dramatic poet, overladen with wine, fell down (on the ground, as some say—according to others, on a bulk), and was killed, or stifled in the snow. He was buried in the parish church of St. Clement Danes, aged about thirty-five years.” [4] “He was a very handsome as well as ingenious man,” says Oldys, “but given to debauchery, which necessitated a milk diet. When some of his university comrades visited him, he fell to drinking out of all measure, which, flying up into his head, caused his face to break out into those carbuncles which were afterwards observed there; and also touched his brain, occasioning that madness so much lamented in so rare a genius. Tom Brown says he wrote, while he was in Bedlam, a play of twenty-five acts; and Mr Bowman tells me that, going once to visit him there, Lee showed him a scene, ‘in which,’ says he, ‘I have done a miracle for you.’ ‘What’s that?’ said Bowman. ‘I have made you a good priest.’” Oldys mentions another of his mad sayings, but does not tell us with whom it passed. “I’ve seen an unscrewed spider spin a thought, “What say you to that, doctor?” “Ah, marry, Mr Lee, that’s superfine indeed. The thought of a winged spider may catch sublime readers of poetry sooner than his web, but it will need a commentary in prose to render it intelligible to the vulgar.” [ 5] Lee’s madness does not appear to have been melancholy, otherwise these anecdotes would not bear repeating. There are various stories of the origin of it; but, most probably, he had an over-sanguine constitution, which he exasperated by intemperance. Though he died so young, the author of A Satyr on the Poets gives us to understand that he was corpulent. “Pembroke loved tragedy, and did provide This Pembroke, who loved a bear-garden, was the
seventh earl of that title. His daughter married the son of Jefferies.
Lee, on a visit to the earl at Wilton, is said to have drunk so
hard, that “the butler feared he would empty the cellar.” The madness
of Lee is almost visible in his swelling and over-laden dramas;
in which, however, there is a good deal of true poetic fire, and
a vein of tenderness that makes us heartily pity the author. The social Boswell, in speaking of Johnson’s eating-house in Butcher Row, does not approve of establishments of that sort. We shall see, by and by, that he was wrong. “Happening to dine,” says he, “at Clifton’s eating-house in Butcher Row, I was surprised to see Johnson come in and take his seat at another table. The mode of dining, or rather being fed, at such houses in London, is well known to many to be peculiarly unsocial, as there is no ordinary or united company, but each person has own mess, and is under no obligation to hold any intercourse with any one. A liberal and full-minded man, however, who loves to talk, will break through this churlish and unsocial restraint. Johnson and an Irish gentleman got into a dispute concerning the cause of some part of mankind being black. ‘Why, sir (said Johnson), it has been accounted for in three ways: either by supposing that they are the posterity of Ham, who was cursed; or that God at first created two kinds of men, one black and another white; or that, by the heat of the sun, the skin is scorched, and so acquires a sooty hue. This matter has been much canvassed among naturalists, but has never been brought to any certain issue. What the Irishman said is totally obliterated from my mind; but I remember that he became very warm and imtemperate in his expressions; upon which Johnson rose, and quietly walked away. When he had retired, his antagonist took his revenge, as he thought, by saying, ‘He has a most ungainly figure, and an affectation of pomposity unworthy of a man of genius.’” [ 7] The ungainly figure might have been pardoned by the Irishman; who, we suppose, was equally fiery and elegant. As to Johnson’s pompous manner, the most excusable part of it originated, doubtless, in his having decided opinions. The rest may have been an instinct of self-defence, arising from the “ungainly figure,” not without a sense of the dignity of his calling. He certainly lost nothing by it, upon the whole. At all events, one is willing to think the best of what was accompanied by so much excellence. Affectation it was not; for nobody despised pretension of any kind more than he did. Johnson was a sort of born bishop in his way, with high judgments and cathedral notions lording it in his mind; and ex cathedra he accordingly spoke. In Butcher Row, one
day, Johnson met, in advanced life, a fellow-collegian, of the name
of Edwards, whom he had not seen since they were at the university.
Edwards annoyed him by talking of their age. “Don’t let us discourage
one another,” said Johnson. It was this Edwards, a dull but good
man, who made that naïve remark, which was pronounced by
Burke and others to be an excellent trait of character:—“You are
a philosopher, Dr Johnson,” said he: “I have tried in my time to
be a philosopher; but, I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always
breaking in.” [ 8] Before we come to St. Clement’s, we arrive, on the lefthand side of the way, at Essex Street; a spot once famous for the residence of the favourite Earl of Essex. We have mentioned an Outer Temple, which originally formed a companion to the Inner and Middle Temples, the whole constituting the tenements of the knights. This Outer Temple stretched beyond Temple Bar into the ground now occupied by Essex Street and Devereux Court; and after being possessed (Dugdale supposes) by the Prior and Canons of the Holy Sepulchre, was transferred by them, in the time of Edward III., to the Bishops of Exeter, who occupied it till the reign of Henry VI., and called it Exeter House. Sir William Paget (afterwards Lord Paget) then had it, and did “re-edify the same,” calling it Paget Place. After this it was occupied by the Duke of Norfolk, who was executed for his dealings with Mary, Queen of Scots; then by Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the favourite, who called it Leicester House, and bequeathed it to his “son, Sir Robert”; and then by the other favourite, Leicester’s son-in-law, Essex, from whom it retained the name of Essex House. It was occasionally tenanted by men of rank till some time after the Restoration, when it was pulled down, and the site converted into the present street and court. The only remnant of it supposed to exist is the present Unitarian Chapel, which, before it became such, was called Essex House, and latterly contained an auction room. [ 9] The repose enjoyed in this precinct since the Restoration has been like silence after a succession of storms, for the house was of a turbulent reputation. The first bishop who had it after the Templars, being a favourite of Edward II., was seized by the mob, hurried to Cheapside, where they beheaded him, and then carried back a corpse, and buried it in a heap of sand at his door. Lord Paget got into trouble, together with his friend the Duke of Somerset, who was accused of intending to assassinate Northumberland and others at this house. Norfolk possessed it while he formed his designs on Mary, Queen of Scots, for which he was brought to the scaffold; Leicester was always having some ill design or other—perhaps poisoned a visitor or so occasionally (for he is said to have thought nothing of that gentle expediency); and Essex made the house famous by standing a siege in it against the troops of his mistress. The siege was not long, nor any of his actions in the business very wise, though he was a man of an exalted nature. Essex got into his troubles partly from heat and ambition, partly from the inferior and more cunning nature of some of his rivals at court. There is no doubt that all these causes, together with his confidence in Elizabeth’s inability to proceed to extremities, conspired to lead him into rebellion. His first offence that we hear of, next to a general petulance of manner, which the queen’s own mixture of fondness and petulance was calculated enough to provoke, was a quarrel with some young lords for her favour; the second, his joining the expedition to Cadiz without leave; and the third, his marriage with the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham: for Elizabeth never thought it proper that her favourites should be married to anything but her “fair idea.” His next dispute
with her, which was on the subject of an assistant in the affairs
of Ireland, to which he was going as lord deputy, terminated in
the singular catastrophe of his receiving from her a box on the
ear; with the encouraging addition of bidding him “Go, and be hanged.”
It is said to have been occasioned by his turning his back upon
her. He clapped his hand to his sword, and swore he would not have
put up with such an insult from her father. His fall is generally
dated from this circumstance, and it is thought he never forgave
it. But surely this is not a correct judgment; for the blow which
might have been intolerable from the hand of a king, implied, in
its very extravagance, some thing not without flattery and self-abasement
from that of a princess. It was as if Elizabeth had put herself
into the situation of a termagant wife. The quarrel preceded the
violence. Essex went to Ireland against the rebels, but apparently
with great unwillingness, calling it, in a letter to the queen,
the “cursedest of all islands,” and insinuating that the best thing
that could happen both to please her and himself was the loss of
his life in battle. The conclusion of this letter is a remarkable
instance of the mixture of romance with real life in those days.
It is in verse, terminating with the following pastoral sentiment.
Essex wishes he could live like a hermit, “in some unhaunted desert
most obscure”—
Think of this being
a letter from a lord lieutenant of Ireland to his sovereign! Warton
says, from the evidence of some sonnets preserved in the British
Museum, that although Essex was “an ingenious and elegant writer
of prose,” he was no poet. There is an ungainliness in the lines
we have just quoted, and he was probably too much given to action
to be a poet; but there is something in him that relished of the
truth and directness of poetry, when he had to touch upon any actual
emotion. Poetry is nothing but the voluntary power to get at the
inner spirit of what is felt, with imagination to embody it. It
was supposed that Essex’s enemies first got him into the office
of lord lieutenant, and then took advantage of his impatience under
it to ruin him. He was accused of tampering with the rebels, and
meditating his return into England with the troops under his charge;
with a view to which object he is said to have described his army
as a force with which he “would make the earth to tremble as he
went.” He came over, with the passion of an injured man, and presented
himself before the queen, who gave him a tolerable reception, but
afterwards confined him to the house of the lord keeper. It was
then, according to his confession before his death, that he first
contemplated violent measures against the throne, though always
short of treason. Before his liberation, he was soured by his ineffectual
attempts to renew his facility of admission to the presence chamber;
and he let fall an expression which his enemies greedily seized
at, to wit, that the “Queen grew old and cankered, and that her
mind was become as crooked as her carcase.” This was exactly in
his style, which was off-hand and energetic, with a gusto of truth
in it. Meantime he began to have his friends about him more than
ever, and to affect a necessity for it; and a summons being sent
him to attend the council, he was driven by anger and fear to decline
it, and to fortify himself in his house. His chief and most generous
companion on this occasion was Henry, Earl of Southampton, the friend
of Shakspeare. There was some little resistance; and the Lord Keeper,
with the Lord Chief Justice and the Earl of Worcester, coming to
summon him on his allegiance, he locked them up in a room, on pretence
of taking care of their persons, and then sallied through Fleet
Street into the city, where he expected a rising in his favour;
for he was the most popular noble, perhaps, that England had ever
seen, and the city had been disgusted by repeated levies on its
purse, under pretence of invasions from Spain: though, according
to Essex, Spain had never been so much in favour. The levies, in
truth, were made against himself. He was disappointed: heard himself
proclaimed a traitor by sound of trumpet in Gracechurch Street,
and after a little more scuffling on the part of his adherents,
returned by water from Queenhithe, and surrendered himself; being
partly moved, he said, by the “cries of ladies.” It is clear that
he did not know what to be at. He expected, most likely, every moment,
that the queen’s tenderness would interfere, fearful of seeing her
once beloved favourite in danger. But the Cecils and others aided
her good sense in keeping her quiet. Essex had certainly acted in
a way incompatible with the duty of a subject, and such as no sovereign
could tolerate. He was tried in Westminster Hall, and convicted
of an intention to seize the court and the Tower, to surprise the
queen in her apartments, and then to summon a parliament for a “redress
of grievances;” which, he said, should give his enemies “a fair
trial.” Southampton was acquited, no doubt from a sense that he
intended nothing but a romantic adherence to his friend. How a man of Essex’s understanding could give into these preposterous attempts, it would be difficult to conceive, if every day’s experience did not show how powerful a succession of little circumstances is to bring people into situations which themselves might have least looked for. Essex evidently expected pardon to the last. When Lord Grey’s name was read over among the peers who were to try him, he smiled and jogged the elbow of Southampton, for offending whom Grey had been punished. He was at his ease throughout the trial. He said to the Attorney General (Coke), who had told him in the course of his speech that he should be “Robert the Last” of an earldom, instead of “Robert the First” of a kingdom—“Well, Mr Attorney, I thank God you are not my judge this day, you are so uncharitable.” “Coke. Well, my lord, we shall prove you anon, what you are; which your pride of heart, and aspiring mind, hath brought you unto. “Essex. Ah, Mr Attorney, lay your hand upon your heart, and pray to God to forgive us both.” [10] And when sentence
was passed, though it is not true that he refused to ask for mercy,
for he did it after the best fashion of his style, “kneeling (he
said) upon the very knees of his heart,” yet he seemed to threaten
Elizabeth, in a tender way, with his resolution to die. She left
him, like a politic sovereign, to his fate; but is thought never
to have recovered it, as a friend. The romantic story of her visiting
the Countess of Nottingham, who had kept back a ring which Essex
sent her after his condemnation, of her shaking her on her deathbed,
and crying out that “God might forgive, but she could not,” is more
and more credited as documents transpire. The ring, it is said,
had been given to Essex, with a promise that it should serve him
in need under any circumstances, if he did but send it. It is supposed
that the non-appearance of it hurt the proud heart of Elizabeth,
and finally allowed her to let him die. Yet she was a great sovereign,
and might have suffered the law to take its course, with whatever
sorrow. She was jealous of her reputation with the old and cool-headed
lords about her. When the death, however, had taken place, she might
have fancied otherwise. Something preyed strongly on her mind towards
her decease, which happened within two years after his execution.
She refused to go to bed for ten days and nights before her death,
lying upon the carpet with cushions about her, and absorbed in the
profoundest melancholy. To be sure, this may have been disease.
A princess like Elizabeth, possessed of sovereign power, which had
been sharply exercised on some doubtful occasions, might have had
misgivings when going to die. Two certain causes of regret she must
have had for Essex. She must have been well aware that she had alternately
encouraged and irritated him over much; and she must have known
that he was a better man than many who assisted in his overthrow,
and that if he had been less worthy of regard, he probably would
have survived her, as they did. It may easily be imagined that Essex was a man for whom a strong affection might be entertained. He excited interest by his character, and could maintain it by his language. In everything he did there was a certain excess, but on the liberal side. When a youth, he plunged into the depths of rural pleasures and books; he was lavish of his money and good word for his friends; he said everything that came uppermost, but then it was worth saying, only his enemies were not as well pleased with it as his friends, and they never forgot it: in fine, he was romantic, brave, and impassioned. He is so like a preux chevalier, that till we call to mind other gallant knights who have not been handsome, we are somewhat surprised to hear that he was not well made, and that nothing is said of his face but that it looked reserved—a seeming anomaly, which deep thought sometimes produces in the countenances of open-hearted men. These were no hindrances, however, to the admiration entertained of him by the ladies; and he was so popular with authors and with the public, that Warton says he could bring evidence of his scarcely ever quitting England or even the metropolis, on the most frivolous enterprise, without a pastoral or other poetical praise of him, which was sold and sung in the streets. He was the friend of Spenser, most likely of Shakspeare too, being the friend of Southampton. Spenser was well acquainted with Essex House. In his Prothalamion, published in 1596, he has left interesting evidence of his having visited Leicester there; and he follows up the record with a panegyric on Leicester’s successor, which was probably his first hint to Essex that he was still in want of such assistance as he had received from his father-in-law. The two passages taken together render the hint rather broad, and such as would make one a little jealous for the dignity of the great poet, were not the manners of that time different in this respect from what they are now. Speaking of the Temple, in the lines quoted in our last chapter, he goes on to say— “Next whereunto there stands a stately place, Essex no doubt took
the poet at his word, both for his panegyric and his hint; for it
was he that gave Spenser his funeral in Westminster, and he was
not of a spirit to treat a great poet, as poets have sometimes been
treated—with neglect in their lifetime, and self-complacent monuments
to them after their death. We shall close this notice (in which we have endeavoured to concentrate all the interest we could) of the once great and applauded Essex, whose memory long retained its popularity, and gave rise to several tragedies, with a letter of his to the Lord Keeper Egerton, in which there is one of his finest sentiments expressed with his most passionate felicity. Egerton’s eldest son had accompanied Essex into Ireland, and died there, which is the subject of the letter. As Spenser’s death also happened just before the earl set out for that country, at a moment when he might have been of political as well as poetical use to him (for Spenser was a politician, and had been employed in the affairs of Ireland), Mr Todd thinks, that among the friends alluded to, part of the regret may have been for him: “Whatt can you receave from a cursed country butt vnfortunate newes? whatt can be my stile (whom heaven and earth are agreed to make a martyr) butt a stile of mourning? nott for myself thatt I smart, for I wold I had in my hart the sorrow of all my frends, but I mourn that my destiny is to overlive my deerest frendes. Of yr losse yt is neither good for me to write nor you to reade. But I protest I felt myself sensibly dismembered, when I lost my frend. Shew yr strength in lyfe. Lett me, yf yt be God’s will, shew yt in taking leave of the world, and hasting after my frends. Butt I will live and dy
“More yr lp’s then any “Little,” [ 11] says Mr Todd, “did the generous but unfortunate Essex then imagine, that the learned statesman, to whom this letter of condolence was addressed, would be directed very soon afterwards to issue an order for his execution. The original warrant, to which the name of Elizabeth is prefixed, is now in the possession of the Marquis of Stafford; and the queen has written her name not with the firmness observable in numerous documents existing in the same and other collections, but with apparent tremor and hesitation.” In Essex House was
born another Robert, Earl of Essex, son of the preceding, well known
in history as general of the Parliament. He was a child when his
father died; and was in the hands, first, of his grandmother, Lady
Walsingham, and, secondly, of Henry Savile (afterwards Sir Henry),
under whose severe discipline he was educated at Eton. We mention
these circumstances, because they tended to keep him in that Presbyterian
interest, which his father patronised out of a love of toleration
and popularity. Perhaps, also, they did him no good with his wives;
for he married two, and was singularly unfortunate in both. To the
first, Lady Frances Howard, he was betrothed when a boy. He travelled,
returned, and married her, with little love on his own side, and
none on hers. Her connexion with Car, Earl of Somerset, and all
the infamy, crime, and wretchedness it brought upon her, are well
known. Her best excuse, which is the ordinary one in cases of great
wickedness (and it is a comfort to human nature that it is so),
is, that she was a great fool. Her dislike of her first husband
was not, perhaps, the least excusable part of her conduct, first,
because she was a child like himself when they were betrothed; and
secondly, because his second wife appears to have liked him no better.
The latter was divorced also. After this, Essex took to a country
retirement, and subsequently to an active part in the Civil Wars,
during which his love of justice and affability to his inferiors
rendered him extremely popular. He was of equivocal service, however,
to the parliament. He was a better general than politician, not
of a commanding genius in any respect, and was suspected, not without
reason, of an overweening desire to accommodate matters too much,
partly out of ignorance of what the nature of the quarrel demanded,
and partly from an affectation of playing the part of an amicable
dictator for his own aggrandisement. So the parliament got rid of
him by the famous self-denying ordinance. Clarendon says that when
he resigned his commission, the whole Parliament went the day following
to Essex House, to return him thanks for his great services; but
a late historian of the commonwealth says, there is no trace of
this compliment on the journals. [
12] Next year they attended him to his grave. Essex’s character
was a prose-copy of his father’s, with the love and the romance
left out. Dr Johnson, the year before he died, founded in Essex Street one of his minor clubs. The Literary Club did not meet often enough for his want of society, was too distant, and perhaps had now become too much for his conversational ambition. He wanted a mixture of inferior intellects to be at ease with. Accordingly, this club, which was held at the Essex Head, then kept by a servant of Mr Thrale, was of a more miscellaneous nature than the other, and made no pretension to expense. One cannot help smiling at the modest and pensive tone of the letter which Johnson sent to Sir Joshua, inviting him to join it. “The terms are lax, and the expenses light. We meet thrice a-week; and he who misses, forfeits two-pence.” [13] This stretch of philosophy seems to have startled the fashionable painter, who declined to become a member. When we find, however, in the list the names of Brocklesby, Horsley, Daines Barrington, and Windham, Boswell has reason to say that Sir John Hawkins’s charge of its being a “low ale-house association” appears to be sufficiently obviated. But the names might have been subscribed out of civility without any further intention. The club, nevertheless, was in existence when Boswell wrote, and went on, he says, happily. Johnson said of him, when he was proposed, “Boswell is a very clubable man.” In Devereux Court, through which there is a passage round into the Temple, is the Grecian Coffee House, supposed to be the oldest in London. We should rather say the revival of the oldest, for the premises were burnt down and rebuilt. The Grecian was the house from which Steele proposed to date his learned articles in the Tatler. In this court are the premises of the eminent tea-dealers, Messrs Twining, the front of which, surmounted with its stone figures of Chinese, has an elegant appearance in the Strand. We notice the house, not only on this account, but because the family have to boast of a very accomplished scholar, the translator of the Poetics of Aristotle. Mr Twining was contemporary with Gray and Mason at Cambridge; and besides his requirements as a linguist (for, in addition to his knowledge of Greek and Latin, he wrote French and Italian with idiomatic accuracy), was a musician so accomplished as to lead the concerts and oratorios that were performed during term-time, when Bate played the organ and harpsichord. He was also a lively companion, full of wit and playfulness, yet so able to content himself with country privacy, and so exemplary a clergyman, that for the last forty years of his life he scarcely allowed himself to be absent from his parishioners more than a fortnight in a year. The church of St.
Clement Danes, which unworthily occupies the open part of the Strand,
to the west of Essex Street, was the one most frequented by Dr Johnson.
It is not known why this church is called St. Clement Danes.
Some think because there was a massacre of the Danes thereabouts;
others because Harold Harefoot was buried there; and others, because
the Danes had the quarter given them to live in, when Alfred the
Great drove them out of London, the monarch at the same time building
the church, in order to assist their conversion to Christianity.
The name St. Clement has been derived with probability from
the patron saint of Pope Clement Ill., a great friend of the Templars,
to whom the church at one time belonged. St. Clement’s was rebuilt
towards the end of the century before last by Edward Pierce, under
the direction of Sir Christopher Wren, but is a very incongruous
ungainly edifice. Its best aspect is at night-time in winter, when
the deformities of its body are not seen, and the pale steeple rises
with a sort of ghastliness of grandeur through the cloudy atmosphere.
The chimes may still be heard at midnight, as Falstaff describes
having heard them with Justice Shallow. If they did not execute
one of Handel’s psalm-tunes, we should take them to be the very
same he speaks of, and conclude that they had grown hoarse with
age and sitting-up; for to our knowledge they have lost some of
their notes these twenty years, and the rest are falling away. A
steeple should set a better example. A few years back, when the improvements on the north side, in this quarter, had not been followed by those on the south, Gay’s picture of the avenue between the church and the house was true in all its parts. We remember the “combs dangling in our faces,” and almost mourned their loss for the sake of the poet. “Where the fair columns of St. Clement stand, Everybody can testify to the truth of this description. A little patience, however, is well repaid by the sight of the noble creatures dragging up the loads. The horses of the colliers and brewers of London are worth notice at all times for the magnificence of their build. Gay proceeds to other particulars, now no longer to be encountered. He cautions you how you lose your sword; and adds a pleasant mode of theft, practised in those times:— “Nor is the flaxen wig with safety worn: Clement’s Inn is named from the church. The device over the gate, of an anchor and the letter C, is supposed to allude to the martyrdom of St. Clement, who is said to have been tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea, by order of the Emperor Trajan. “The hall is situated
on the south side of a neat but small quadrangle. It is a Tuscan
diminutive building, with a very large Corinthian door, and arched
windows, erected in 1715. Another irregular area is surrounded by
convenient houses, in which are the possessor’s chambers. Part of
this is a pretty garden, with a kneeling African, of considerable
merit, supporting a dial, on the eastern side.” [15] In Knox’s Elegant Extracts are some lines on this negro, which have often been repeated:— “In vain, poor sable son of woe, This inn, like all the other inns of court, is of great antiquity. Dugdale states it to have been an inn of Chancery in the reign of Edward II. Some have conjectured, according to Mr Moser, “that near this spot stood an inn, as far back as the time of King Ethelred, for the reception of penitents who came to St. Clement’s Well; that a religious house was in process of time established, and that the church rose in consequence.” Be this as it may, the holy brotherhood was probably removed to some other institution; the Holy Lamb, an inn on the west side of the lane, received the guests; and the monastery was converted, or rather perverted, from the purposes of the gospel to those of the law, and was probably, in this profession, considered as a house of considerable antiquity in the days of Shakspeare; for he, who with respect to this kind of chronology may be safely quoted, makes in the second act of Henry IV. one of his justices a member of that society:— “He must to the Inns of Court. I was of Clement’s once myself, where they talk of Mad Shallow still.” A pump now covers St. Clement’s Well. Fitzstephen, in his description of London, in the reign of Henry II., speaks of certain “excellent springs at a small distance” from the city, “whose waters are sweet, salubrious, and clear, and whose runnels murmur o’er the shining stones: among these,” he continues, “Holywell, Clerkenwell, and St. Clement’s Well may be esteemed the principal, as being much the most frequented, both by the scholars from the school (Westminster) and the youth from the city, when on a summer’s evening they are disposed to take an airing.” Six hundred years
and upwards have elapsed since Fitzstephen wrote. It is pleasant
to think that the well has lasted so long, and that the place is
still quiet. The Clare family, who have left their name to Clare Market, appear to have occupied Clement’s Inn during part of the reign of the Tudors. From their hands it reverted to those of the law. It is an appendage to the Inner Temple. We are not aware of any greater legal personage having been bred there, than the one just mentioned. Shallow takes delight in his local recollections, particularly of this inn. In one of the masterly scenes of this kind, Falstaff’s corroboration of a less pleasant recollection, and Shallow’s anger against the cause of it, after such a lapse of time, are very ludicrous. “Shallow. Oh, Sir John, do you remember since we lay all night in the windmill in St. George’s Fields? “Fals. No more of that, good Master Shallow, no more of that. “Shal. Ha, it was a merry night. And is Jane Nightwork alive? “Fals. She lives, Master Shallow. “Shal. She never could away with me. “Fals. Never, never; she would always say she could not abide Master Shallow. “Shal. By the mass, I could anger her to the heart. She was then a bonaroba. Doth she hold her own well?—and had Robin Nightwork by old Nightwork, before I came to Clement’s Inn. “Silence. That’s fifty-five years ago. “Shal. Ha, Cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this knight and I have seen! Ah, Sir John, said I well? “Fals. We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow. “Shal. That we have, that we have, that we have; in faith, Sir John, we have; our watchword was, Hem, boys! Come, let’s to dinner: come, let’s to dinner! Oh, the days that we have seen! Come, come.” [16] The sites of Arundel,
Norfolk, Surrey, and Howard Streets (the last of which crosses the
others), were formerly occupied by the house and grounds originally
constituting the town residence of the Bishop of Bath and Wells,
then of the Lord High Admiral Seymour, and afterwards of the Howards,
Earls of Arundel, from whom it came into possession of the Duke
of Norfolk. It was successively called Bath’s Inn (Hampton Place,
according to some, but we know not why), Seymour Place, Arundel
House, and Norfolk House. It was a wide low house, but according
to Sully, who lodged in it when he was ambassador to James I., very
convenient, on account of the multitude of rooms on the same floor. In this house the Lord High Admiral, Thomas Seymour, brother of the Protector Somerset, in the reign of Edward VI., contrived to place the Princess (afterwards Queen) Elizabeth, with a design of possessing her person, and sharing her succession to the Crown. No doubt is entertained of these views by the historians. Elizabeth was not averse to him, though he had lately married the Queen Dowager (Catherine Parr); and some gossipping stories transpired of the evidences of their goodwill. Catherine’s death increased the suspicion, and she herself expressed it on her death-bed. Seymour’s ambition, however, shortly brought him to the scaffold, and saved us from a King Thomas I., who would probably, as Pennant thinks, have been a very bad one. We have mentioned the Countess of Nottingham who withheld from Elizabeth the ring sent her by Essex. It was in this house she died. Her husband was a Howard, and, probably she was on a visit there. We take an opportunity, therefore, of relating the particulars of that romantic story, as collected by the accurate Dr Birch, and repeated in the Memoirs of the Peers of England during the reign of James I. “The following curious story,” says the compiler of this work, “was frequently told by Lady Elizabeth Spelman, great grand-daughter of Sir Robert Carey, brother of Lady Nottingham, and afterwards Earl of Monmouth, whose curious memoirs of himself were published a few years ago by Lord Corke.” “When Catherine,
Countess of Nottingham, was dying (as she did, according to his
lordship’s own account, about a fortnight before Queen Elizabeth),
she sent to her Majesty to desire that she might see her, in order
to reveal something to her Majesty without the discovery of which
she could not die in peace. Upon the Queen’s coming, Lady Nottingham
told her, that, while the Earl of Essex lay under sentence of death,
he was desirous of asking her Majesty’s mercy, in the manner prescribed
by herself, during the height of his favour; the Queen having given
him a ring, which being sent to her as a token of his distress,
might entitle him to her protection. But the earl, jealous of those
about him, and not caring to trust any of them with it, as he was
looking out of his window one morning, saw a boy, with whose appearance
he was pleased; and engaging him by money and promises, directed
him to carry the ring, which he took from his finger and threw down,
to Lady Scroope, a sister of the Countess of Nottingham, and a friend
of his lordship, who attended upon the Queen; and to beg of her
that she would present it to her Majesty. The boy, by mistake, carried
it to Lady Nottingham, who showed it to her husband, the admiral,
an enemy of Lord Essex, in order to take his advice. The admiral
forbid her to carry it, or return any answer to the message; but
insisted upon her keeping the ring. “The Countess of Nottingham, having made this discovery, begged the Queen’s forgiveness; but her Majesty answered, ‘God may forgive you, but I never can,’ and left the room with great emotion. Her mind was so struck with the story that she never went into bed, nor took any sustenance from that instant, for Camden is of opinion, that her chief reason for suffering the earl to be executed, was his supposed obstinacy in not applying to her for mercy. [ 17] “In confirmation of the time of the countess’s death,” continues the compiler, “it now appears from the parish register of Chelsea, extracted by Mr Lysons (Environs of London, vol. ii., p. 120), that she died at Arundel House, London, February 25, and was buried the 28th, 1603. Her funeral was kept at Chelsea, March 21st; and Queen Elizabeth died three days afterwards.” Clarendon gives a singular character of this house and its master when it was in possession of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. He says that the earl “Seemed to live, as it were, in another nation, his house being a place to which all people resorted, who resorted to no other place; strangers, or such as affected to look like strangers, and dressed themselves accordingly. He was willing to be thought a scholar, and to understand the most mysterious parts of antiquity, because he made a wonderful and costly purchase of excellent statues whilst in Italy and in Rome (some whereof he could never obtain permission to remove out of Rome, though he had paid for them), and had a rare collection of medals. As to all parts of learning, he was almost illiterate, and thought no other part of history so considerable as what related to his own family, in which, no doubt, there had been some very memorable persons. It cannot be denied that he had in his own person, in his aspect and countenance, the appearance of a great man, which he preserved in his gait and motion. He wore and affected a habit very different from that of the time, such as men had only beheld in pictures of the most considerable men; all which drew the eyes of most, and the reverence of many, towards him, as the image and representative of the ancient nobility, and native gravity of the nobles, when they had been most venerable; but this was only his outside, his nature and true humour being much disposed to levity and delights, which indeed were very despicable and childish.” The marbles here
mentioned, now at Oxford, were collected at Arundel House. This
character from the pen of Clarendon has been thought too severe.
Perhaps the earl had given the noble historian a repulse when he
was nothing but plain Mr Hyde; for personal resentments of this
sort are apparent in his writings. The last Duke of Norfolk but
one, who wrote anecdotes on the Howard family, asks how the man
who collected the Oxford marbles could be the slave of such family
self-love as Clarendon describes, and how it was that he held the
first places in the state, and the most important commissions abroad.
It is well-known, however, that a man may do all this, and yet be
more fortunate than wise. Arundel was certainly proud, if not dull;
and the proudest men are not apt to be the brightest. It was he
that, in a dispute with Lord Spenser, in the Upper House, when the
latter spoke of the treason of the earl’s ancestors, said, “My lord,
my lord, while my ancestors were plotting treason, yours were keeping
sheep.” He little thought that his marbles would help to bring about
a time, when an historian, by no means indifferent to rank and title,
should regard a romantic poem as the “brightest jewel” in a ducal
coronet, and that coronet be a Spenser’s. [18] At the south-west corner of Norfolk Street lived at one time the famous Penn, who from being a coxcomb in his youth became a quaker and a founder of a state. However, his coxcombry was a falling-off from early seriousness. His father was a rough admiral, who could not for the life of him conceive why his son should relapse into a preciseness so unlike the rest of the world, and so unfitted to succeed at court. Voltaire says, [19] that young Penn (for he was little more than twenty years of age) appeared suddenly before his father in a quaker dress, and to the old man’s astonishment and indignation said, without moving his hat, “Friend Penn, how dost thee do?” But, according to more serious biographers, the change was not so sudden. The hat, however, was a great matter of contention between them, the admiral wishing to stipulate that his son should uncover to the king (Charles II.), the king’s brother, and himself; but Penn having recourse to “fasting and supplication,” found that his hat was not to be moved. These were the weaknesses of a young enthusiast. His enthusiasm remained for greater purposes; but he is understood to have grown wiser with regard to the rest, though he continued a quaker for life. Penn, though a legislator, never seems to have given up a taste for good living. His appearance in the portraits of him, notwithstanding his garb, is fat and festive; and he died of apoplexy. In the same house, we believe, that had been occupied by Penn, [20] resided an author who must not be passed over in a work of this kind; to wit, the indefatigable and honest antiquary, Dr Birch. He came of a Quaker stock. Birch astonished his friends by going a great deal into company; but the secret of his uniting sociality with labour, was his early rising. This, which appears to be one of the main secrets of longevity, ought to have kept him older, for he died at the age of sixty-one: but he was probably festive as well as social, and should have taken more exercise. Being a bad horseman, he was thrown on the Hampstead road, and killed on the spot; but the doctors were uncertain whether apoplexy had not a hand in the disaster. In speaking of Birch, nobody should omit a charming billet, written to him by his first wife, almost in the article of death. The death took place within a year after their marriage, and was accelerated by childbed. “This day I return you, my dearest life, my sincere hearty thanks for every favour bestowed on your most faithful and obedient wife.
“July 31, 1729.” In Norfolk Street,
for upwards of thirty years, lived Dr Brocklesby, the friend and
physician of Dr Johnson. Physicians of this class may, par excellence,
be styled the friends of men of letters. They partake of their accomplishments,
understand their infirmities, sympathise with their zeal to do good,
and prolong their lives by the most delicate and disinterested attentions.
Between no two professions has a more liberal or cordial intimacy
been maintained than between literature and medicine. Brocklesby
was an honour to the highest of his calling. “In the course of his practice,” we are told that “his advice, as well as his purse, was ever accessible to the poor, as well as to men of merit who stood in need of either. Besides giving his advice to the poor of all descriptions, which he did with an active and unwearied benevolence, he had always upon his list two or three poor widows, to whom he granted small annuities; and who, on the quarter-day of receiving their stipends, always partook of the hospitalities of his table. To his relations, who wanted his assistance in their business or professions, he was not only liberal, but so judicious in his liberalities as to supersede the necessity of a repetition of them. To his friend Dr Johnson (when it was in agitation amongst his friends to procure an enlargement of his pension, the better to enable him to travel for the benefit of his health), he offered an establishment of one hundred pounds per year during his life; and upon Dr Johnson’s declining it (which he did in the most affectionate terms of gratitude and friendship), he made him a second offer of apartments in his own house, for the more immediate benefit of medical advice. To his old and intimate friend Edmund Burke, he had many years back bequeathed by will the sum of one thousand pounds; but recollecting that this event might take place (which it afterwards did) when such a legacy could be of no service to him, he, with that judicious liberality for which he was always distinguished, gave it to him in advance, ‘ut pignus amicitiæ:’ it was accepted as such by Mr Burke, accompanied with a letter, which none but a man feeling the grandeur and purity of friendship like him could dictate.” [22] If it be dangerous in the present condition of society, to incur pecuniary obligations, particularly for those who are more qualified to think than to act, and who may ultimately startle to find themselves in positions in which they can neither prove the benefit done them, nor the good feelings which allowed them to receive it, nobody can doubt the generosity of such a man as Brocklesby; who, so far from being a mere patron, jealous of being obliged himself, was equally as prepared to receive kindness as to show it. Proposing just before he died to go down to Burke’s house at Beaconsfield, and somebody hinting to him the danger of being fatigued, and of lying out of his own bed, he replied with his usual calmness, “My good friend, I perfectly understand your hint, and am thankful to you for it; but where’s the difference, whether I die at a friend’s house, at an inn, or in a post-chaise? I hope I am every way prepared for such an event, and perhaps it is as well to elude the expectation of it.” This was said like a man, and a friend. Brocklesby was not one who would cant about giving trouble at such a moment—the screen of those who hate to be troubled; neither would he grudge a friend the melancholy satisfaction of giving him a bed to die in. He better understood the first principles which give light and life to the world, and left jealousy and misgiving to the vulgar. Dr Brocklesby died
at his house in the street above mentioned, and was buried in the
churchyard. Lee was buried, “at St. Clement Danes”; probably, therefore,
in the churchyard also. There are now in that spot some trees, by
far the best things about the church. The reader may imagine them
to shade the places where the poet and the physician lie. Arundel or Norfolk House, after the great fire, became the temporary place of meeting for the Royal Society, previously to its return to Gresham College. It was pulled down on their leaving it, the century before last and the street before mentioned built in its room. They appear to have been favourite places of residence with persons connected with the drama. Congreve lived in Surrey Street, Mountford the player in Norfolk Street, Mrs Bracegirdle in Howard Street, and Mrs Barry somewhere near her. Congreve died where he had lived (Jan. 29, 1728–9), after having been for several years afflicted with blindness and gout; of which, however, he seems to have made the best he could, by the help of good sense and naturally good spirits. If his wits ever failed him, it was in the propensity to a love of rank and fashion, which, in spite of all that he had seen in the world, never forsook him. It originated probably in the need he thought he had of them, when he first set out in life. The finest sense of men of his cast does not rise above a graceful selfishness. It was most probably in Surrey Street (for he had come to the “verge of life”), that he had a visit paid him by Voltaire, who had recorded the disgust given him by an ebullition of his foppery: for the Frenchman had a great admiration of him as a writer. “Congreve spoke of his works,” says Voltaire, “as of trifles that were beneath him; and hinted to me, in our first conversation, that I should visit him upon no other foot than upon that of a gentleman, who led a life of plainness and simplicity. I answered, that had he been so unfortunate as to be a mere gentleman, I should never have come to see him; and I was very much disgusted at so unseasonable a piece of vanity.” [23] Our readers will admire the fineness of this rebuke. But the most glaring instance of this propensity was his leaving the bulk of his fortune to a duchess, when he had poor relations in want of it. “Having lain in state,” says Johnson, “in the Jerusalem Chamber, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument is erected to his memory by Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, to whom, for reasons either not known or not mentioned, he bequeathed a legacy of about ten thousand pounds, the accumulation of attentive parsimony, which, though to her superfluous and useless, might have given great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended; at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress.” [ 24] “Congreve,” says
Dr Young, “was very intimate for years with Mrs Bracegirdle, who
lived in the same street—his house very near hers; until his acquaintance
with the young Duchess of Marlborough. He then quitted that house.
The duchess showed me a diamond necklace (which Lady Di. used afterwards
to wear), that cost seven thousand pounds, and was purchased with
the money Congreve left her. How much better would it have been
to have given it to poor Mrs Bracegirdle!” [
25] Yet this dramatist, throughout his life, had had the good word of everybody. All parties praised him: all parties kept him in office (he had some places that are said to have produced him twelve hundred a year): Pope dedicated his Iliad to him; called him, after his death, Ultimus Romanorum; and added that “Garth, Vanbrugh, and he were the three most honest-hearted, real good men of the Kit-Kat Club.” [ 26] The secret of this is, that Congreve loved above all things to be at ease, and spoke politicly of everybody. He had a bad opinion of mankind, as we may see by his comedies; and he made the best of it, by conversing with them as if he took heed of their claws. The only person, we believe, that he ever opposed, was Collier, who attacked the stage with more spirit than elegance, and who was at enmity with the whole world of wit and fashion. We are far from thinking with Collier, that the abuses of the stage outweigh the benefit it does to the world; nor do we think the world by any means so bad as Congreve supposed it, nor himself either: but it is useful to know the tendencies of those who have a habit of thinking otherwise. Congreve’ s bequest
created a good deal of gossip. Curll, the principal scandal-monger
of those times, got up a catch-penny life of him, professing to
be written by “Charles Wilson, Esq.,” but supposed to be the work
of Oldmixon. There is no relying upon Charles Wilson; but, from
internal evidence, we may take his word occasionally; and we may
believe him when he says that the duchess and her friends were alarmed
at the threatened book. The picture which he draws of her manner
has also an air like a woman of quality. She had demanded a sight
of the documents on which the book was founded; and being refused,
asked what authority they had, and what pieces contained in it were
genuine. “Upon being civilly told there would be found several essays,
letters, and characters of that gentleman’s writing,” says Mr Wilson,
“she, with a most affected, extraordinary, dramatic drawl, cried
out, ‘Not one single sheet of paper, I dare to swear.’” [27] Mr Wilson’s own grand air in return is very amusing. He speaks of Arbuthnot’s
coming with “expresses,” probably to Curll’s; and adds, that if
he be despatched with any more, “he may, if he please, come to me,
who am as easily to be found in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury,
when in town, as he is in Burlington Gardens.—Cha. Wilson.” Mr Wilson’s book opens with a copy of the will, in which £500 are left among the Congreves; about £500 more to friends and domestics, etc. (not omitting £200 to Mrs Bracegirdle); and all the rest (with power to annul or increase the complimentary part of the legacies) to the Duchess of Marlborough. We know not that anybody could have brought forward grounds for objecting to this will, had the duchess been poor herself; for his relations may or may not have had claims upon him—relations, as such, not being of necessity friends, though it is generally fit that they should partake of the family prosperity. We except, of course, a man’s immediate kindred, particularly those whom he has brought into the world. But here was a woman, rolling in wealth, and relatives neither entirely forgotten, nor yet, it seems, properly assisted. The bequest must, therefore, either have been a mere piece of vanity, or the consequence of habitual subjection to a woman’s humours. The duchess was not ungrateful to his memory. She raised him, as we have seen, a monument; and it is related in Cibber’s Lives of the Poets, [28] we know not on what authority, that she missed his company so much, as to cause “an image of him to be placed every day on her toilet-table, to which she would talk as to the living Mr Congreve, with all the freedom of the most polite and unreserved conversation.” There is something very ludicrous in this way of putting a case, which might otherwise be affecting. It is as if there had been a sort of polite mania on both sides. Congreve’s plays
are exquisite of their kind, and the excessive heartlessness and
duplicity of some of his characters are not to be taken without
allowance for the ugly ideal. There is something not natural,
both in his characters and wit; and we read him rather to see how
entertaining he can make his superfine ladies and gentlemen, and
what a pack of sensual busybodies they are, like insects over a
pool, than from any true sense of them as “men and women.” As a
companion he must have been exquisite to a woman of fashion. We
can believe that the duchess, in ignorance of any tragic emotion
but what was mixed with his loss would really talk with a waxen
image of him in a peruke, and think the universe contained nothing
better. It was carrying wit and politeness beyond the grave. Queen
Constance in Shakspeare makes grief put on the pretty looks of her
lost child: the Duchess of Marlborough made it put on a wig and
jaunty air, such as she had given her friend in his monument in
Westminster Abbey. No criticism on his plays could be more perfect.
Congreve’s serious poetry is a refreshment, from its extreme insipidity
and common-place. Everybody is innocent in some corner of the mind,
and has faith in something. Congreve had no faith in his fellow-creatures,
but he had a scholar’s (not a poet’s) belief in nymphs and weeping
fauns; and he wrote elegies full of them, upon queens and marquisses.
If it be true that he wrote the character of Aspasia (Lady Elizabeth
Hastings), in the Tatler (No. 42), he had indeed faith in
something better; for in that paper is not only given an admiring
account of a person of very exalted excellence, but the author has
said of her one of the finest things that a sincere heart could
utter; namely, that “to love her was a liberal education.” We cannot
help thinking, however, that the generous and trusting hand of Steele
is very visible throughout this portrait; and in the touch just
mentioned, in particular. The engaging manners of Mrs Bracegirdle gave rise to a tragical circumstance in Howard Street—the death of Mountford her fellow-player. Mrs Bracegirdle, one of the most popular actresses of that time, was a brunette, not remarkable for her beauty, but so much so for the attractiveness superior to beauty, that Cibber calls her the “darling of the stage,” and says it was a kind of fashion for the young men about town to have a tenderness for her. This general regard she preserved by setting a value on herself, not so common with actresses at that time as it has been since. Accordingly, some made honourable proposals, which were then still more remarkable. In Rowe’s poems, there is a bantering epistle to an Earl of S——, advising him not to care for what people might think, but pursue his inclinations to that effect. Among others a Captain Hill made desperate love, professing the same intentions; but he was a man of bad character, and the lady would have nothing to say to him. The captain, like a proper coxcomb, took it in his head that nothing could have prevented his success, but some other person; and he fixed upon Mountford as the happy man. Mountford was the best lover and finest gentleman then on the stage, as Mrs Bracegirdle was the most charming heroine; but it does not appear that Hill had any greater ground for his suspicion than their frequent performance in the same play, which, however, to a jealous man, must have been extremely provoking. They used to act Alexander and Statira together. In Mountford’s Alexander, according to Cibber, there were seen “the great, the tender, the penitent, the despairing, the transported, and the amiable, in the highest perfection”; and “if anything,” he said, “could excuse that desperate extravagance of love, that almost frantic passion,” it was when Mrs Bracegirdle was the Statira. Imagine a dark-souled fellow in the pit thinking himself in love with this Statira, and that the passion between her and the Alexander was real. This play was acted a few nights before the catastrophe which we are about to relate. Hill was intimate with another man of bad character, Lord Mohun; who agreed to assist him in carrying off Mrs Bracegirdle. The captain had often said that he would be “revenged” upon Mountford; and dining with Lord Mohun on the day when they attempted the execution of their plot, he said, further, that he would “stab” him “if he resisted”; upon which Mohun said that he would “stand by his friend.” Mohun and Hill met
at the playhouse at six o’clock, changed their clothes there, and
waited some time for Mrs Bracegirdle; but not finding her come,
they took a coach which they had ordered to be ready, drove towards
her lodgings in Howard Street, and then back to Drury Lane, where
they directed the coach to stop near Lord Clare’s house (by the
present Craven Buildings). Mrs Bracegirdle had been supping at a
Mr Page’s, in Princes Street, Drury Lane. She came out, accompanied
by her mother, brother, and Mr Page, and was seized by Hill, who,
with the aid of a number of soldiers, endeavoured to force her into
the coach. In the coach was Lord Mohun, with seven or eight pistols.
Old Mrs Bracegirdle threw her arms round her daughter’s waist; her
other friends, and at length the passengers, interfered; and our
heroine succeeded in getting into her lodgings in Howard Street,
Hill and Mohun following them on foot. When they all came to the
door, Hill would have spoken with Page, but the latter refused;
and the door was shut. A witness, at the trial of Lord Mohun, deposed,
that they knocked several times at the door, and then the captain
entreated to beg pardon of Mrs Bracegirdle for having affronted
her, but in vain. Hill and Mohun remained in the street. They sent to a tavern for a bottle of wine, and perambulated before the door with drawn swords. Mrs Browne, the mistress of the house, came out to know what they did there; upon which Hill said that he would light upon Mountford some day or other, and that he would be revenged on him. The people in-doors, upon this, sent to Mountford’s house in Norfolk Street, to inform his wife; and she despatched messengers to all the places where he was likely to be found, to warn him of his danger, but they could not meet with him. Meanwhile the constables and watchmen come up and ask the strangers what they mean. They say they are drinking a bottle of wine. Lord Mohun adds that he is ready to put up his sword; remarking, withal, that he is a “peer of the realm.” Upon asking why the other gentleman did not put up his, his lordship tells them, that his friend had lost the scabbard. The watchmen, like “ancient and quiet watchmen,” go away to the tavern to “examine who they are”; and in the meantime Mountford makes his appearance coming up the street. Mountford lived in Norfolk Street, but he turned out of the path that led to his own house, and was coming towards Mrs Bracegirdle’s—whether to her house, or to any other, does not appear. By this time two hours had elapsed. Mrs Browne, who seems to have remained watching at the door, caught sight of Mountford, and hastened to warn him how he advanced. She was either not quick enough, or Mountford (which appears most likely) pressed on in spite of what she said, and, according to her statement, the following dialogue took place between him and Lord Mohun:— “Your humble servant, my lord.” “Your servant, Mr Mountford. I have a great respect for you, Mr Mountford, and would have no difference between us; but there is a thing fallen out between Mr Hill and Mrs Bracegirdle.” “My lord, has my wife disobliged your lordship? if she has, she shall ask your pardon. But Mrs Bracegirdle is no concern of mine: I know nothing of this matter; I come here by accident. But I hope your lordship will not vindicate Hill in such actions as these are.” Upon this, according to Mrs Browne’s statement, Hill bade Mountford draw; which the other said he would; but whether he received his wound before or after she could not tell, owing to its being night-time. Another female witness, who lived next door, gives the dialogue as follows. Lord Mohun begins:— “Mr Mountford, your humble servant. I am glad to see you” (embracing him). “Who is this? my
Lord Mohun?” “Yes, it is.” “What bringeth your lordship here at this time of night?” “I suppose you were sent for, Mr Mountford?” “No, indeed; I came by chance.” “You have heard of the business of Mrs Bracegirdle?” Hill (interfering). “Pray, my lord, hold your tongue. This is not a convenient time to discuss this business.” (On saying which, the witness adds, that he would have drawn Mohun away). Mountford. “I am very sorry, my lord, to see that your lordship should assist Captain Hill in so ill an action as this: pray let me desire your lordship to forbear.” As soon as he had uttered these words Hill, according to the witness, came up and struck Mountford a box on the ear; upon which the latter demanded with an oath, “what that was for”; and then she gives a confused account of the result, which was the receipt of a mortal wound by the poor actor. It was agreed that Mountford’s sword was not drawn in the first instance, and that Hill’s was; and the question was settled by the dying deposition of Mountford, who stated several times over, that Lord Mohun offered him no violence, but that Hill struck him with his left hand, and then ran him through the body, before he had time to draw in defence. Mountford died next
day. Hill fled at the time, and we hear no more of him. Mohun was
tried for his life, but acquitted, for want of evidence, of malice
prepense. The truth is, he was a great fool, and Hill appears to
have been another. The captain himself, probably, did not know what
he intended, though his words would have hung him had he been caught.
They were a couple of box-lobby swaggerers, who had heated themselves
with wine; and Hill, who told the constables “they might knock him
down if they liked,” and was for drawing Mohun away on Mountford’s
appearance, was most likely overcome with rage and jealousy at hearing
the latter speak of him with rebuke. Mohun was at that time very
young. He never ceased, however, hankering after this sort of excitement
to his dulness, till he got killed in a duel about an estate with
the Duke of Hamilton, who was at the same time mortally wounded.
Swift, in a letter about it, calls Mohun a “dog.” Pennant says,
that when his body was taken home bleeding (to his house in Gerrard
Street), Lady Mohun was very angry at its being flung “upon the
best bed.” [29] In front of the spot now occupied by St. Mary-le-Strand, commonly called the New Church, anciently stood a cross, at which, says Stowe, “in the year 1294, and other times, the justices itinerant sat without London.” In the place of this cross was set up a Maypole, by a blacksmith named John Clarges, whose daughter Ann became the wife of Monk, Duke of Albemarle. It was for a long time in a state of decay, and having been taken down in 1713, a new one was erected opposite Somerset House. This second May-pole had two gilt balls and a vane on the summit, and was decorated on holidays with flags and garlands. The races in the “Dunciad” take place
It was removed in 1718, probably being thought in the way of the new church, which was then being finished. Sir Isaac Newton begged it of the parish, and afterwards sent it to the rector of Wanstead, who set it up in Wanstead Park to support the then largest telescope in Europe. The gift of John Clarges came a day too late. In old times, May had been a great holiday in the streets of London. We shall speak further of it when we come to the parish of St. Andrew Undershaft, so called from a May-pole higher than the church. But though the holiday returned with the Restoration, it never properly recovered the disuse occasioned by the civil wars, and the contempt thrown on it by the spirit of puritanism. We gained too many advantages by the thoughtfulness generated in those times to quarrel with their mistakes; and have no doubt that the progress of knowledge to which they gave an impulse, will bring back the advantages they omitted by the way. [30] The New Church, or,
more properly, the Church of St. Mary-le-Strand, was built by Gibbs,
the architect of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. It was one of the “fifty,”
improperly so called, that are said to have been built in the reign
of Queen Anne; for though fifty were ordered, the number was not
completed. The old church in this quarter, which stood at a little
distance to the south, was removed by the Protector Somerset, to
make way for Somerset House, and has never been restored. The parishioners
went to the neighbouring churches. The New Church is in the pretty,
over-ornamental style, very different from that of St. Martin’s
with its noble front, and though far better than St. Clement’s,
and as superior to many places of worship built lately [31]
as art is superior to ignorance, yet it surely is not worthy of
its advantageous situation. It is one of those toys of architecture
which have been said to require glass cases. For the superfluous
height of the steeple, Gibbs offered an excuse. A column was to
have been erected near the church in honour of Queen Anne, but,
as the queen died, she was no longer thought deserving the column,
and the architect was ordered to make a steeple with the materials,
whereas he had intended only a belfry. Now, to render the steeple
fitting, the church should have had a wider base; but the structure
was already begun, and there was no changing the plan of it. It
might be still argued, that the steeple should not have been made
so high: but then, what was to be done with the stones? This, in
the mouth of parish virtù, was a triumphant reply. After all, however,
the artist need not have spoilt his church with ornament. He said,
that being situated in a very public place, “the parishioners” spared
no cost to beautify it; but to beautify a church is not to make
it a piece of confectionery. [32] Somerset House occupies the site of a princely mansion built by Somerset the Protector, brother of Lady Jane Seymour, and uncle to King Edward VI. His character is not sufficiently marked to give any additional interest to the spot. He was great by accident; lost and gained his greatness, according as others acted upon it; and ultimately resigned it on the scaffold. The house he left became the property of the crown, and was successively in possession of Queen Elizabeth and of the queens of James I., Charles I., and Charles II. The rooms in this house witnessed many joyous scenes and many anxious ones. Somerset had not long inhabited it when he was taken to the scaffold. Elizabeth, in her wise economy, lent it to her cousin Lord Hunsdon, whom she frequently visited within its walls. During its occupation by James’s queen, Anne of Denmark (from whose family it was called Denmark House), Wilson says, that a constant masquerade was going on, the queen and her ladies, “like so many sea-nymphs, or nereids,” appearing in various dresses, “to the ravishment of the beholders.” [33] Here began the struggle for mastery between Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, which terminated in favour of the latter, though the king behaved himself manfully at first. Henrietta had brought over with her a meddling French household, which, after repeated grievances, his Majesty was obliged to send “packing.” He summoned them all together one evening in the house, and addressed them as follows:— “Gentlemen and ladies, “I am driven to that extremity, as I am personally come to acquaint you, that I very earnestly desire your return into France. True it is, the deportment of some amongst you hath been very inoffensive to me; but others again have so dallied with my patience, and so highly affronted me, as I cannot, and will not, longer endure it.” [34] “The King’s address,
implicating no one, was immediately followed by a volley of protestations
of innocence. An hour after he had delivered his commands, Lord
Conway announced to the foreigners, that early in the morning carriages
and carts and horses would be ready for them and their baggage.
Amidst a scene of confusion, the young bishop (he was scarcely of
age) protested that this was impossible; that they owed debts in
London, and that much was due to them. On the following day, the
procureur-general of the Queen flew to the keeper of the
great seal at the privy council, requiring an admission to address
his Majesty, then present at his council, on matters important to
himself and the Queen. This being denied, he exhorted them to maintain
the Queen in all her royal prerogatives; and he was answered, ‘so
we do.’ “Their prayers and disputes served to postpone their departure. Their conduct during this time was not very decorous. It appears, by a contemporary letter-writer, that they flew to take possession of the Queen’s wardrobe and jewels. They did not leave her a change of linen, since it was with difficulty her Majesty procured one. Everyone now looked to lay his hand on what he might call his own. Everything he could touch was a perquisite. One extraordinary expedient was that of inventing bills to the amount of ten thousand pounds, for articles and other engagements in which they had entered for the service of the Queen, which her Majesty acknowledged, but afterwards confessed that the debts were fictitious.” [35] “In truth,” continues the writer, “the breaking up of this French establishment was ruinous to the individuals who had purchased their places at the rate of life annuities.” Charles now grew indignant, and sent the following letter to Buckingham:— “Steenie. [ 36] “I have receaved your letter by Dic Greame (Sir Richard Grahame). This is my answer: I command you to send all the French away to-morrow out of the towne, if you can by fair meanes (but stike not long in disputing), otherways force them away, dryving them away lyke so manie wilde beasts, until ye have shipped them, and so the devil goe with them. Let me heare no answer, but of the performance of my command. So I rest, “Your faithful,
constant, loving friend, “This order put an
end to the delay, but the King paid the debts, the fictitious ones
and all—at the cost, as it appears, of fifty thousand pounds. Even
the haughty beauty, Madame St. George, was presented by the king
on her dismission with several thousand pounds and jewels.” Still the French could not go quietly. “The French bishop,” says D’Israeli, “and the whole party having contrived all sorts of delays to avoid the expulsion, the yeomen of the guard were sent to turn them out of Somerset House, whence the juvenile prelate, at the same time making his protest and mounting the steps of the coach, took his departure ‘head and shoulders.’ In a long procession of near forty coaches, after four days’ tedious travelling, they reached Dover; but the spectacle of these impatient foreigners so reluctantly quitting England, gesticulating their sorrows or their quarrels, exposed them to the derision, and stirred up the prejudices, of the common people. As Madame St. George, whose vivacity is always described as extremely French, was stepping into the boat, one of the mob could not resist the satisfaction of flinging a stone at her French cap. An English courtier who was conducting her, instantly quitted his charge, ran the fellow through the body, and quietly returned to the boat. The man died on the spot, but no further notice appears to have been taken of the inconsiderate gallantry of the English courtier.” Henrietta had a magnificent Catholic chapel in Somerset House, and a cloister of Capuchins. The former has given occasion to some interesting descriptions of papal show and spectacle in the commentaries just quoted. [37] Cromwell’s body lay in state at Somerset House, as Monks did afterwards, probably on that account. Pepys, the prince of gossips, gives an edifying picture of the presence chamber in this palace, when the queens of the two Charleses were there together, a little after the Restoration: “Meeting Mr Pierce
the chyrurgeon,” says he, “he took me into Somerset House, and there
carried me into the queene-mother’s presence chamber, where she
was with our own queen sitting on her left hand, whom I did never
see before, and though she be not very charming, yet she hath a
good, modest, and innocent look, which is pleasing. Here I also
saw Madame Castlemaine; and, which pleased me most, Mr Crofts, the
King’s bastard, a most pretty sparke of about fifteen years old,
who, I perceive, do hang much upon my Lady Castlemaine, and is always
with her; and, I hear, the queenies both are mighty kind to him.
By and by, in comes the king, and anon the duke and his duchesse;
so that they being all together, was such a sight, as I never could
almost have happened to see, with so much ease and leisure. They
staid till it was dark and then went away; the king and his queene,
and my Lady Castlemaine and young Crofts, in one coach, and the
rest in other coaches. Here were great stores of great ladies, but
very few handsome. The king and queene were very merry; and he would
have made the queene-mother believe that his queene was with child,
and said that she said so, and the young queene answered, ‘you lye;’
which was the first English word that I had ever heard her say:
which made the king good sport.” [
38] After this we shall not wonder at the following:— “30th (Dec., 1662). Visited Mrs Ferrer and staid talking with her a good while, there being a little proud, ugly, talking little lady there, that was much crying up the queene-mother’s court at Somerset House above our own queene’s; there being before her no allowance of laughing and the mirth that is at others; and, indeed, it is observed that the greatest court now-a-days is there.” [ 39]
——“each alley has his brother, a style, however, not without its merits, particularly
in admitting so many walks among the flowers, and inviting a pace
up and down between the trees. Milton, though he made a different
garden for his Eden, spoke of “trim gardens,” as enjoyed by “retired
leisure.” In this back front were the apartments of the court. The
scene we have just been reading in Pepys must have passed in one
of them. Here Charles the First’s widow lived with her supposed
husband, the Earl of St. Albans; though she was not so constant
to the place as Waller prophesied she would be. She had been used
to too much power as a queen, and found she had too little as a
dowager. Poor Catherine remained as long as she could. She lived
here till she returned to Portugal, in the reign of William III.
Speaking of Waller, we must not quit the premises without noticing
a catastrophe that befel him at the water-gate, or Somerset-stairs
(also, by the way, the work of Inigo Jones). Waller, according to
Aubrey, had but “a tender weak body, but was always very temperate.”
——(we know not who this is) “made him damnable drunk at Somerset
House, where, at the water stayres, he fell down, and had a cruel
fall. ’Twas a pity to use such a sweet swan so inhumanly.” [
40] Waller, who, notwithstanding his weak body, lived to be
old, was a water-drinker; but he had a poet’s wine in his veins,
and was excellent company. Saville said, “that nobody should keep
him company without drinking, but Ned Waller.” Subsequently to Catherine’s departure, old Somerset House was chiefly used as a residence for princes from other countries when on a visit. It was pulled down towards the end of the last century, and the present structure erected by Sir William Chambers, but left unfinished. The unfinished part, which is towards the east, is now in a state of completion, as the King’s College. The only memorial remaining of the old palace and its outhouses is in the wall of a house in the Strand, where the sign of a lion still survives a number of other signs, noticed in a list made at the time, and common at that period to houses of all descriptions. The area of the New Somerset House occupies a large space of ground, the basement of the back-front being in the river. Three sides of it are appropriated to a variety of public offices, connected with trade, commerce, and civil economy; and the front was lately dignified by the occupancy of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies and the Royal Academy of Painting. The structure was an ambitious one on the part of the architect, and upon the whole is elegant but timid. There is a look of fragility in it. It has the extent, but not the majesty, of a national emporium. Rules are violated in some instances for the sake of trifles, as is the case of pillars “standing on nothing and supporting nothing;” and in others, it would seem out of a dread of the result, as in the instance of the huge basement over the water, supporting a cupola, which is petty in the comparison. Sir William did well in wishing to have an imposing front towards the river; but he might have had another towards the Strand, nobler than the present one. The lower part is nothing better than a pillared coachway. However, the front of the story is, perhaps, the best part of the whole building. It presents a graceful harmony in the proportions. The Royal Society,
which originated in the college rooms of Dr Wilkins, afterwards
bishop of Chester, met, when it was incorporated, at Old Gresham
College in Aldersgate Street; then at Arundel House (on account
of the fire); then returned to Gresham College; and, after a variety
of other experiments upon lodging, was settled by the late king
in New Somerset House. This society, on its foundation, was much
ridiculed by the wits. Though its ends were great, it naturally
busied itself with little things; pragmatical and pedantic persons
naturally enough got mixed up with it; some of its members had foibles
of enthusiasm and pedantry, which were easily confounded with their
capacities; and the jokes were most likely encouraged by the king
(Charles II.), who, though fond of scientific experiments, and wearing
a grave face in presence of the learned body (of which he declared
himself a member), was not a man to forego such an opportunity of
jesting. Wilkins wrote a book to show that a man might go to the
moon; and the ethical common-places of Boyle (who was as great a
natural philosopher as he was a poor moralist) were the origin of
Swift’s Essay on the Tritical Faculties of the Mind. Then
there was the good Evelyn with his hard words, wondering sentimentally
at everything; and jolly Pepys marvelling like Sancho Panza. The
readers of Pepys’ Diary have been surprised at his not liking
Hudibras. Perhaps one reason was, that Butler was the greatest
of the jesters against the society. It was impossible not to laugh
at the jokes, in which he charges them with attempting to “Search the moon by her own light; Evelyn got angry, and pretended to be calm. Cowley expressed his anger by a generous indignation. The following passage in his Ode of the Society concludes with a fine appropriate simile. “Mischief and true dishonour,” says he ——“fall on those Perhaps a part of
the jealousy against the Royal Society arose from a notion which
has since become not uncommon, that bodies of this nature, incorporated
by kings, are calculated rather to limit inquiry, than to enlarge
it. Without stopping to discuss this point, we shall merely observe,
that the real greatness of all such bodies, like those of nations
themselves, must arise from the greatness of individuals; and that
whether the bodies give any lustre to them or not, there is no denying
that the individuals give lustre to the bodies. When Sir Isaac Newton
became president, jesting ceased. It is pleasant to think, while passing Somerset House, in the midst of the noise of a great thoroughfare, that philosophical speculation is, perhaps, going on within those graceful walls; that in the midst of all sorts of new things, sight is not lost of the venerable beauties of old; and that art, as well as philosophy, is considering what it shall do for our use and entertainment. The Antiquarian Society originated as far back as the sixteenth century (about the year 1580), and held its first sittings in a room in the Heralds’ College; but it did not receive a charter till the year 1751. Neither Elizabeth nor James would give it one, fearful, perhaps, of bringing up discussions on matters connected with politics and religion. Elizabeth has now become one of the most interesting of its heroines. There is no society, we think, more likely to increase with age, and to outgrow half-witted objection. The growth of time adds daily to its stock; and as reflecting men become interested in behalf of ages to come, they naturally turn with double sympathy towards the periods that have gone by, and to the multitudes of beating hearts that have become dust. We should like to see the society in a venerable building of its own, raised in some quiet spot, with trees about it, and with painted windows reflecting light through old heraldry. The Royal Academy of Painters, now removed to Trafalgar Square, first met in Saint Martin’s Lane, under the title of the Society of Artists of Great Britain. They had a division among them, which gave rise to the establishment as it now stands; and are a flourishing body, we believe, in point of funds. Of the deceased members who have done them honour, we shall speak when we come to their abodes. The Turk’s Head Coffeehouse, near Somerset House, was frequented by Dr Johnson.
The precinct called the Savoy was anciently the seat of Peter, Earl of Savoy, who came into England to visit his niece Eleanor, Queen to Henry III. It is not known whether the house was built or appointed for him, but on his death it became the property of the queen, who gave it to her second son Edmund, afterwards Earl of Lancaster; and from his time the Savoy was reckoned part and parcel of the earldom and honour of Lancaster, afterwards the duchy. Henry VII. converted the palace into an hospital for the poor; and it remained so till the time of Charles II.; though the master and other officers, by an abuse which grew into a custom, appear to have had no regular inmates, except themselves. The poor were to apply, as it might happen; and what they got depended on the generosity of the master. In answer to a question put by Government in the reign of Queen Anne, it was stated by the lawyer and four chaplains, that “the statutes relating to the reception of the poor had not been observed within the memory of man.” [43] Charles II. put wounded soldiers and sailors into the hospital; and since his time it appears to have been used for the reception of soldiers and prisoners. Latterly, it was a prison for deserters. The Savoy was the scene of a conference in Charles II.’s reign, between the church and the Presbyterians, in which possession was proved to be nine points of the Gospel, as well as law. The Presbyterians thought so when it was their turn to rule, and would have thought so again; and the progress of genuine Christianity has been a gainer by the mild sway of the Church of England. In the chapel was buried old Gawen Douglas, the Chaucer of Scotland; and Anne Killegrew, celebrated by Dryden’s ode for her poetry and painting. She was the daughter of one of the masters, Dr Henry Killegrew, brother of the famous jester, and himself a man of talent. Mrs Anne Killegrew,
had probably the honour, some day, of dining with
her washerwoman’s daughter, in the guise of Duchess of Albemarle;
for John Clarges, the blacksmith, who lived in the Savoy, had a
wife who was a washerwoman, and the washerwoman had a daughter,
who took linen to Monk, when he was in the Tower, and married him.
It is not commonly known that the validity of this marriage was
contested. Upon the trial of an action at law between the representatives
of Monk and Clarges, some curious particulars, says an article in
the Gentleman’s Magazine, came out respecting the family
of the duchess. “It appeared that she was the daughter of John Clarges, a farrier, in the Savoy, and farrier to Colonel Monk, in 1632. She was married in the church of St. Lawrence Pountney, to Thomas Ratford, son of Thomas Ratford, late a farrier, servant to Prince Charles, and resident in the Mews. She had a daughter who was born in 1634, and died in 1638. Her husband and she ‘lived at the Three Spanish Gypsies, in the New Exchange, and sold wash-balls, powder, gloves, and such things, and she taught girls plain work. About 1647, she, being a sempstress to Colonel Monk, used to carry him linen.’ In 1648 her father and mother died. In 1649, she and her husband ‘fell out and parted.’ But no certificate from any parish register appears, reciting his burial. In 1652, she was married in the church of St. George, Southwark, to ‘General George Monk;’ and in the following year was delivered of a son, Christopher (afterwards the second and last Duke of Albemarle), who was suckled by Honour Mills, who sold apples, herbs, oysters, etc. One of the plaintiff’s witnesses swore, ‘that a little before the sickness, Thomas Ratford demanded and received of him the sum of twenty shillings; that his wife saw Ratford again after the sickness, and a second time after the Duke and Duchess of Albemarle were dead.’ A woman swore, ‘she saw him on the day his wife (then called Duchess of Albemarle) was put into her coffin, which was after the death of the duke her second husband, who died the 3rd of January, 1669-70.’ And a third witness swore, ‘that he saw Ratford about July, 1660.’ In opposition to this evidence, it was alleged, that ‘all along, during the lives of Duke George and Duke Christopher, this matter was never questioned,’ that the latter was universally received as only son of the former, and that ‘this matter had been thrice before tried at the bar of the King’s Bench, and the defendant had three verdicts.’ A witness swore that he owed Ratford five or six pounds, which he had never demanded. And a man, who had married a cousin to the Duke of Albemarle, had been told by his wife, that Ratford died five or six years before the duke married. Lord Chief Justice Holt told the jury, ‘If you are certain that Duke Christopher was born while Thomas Ratford was living, you must find for the plaintiff. If you believe he was born after Ratford was dead, or that nothing appears what became of him after Duke George married his wife, you must find for the defendant.’ A verdict was given for the defendant, who was only son to Sir Thomas Clarges, knight, brother to the illustrious duchess in question, who was created a baronet October 30, 1674, and was ancestor to the baronets of his name.” [ 44] It does not appear on which of these accounts the jury found a verdict for the defendant-whether because Ratford was dead, or because nothing had been heard of him; so that the duchess, after all, might have been no duchess. However, she carried it with as high a hand as if she had never been anything else, and Monk had been a blacksmith. There are some amusing notices of her in Pepys. “8th (March, 1661–2).
At noon, Sir W. Batten, Col. Slingsby, and I, by coach to the Tower,
to Sir John Robinson’s, to dinner, where great good cheer. High
company, and among others the Duchess of Albemarle, who is ever
a plain homely dowdy.” [ 45]
“9th (Dec., 1665). My Lord Brouncker and I dined with the Duke of Albemarle. At table, the duchess, a very ill-looked woman, complaining of her lord’s going to sea next year, said these cursed words:—‘If my lord had been a coward, he had gone to sea no more; it may be then he might have been excused, and made an ambassador’ (meaning my Lord Sandwich). This made me mad, and I believe she perceived my countenance change, and blushed herself very much. I was in hopes others had not minded it, but my Lord Brouncker, after we came away, took notice of the words to me with displeasure.” [46] Lord Sandwich, the famous admiral, who has such light repute with posterity, was a relation of Pepys, and much connected with him in affairs. There does not appear to have been the least foundation for the duchess’s charge; except, perhaps, that Sandwich had brains enough to know the danger which he braved, while Monk knew nothing but how to fight and lie. “4th (Nov., 1666).” Pepys says that Mr Cooling tells him, “the Duke of Albemarle is grown a drunken sot, and drinks with nobody but Troutbecke, whom nobody else will keep company with. Of whom he told me this story; that once the Duke of Albemarle in his drink taking notice, as of a wonder, that Nan Hide should ever come to be Duchess of York: ‘Nay,’ says Troutbecke, ‘ne’er wonder at that, for if you will give me another bottle of wine, I will tell you as great, if not greater, miracle.’ And what was that, but that our dirty Besse (meaning his duchess) should come to be Duchess of Albemarle.” [ 47] “4th (April, 1667). I find the Duke of Albemarle at dinner with sorry company, some of his officers of’ the army; dirty dishes and a nasty wife at table, and bad meat, of which I made but an ill dinner. Colonel Howard asking how the Prince (Rupert) did (in the last fight); the Duke of Albemarle answering, ‘Pretty well,’ the other replied, ‘But not so well as to go to sea again.’—‘How!’ says the duchess, ‘what should he go for, if he were well, for there are no ships for him to command? And so you have brought your hogs to a fair market,’ said she.” [ 48] “29th (March, 1667-8).
I do hear by several, that Sir W. Pen’s going to sea do dislike
the Parliament mightily, and that they have revived the Committee
of Miscarriages, to find something to prevent it; and that he being
the other day with the Duke of Albemarle, to ask his opinion touching
his going to sea, the duchess overheard and came into him; and asked
W. Pen how he durst have the confidence to go to sea again to the
endangering of the nation, when he knew himself such a coward as
he was; which, if true, is very severe.” [
49] The habit of charging cowardice against the first officers of the time, which was not confined to the duchess, is characteristic of the grossness of that period, the refinements of which were entirely artificial and modish. No people talked or acted more grossly than the finest gentlemen of the day, or believed more ill of one another; and it was not to be expected that the uneducated should be behindhand with them. The Duchess of Albemarle is supposed to have had a considerable hand in the Restoration. She was a great loyalist, and Monk was afraid of her; so that it is likely enough she influenced his gross understanding, when it did not exactly know what to be at. Aubrey says, that her mother was one of the “five women barbers.” How these awful personages came up we know not—but he has quoted a ballad upon them:— “Did you ever hear the like, After all, the father, John Clarges, must have been a man of substance in his trade, to be enabled to set up the enormous May-pole which we see in the picture. But this did not prevent the daughter from growing up vulgar and foul-mouthed, and a very different person from the Belles Ferronières of old. The Savoy, on the one side, with its Gothic gate and flint wall, and the splendid mansion called Exeter House on the other, appear in former times to have narrowed the highway hereabouts, as much as Exeter ’Change did lately. At the corner of
Beaufort Buildings flourished Mr Lillie, the perfumer so often mentioned
in the Tatler. He was secretary to Mr Bickerstaff’s Court
of Honour, in Shire Lane, where people had actions brought against
them for pulling out their watches while their superiors were talking;
and for brushing feathers off a gentleman’s coat, with a cane “value
fivepence.” Lillie published two volumes of Contributions, of which
the Tatler had made no use. We believe they had no merit.
In Beaufort Buildings lived Aaron Hill, and at one time Fielding. Southampton Street, a little to the west, on the other side of the way, has been much inhabited by wits and theatrical people. Congreve once lived there, Mrs Bracegirdle, and Garrick. It was called Southampton Street from the noble family of that title, who are allied to the Bedford family, the proprietors. On the ground of Cecil and Salisbury Streets, opposite Southampton Street, stood the mansion of Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, the cunning son of a wise father. It was he who, contriving to keep up to the last his interest with the queen Elizabeth, and to oust his rivals, Essex and others, was the first to make secret terms with her successor James, and to prepare the way for his reception in England: of which, perhaps, Elizabeth was aware, when she lay moaning on the ground. Where the Adelphi now stands, was Durham Place, originally a palace of the Bishops of Durham, who resigned it to Henry VIII. Henry made it the scene of magnificent tournaments. The Lord High Admiral Seymour caused the Mint to be established in this house, with a view to coin money for his designs on the throne. It was afterwards inhabited by Dudley, Earl of Northumberland, who here married his son to Lady Jane Grey. But its most illustrious tenant was Raleigh, to whom it was lent by Queen Elizabeth, and who lived in it during the attempt made at Essex House. The four turrets of the mansion, under the roof of which lived and speculated that romantic but equivocal person, have been marked out in an engraving from Hollar. Durham Place, though it got into royal hands during the fluctuation of religious opinions, never seems to have been reckoned out of the pale of the bishopric of Durham; for Lord Pembroke bought it of that see in 1640, and pulled it down for the erection of houses on its site. “Be it known,” says
the lively Pennant, speaking of the word ‘place,’ as applied to
great mansions, and interpreted by him to mean ‘palace,’ “that the
word is only applicable to the habitations of princes, or princely
persons, and that it is with all the impropriety of vanity bestowed
on the houses of those who have luckily acquired money enough to
pile on one another a greater quantity of stones or bricks than
their neighbours. How many imaginary parks have been formed
within precincts where deer were never seen! And how many houses
misnamed halls, which never had attached to them the privilege
of a manor.” [ 51] This is true; but unless the words palazzo and piazza are traceable to the same root, palatium (as perhaps they are), place does not of necessity mean palace; and palace certainly does not mean exclusively the habitation of princes or princely persons (that is to say, supposing princeliness to exclude riches), for in Italy, whence it comes, any large mansion may be called a palace; and many old palaces there were built by merchants. Palatium, it is true, with the old Romans, though it may have originally meant any house on Mount Palatine, yet in consequence of that place becoming the court end of the city, and containing the imperial palace, may have come ultimately to mean only a princely residence. Ovid uses it in that sense in his Metamorphoses. [52] But custom is everything in these matters. Place is now used as a variety of term, either for a large house or street. Perhaps in both cases it ought to imply something of the look of a palace, or at least an openness of aspect analogous to that of a square—square in England, corresponding with place, piazza, and plaça on the Continent. The Piazza in Covent Garden, properly means the place itself, and not the portico. “To the north of Durham Place, fronting the street,” says Pennant, “stood the New Exchange, which was built under the auspices of our monarch in 1608, out of the rubbish of the old stables of Durham House. The king, queen, and royal family, honoured the opening with their presence, and named it Britaine’s Burse. It was built somewhat on the model of the Royal Exchange, with cellars beneath, a walk above, and rows of shops over that, filled chiefly with milliners, sempstresses, and the like. This was a fashionable place of resort. In 1654, a fatal affair happened here. Mr Gerard, a young gentleman, at that time engaged in a plot against Cromwell, was amusing himself in a walk beneath, when he was insulted by Don Pantaleon de Saa, brother to the Ambassador of Portugal, who, disliking the return he met with, determined on revenge. He came there the next day with a set of bravoes, who, mistaking another gentleman for Mr Gerard, instantly put him to death, as he was walking with his sister in one hand and his mistress in the other. Don Pantaleon was tried, and with impartial justice condemned to the axe. Mr Gerard, who about the same time was detected in the conspiracy, was likewise condemned to die. By singular chance, both the rivals suffered on the scaffold, within a few hours of each other: Mr Gerard with intrepid dignity; the Portuguese with all the pusillanimity of an assassin. “Above stairs,” continues
Pennant, “sat, in the character of a milliner, the reduced Duchess
of Tyrconnel, wife to Richard Talbot, Lord Deputy of Ireland, under
James II.; a bigoted Papist, and fit instrument of the designs of
the infatuated prince, who had created him Earl before his abdication,
and after that, Duke of Tyrconnel. A female, suspected to have been
his duchess, after his death, supported herself for a few days (till
she was known and otherwise provided for) by the little trade of
this place; but had delicacy enough to wish not to be detected.
She sat in a white mask, and a white dress, and was known by the
name of the White Widow. This Exchange has long since given way
to a row of good houses, with uniform front, engraved in Mr Nichols’s
Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, which form a part of the street.”
[53] The houses in the quarter behind these, built by the Earl of Pembroke, made way, sixty years back, for the present handsome set of buildings called the Adelphi, from the Messrs Adam, brothers, who built it. [54] The principal front faces the Thames, and is almost the only public walk left for the inhabitants of London on the river side. The centre house was purchased when new, by Garrick in 1771, and was his town house for the rest of his life. He died there about nine years after; but Mrs Garrick possessed it till a late period. Mrs Garrick had been a dancer in her youth, with a name as vernal as need be—Mademoiselle Violette: she died a venerable old lady, at the age of ninety odd. Boswell has recorded a delightful day spent with Johnson and others at her house, the first time she re-opened it after Garrick’s death. Sir Joshua Reynolds was there, Mrs Carter, Mrs Boscawen, and others. “She looked well,” says Boswell, “talked of her husband with complacency; and while she cast her eyes at his portrait, which was hung over the chimney-piece, said, that ‘death was now the most agreeable object to her.’” [55] It is no dishonour to her, that her constitution was too good for her melancholy. She spoke enthusiastically of her husband to the last, and used to decide on theatrical subjects, by right of being his representative. On the same terrace had lived their common friend Beauclerc. On coming away after the party just mentioned, Boswell tells us that Johnson and he stopped a little while by the rail of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames; “and I said to him,” says Boswell, “with some emotion, that I was now thinking of two friends we had lost, who once lived in the buildings behind us, Beauclerc and Garrick.” “Ay, sir,” said he tenderly, “and two such friends as cannot be supplied.” [ 56] When Beauclerc was
labouring under the illness that carried him off, Johnson said to
Boswell, in a faltering voice, that he “would walk to the extent
of the diameter of the earth to save him.” It does not appear what
Beauclerc had in his nature to excite this tenderness; but it is
observable, that Johnson had a kind of speculative regard for rakes
and men of the town, if he thought them not essentially vicious.
He seemed willing to regard them as evidences of the natural virtue
of all men, bad as well as good, and of the excuse furnished for
irregularity by animal spirits. It was not impossible even that
he might have thought them rather conventionally than abstractedly
vicious. He had a similar regard for Hervey, a great rake, who was
very kind to him. “Sir,” said he, “if you call a dog ‘Hervey,’ I
shall love him.” At the same time it is not to be forgotten, that
these rakes were fine gentlemen and men of birth; representatives,
in some respect, of the license assumed by authority. Beauclerc,
however, like Hervey, had a taste for better things than he practised,
and could love scrupulous men. Boswell has given an interesting
account of his first intimacy with Johnson. Langton and Beauclerc
had become intimate at Oxford. “Their opinions and mode of life,”
we are told, “were so different, that it seemed utterly impossible
they should at all agree”; but Beauclerc “had so ardent a love of
literature, so acute an understanding, such elegance of manners,
and so well discerned the excellent qualities of Mr Langton, a gentleman
eminent not only for worth and learning, but for an inexhaustible
fund of entertaining conversation, that they became intimate friends.” “Johnson, soon after this acquaintance began, passed a considerable time at Oxford. He at first thought it strange that Langton should associate so much with one who had the character of being loose, both in his principles and practice, but, by degrees, he himself was fascinated. Mr Beauclerc’s being of the St. Albans family, and having, in some particulars, a resemblance to Charles the Second, contributed, in Johnson’s imagination, to throw a lustre upon his other qualities; and, in a short time, the moral, pious Johnson, and the gay, dissipated Beauclerc were companions. ‘What a coalition!’ said Garrick, when he heard of this: ‘I shall have my old friend to bail out of the round-house.’ But I can bear testimony that it was a very agreeable association. Beauclerc was too polite, and valued learning and wit too much, to offend Johnson by sallies of infidelity or licentiousness; and Johnson delighted in the good qualities of Beauclerc, and hoped to correct the evil. Innumerable were the scenes in which Johnson was amused by these young men. Beauclerc could take more liberty with him than anybody with whom I ever saw him; but, on the other hand, Beauclerc was not spared by his respectable companion, when reproof was proper. Beauclerc had such a propensity to satire, that at one time, Johnson said to him, ‘You never open your mouth but with intention to give pain, and you have often given me pain, not from the power of what you said, but from seeing your intention.’ At another time, applying to him, with a slight alteration, a line of Pope, he said—
‘Everything thou dost shows the one, and everything thou say’st the other.’ At another time he said to him, ‘Thy body is all vice, and thy mind all virtue.’ Beauclerc not seeming to relish the compliment, Johnson said, ‘Nay, sir, Alexander the Great, marching in triumph into Babylon, could not have desired to have had more said to him.’” [57] The streets in the
Adelphi—John, Robert, Adam, etc.—are named from the builders. In
this instance, the names are well bestowed; but the “fond attempt,”
on the part of bricklayers and builders in general to give a “deathless
lot” to their names in the same way, is very idle. Wherever we go
now-a-days, among the new buildings, especially in the suburbs,
we meet with names that nobody knows anything about, nor ever will
know. Probably, as knowledge increases, this custom will go out.
With this exception, streets in the British metropolis have hitherto
been named after royalty or nobility, or from local circumstances,
or from saints. Saints went out with popery. The reader of the Spectator
will recollect the dilemma which Sir Roger de Coverley underwent
in his youth, from not knowing whether to ask for Marylebone or
Saint Marylebone. In Paris they have streets named after men of
letters. There is the Quai de Voltaire,—and one of the most
frequented thoroughfares in that metropolis, for it contains the
Post-Office, is Jean Jacques Rousseau Street. It is not unlikely
that a similar custom will take place in England before long. A
nobleman, eminent for his zeal in behalf of the advancement of society,
has called a road in his neighbourhood, Addison Road. [58] In John Street, Adelphi, are the rooms of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. This society originated in 1753, at the suggestion of Mr Shipley, an artist, and, as the title implies, is very miscellaneous in its object; perhaps too much so to make sufficient impression. It gives rewards for discoveries of all sorts, and for performances of youth in the fine arts. It is, however, one of those combinations of zealous and intelligent men, which have marked the progress of latter times, and which will have an incalculable effect on posterity. Its great room is adorned with the celebrated pictures of Mr Barry, which he painted in order to refute the opinion that Englishmen had no genius for the higher department of art, no love of music, etc., nor a proper relish of anything, “even life itself.” The statement of these positions were not so discreet as the paintings were clever. Mr Barry was one of those impatient, self-willed men who, with a portion of genuine power, think it greater than it is, and will not take the pains to make themselves masters of their own weapons. His pictures in the Adelphi, which are illustrations of the progress of society, are striking, ingenious, with great elegance here and there, and now and then an evidence of the highest feeling; as in the awful pity of the retributive angel who presides over the downfall of the wicked and tyrannical. But the colouring is bad and “foxy”; his Elysium is deformed with the heterogeneous dresses of all ages, William Penn talking in a wig and hat with Lycurgus, etc. (which, however philosophically such things might be regarded in another world, are not fitly presented to the eye in this); and by way of disproving the bad taste of the English in music, he has put Dr Burney in a coat and toupee, floating among the water nymphs! The consequence is, that although these pictures are, perhaps, the best ever exhibited together in England by one artist, they fall short of what he intended to establish by them, as far as England is concerned. Between Adam Street and George Street, on the other side of the Strand, is Bedford Street, the site of an old mansion of the Earls and Dukes of Bedford.
Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was the man who, on his marriage with King Henry VIII.’s sister, appeared at a tournament on a horse that had a cloth half frieze and half gold, with that touching motto— Cloth of gold, do not thou despise, Bacon belongs to Gray’s Inn, and the second Duke of Buckingham to Wallingford House, where he chiefly resided (on the site of the present Admiralty): but the reader, who should go down Buckingham Street, and contemplate the spot which Inigo Jones and the trees have beautified, will not fail to be struck with the many different spirits that have passed through this spot—the romantic Suffolk; the correct Egerton; the earth-moving Bacon; the first Buckingham with a spirit equal to his fortunes; the second, witty but selfish, who lavished them away; and all the visitors, of so many different qualities, which these men must have had, crowding or calmly moving to the gate across the water, in quiet or in jollity, clients, philosophers, poets, courtiers, mistresses, gallant masques, the romance of Charles the First’s reign, and the gaudy revelry of Charles II. A little spot remains, with a few trees, and a graceful piece of art, and the river flowing as calmly as meditation. The only vestige now remaining of the splendid mansion of the Buckinghams is the Water-Gate at the end of Buckingham Street, called York Stairs, [59] and built by Inigo Jones. It has been much admired, and must have admitted, in its time, the entrance of many extraordinary persons. York Buildings affords
us another name, not unworthy to be added to the most useful and
delightful of these, Richard Steele, who lived here just before
he retired into Wales. The place in his time was celebrated for
a concert-room. We must not omit the termination of a curious dispute
at the gate of York House, to which Pepys was a witness. “30th (September
1661). This morning up by moonshine, at five o’clock,” (here
was one of the great secrets of the animal spirits of those times),
“to Whitehall, to meet Mr More at the Privy Seale, and there I heard
of a fray between the two embassadors of Spaine and France, and
that this day being the day of the entrance of an embassador from
Sweeden, they intended to fight for the precedence. Our king, I
heard, ordered that no Englishman should meddle in the business,
but let them do what they would. And to that end, all the soldiers
in town were in arms all the day long, and some of the train bands
in the city, and a great bustle through the city all the day. Then
we took coach (which was the business I came for) to Chelsey, to
my Lord Privy Seale, and there got him to seal the business. Here
I saw by daylight two very fine pictures in the gallery, that a
little while ago I saw by night; and did also go all over the house,
and found it to be the prettiest contrived house that ever I saw
in my life. So back again; and at Whitehall light, and saw the soldiers
and people running up and down the streets. In James the Second’s
time, the French embassy had the house of their rival, and drew
the town to see Popish devices in wax-work. “The fourth of April,” says Evelyn (1672), “I went to see the fopperies of the Papists at Somerset House and York House, where now the French ambassador had caused to be represented our Blessed Saviour at the Pascal Supper with his disciples, in figures and puppets made as big as the life, of wax-work, curiously clad and sitting round a large table, the room nobly hung, and shining with innumerable lamps and candles; this was exposed to all the world; all the city came to see it: such liberty had the Roman Catholicks at this time obtained.” [61] They have obtained more liberty since, and can dispense with these “fopperies.” At least they would do well to think so. Hungerford Market takes its name from an old Wiltshire family, who had a mansion here in the time of Charles II., which they parted with, like others, to the encroachments of trade. It used to be an inconvenient and disagreeable place, little frequented, but has lately been converted into a handsome market, and put an end to the monopoly of Billingsgate. No. 7 in Craven Street is celebrated as having been, at one time, the residence of Franklin. What a change along the shore of the Thames in a few years (for two centuries are less than a few in the lapse of time), from the residence of a set of haughty nobles, who never dreamt that a tradesman could be anything but a tradesman, to that of a yeoman’s son, and a printer, who was one of the founders of a great state! Northumberland House is the only one remaining of all the great mansions which lorded it on the river side. It was built by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, son of the famous Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, the poet; but a very unworthy son, except in point of capacity. He was one of those men, who, wanting a sense of moral beauty, are in every other respect wise in vain, and succeed only to become despised and unhappy. He was the grossest of flatterers; paid court to the most opposite rivals, in the worst manner; and seems to have stuck at nothing to obtain his ends. His perception of what was great, extrinsically, led him to build this princely abode; and his worship of success and court favour degraded him into an accomplice of Carr, Earl of Somerset. It is thought by the historians, that he died just in time to save him from the disgraceful consequences of the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. [ 62] Northumberland House
was built upon the site of the old hospital of St. Mary Roncesvaux—Osborne
says, with Spanish gold. “Part of the present mansion,” says the
Londinium Redivivum, “is from the designs of Bernard
Jansen, and the frontispiece or gateway from those of Gerard Christmas.
This gateway cannot possibly be described correctly, as the ornaments
are scattered in the utmost profusion, from the base to the attic,
which supports a copy of Michael Angelo’s celebrated lion. Double
ranges of grotesque pilasters inclose eight niches on the sides,
and there are a bow window and an open arch above the gate. The
basement of the whole front contains fourteen niches, with ancient
weapons crossed within them; and the upper stories have twenty-four
windows, in two ranges, with pierce battlements. Each wing terminates
in a cupola, and the angles have rustic quoins. The quadrangle within
the gate is in a better style of building, but rather distinguished
by simplicity than grandeur; and the garden next the Thames, with
many trees, serves to screen the mansion from those disagreeable
objects which generally bound the shores of the river in this vast
trading city.” “Northumberland House was discovered to be on fire, March 18, 1780, at five o’clock in the morning, which raged from that hour till eight, when the whole front next the Strand was completely destroyed. Dr Percy’s apartments were consumed; but great part of his library escaped the general ruin.” [63] We have been the more particular in laying this extract before our readers, because, though the house still exists, the public see little of it. All they behold, indeed, is the screen or advanced guard, which is no very fine sight, and only serves to narrow the way. Of the quadrangle inside the public know nothing; and thousands pass every day without suspecting that there is such a thing as a tree on the premises. The Percys had this house in consequence of a marriage with the daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, who was Northampton’s nephew. During the Earl’s possession it was called Suffolk House, and furnished an escape to a person of the name of Emerson from one of the mad pranks of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who was for fighting everybody. His lordship had had sundry fits of ague, which brought him at last to be “so lean and yellow, that scarce any man,” he says, “did know him.” “It happened,” he continues, “during this sickness, that I walked abroad one day towards Whitehall, where, meeting with one Emerson, who spoke very disgraceful words of Sir Robert Harley, being then my dear friend, my weakness could not hinder me to be sensible of my friend’s dishonour; shaking him, therefore, by a long beard he wore, I stept a little aside, and drew my sword in the street; Captain Thomas Scrivan, a friend of mine, not being far off on one side, and divers friends of his on the other side. All that saw me wondered how I could go, being so weak and consumed as I was, but much more that I would offer to fight; howsoever, Emerson, instead of drawing his sword, ran away into Suffolk House, and afterwards informed the Lords of the Council of what I had done; who, not long after sending for me, did not so much reprehend my taking part with my friend, as that I would adventure to fight, being in such a bad condition of health.” [64] The disgraceful words spoken by Emerson were very likely nothing at all, except to his lordship’s ultra-chivalrous fancy; but this is a curious scene to imagine at the entrance of the present quiet Northumberland House—Emerson slipping into the gate with horror in his looks, and the lean and yellow ghost of the knight-errant behind him, sword in hand. Mr Malcolm has spoken
of the apartments of Dr Percy. This was Dr Percy, Bishop of Dromore,
who gave an impulse to the spirit of the modern muse by his Reliques
of Ancient English Poetry. He was a kinsman of the Northumberland
family. We believe it was in Northumberland House that his friend
Goldsmith, stammering out a fine speech of thanks to a personage
in a splendid dress whom he took for the Duke, was informed, when
he had done, that it was his Grace’s “gentleman.” A little way up Catherine Street is Exeter Street, where Johnson first lodged when he came to town. His lodgings were at the house of Mr Morris, a stay-maker. He dined at the Pine-apple in New Street, “for eight-pence, with very good company.” Several of them, he told Boswell, had travelled. “They expected to meet every day; but did not know one another’s names.” The rest of his information is a curious and interesting specimen of his disposition. “It used,” said he, “to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank wine: but I had a cut of meat for sixpence, and bread for a penny, and gave the waiter a penny; so that I was quite as well served, nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing.” Johnson drank at this time no fermented liquors. Boswell supposes that he had gained a knowledge of the art of living in London from an Irish painter, whom he knew at Birmingham, and of whom he gave this account. “Thirty pounds a-year,” according to this economical philosopher, “was enough to enable a man to live there without being contemptible. He allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. He said a man might live in a garret at eighteen pence a week; few people would inquire where he lodged: and if they did, it was easy to say, ‘Sir, I am to be found at such a place.’ By spending three pence at a coffee-house, he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine for six-pence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper. On clean-shirt day he went abroad and paid visits.” [65] The Strand end of Catherine Street is mentioned in Gay’s Trivia for a notoriety which it now unfortunately shares with too many places to render it remarkable. His picture of one of the women he speaks of possesses a literal truth, the characteristic of the whole of this curious poem. “’Tis she who nightly strolls with sauntering pace; Gay contents himself
with a picture, and a warning. In our times, we have learnt to pity
the human beings, and to think what can be done to remedy the first
causes of the evil. The houses between Catherine Street and Burleigh Street stand upon ground formerly occupied by Wimbledon House, a mansion built by Sir Edward Cecil, whom Charles I. created Viscount Wimbledon. It was burnt down; and Stow says, that the day before, his lordship’s country house at Wimbledon was blown up. The late Lyceum was built about the year 1765, as an academy and exhibition-room, in anticipation of the royal one then contemplated. It did not succeed; and part of it was converted into a theatre for musical performances. It then became a place of exhibition for large panoramic pictures, among which we remember with pleasure the battle pieces of Robert Ker Porter (Seringapatam, Acre, etc.) A species of entertainment then took place in it, which has justly been called “useful and liberal,” presenting, on a regular stage, pictures or scenes of famous places, while a person read accounts of them from a desk. We remember the Ægyptiana, or description of Ægypt, and, if we mistake not, an attempt, not quite so well founded, to illustrate the scenes of Milton’s Allegro and Penseroso. Neither of the attempts met with success; but the former perhaps might be tried again with advantage, now that information and the thirst for it have so wonderfully increased. The panorama, however, may have realised all that can be done in this way. Visitors to those admirable contrivances may be almost said to become travellers; and a reader at hand might disturb them, like an impertinence. We recollect being so early one morning at a panorama, that we had the place to ourselves. The room was without a sound, and the scene Florence; and when we came out the noise and crowd of the streets had an effect on us, as if we had been suddenly transported out of an Italian solitude. The Lyceum has since been handsomely rebuilt as a new English Opera House, under the management of Mr Arnold, who has done much to cultivate a love of music in this country. Over the former theatre, we believe, was a room built by him for the members of the famous Beef-Steak Club, equally celebrated for loving their steaks and roasting one another. [66]
“Mr Normond Cony,” saith the historian, “exhibited a singular bed for two shillings and sixpence each person, the product of his own ingenuity; the curtains of which were woven in the most ingenious manner, with feathers of the greatest variety and beauty he could procure; the ground represented white damask, mixed with silver and ornaments of various descriptions, supporting vases of flowers and fruits. Each curtain had a purple border a foot in breadth, branched with flowers shaded with scarlet, the valence and bases the same. The bed was eighteen feet in height; and from the description must have been a superior effort of genius, equally original with the works of the South Sea Islanders, whose cloaks, mantles, and caps, grace the collection formed by Captain Cook, now preserved in the British Museum.” [67] This was a gentle exhibition enough. Sixty years ago, instead of the bed, was presented the right honourable body of Lord Baltimore, a personage who ran away with young ladies against their will. The body lay “in state,” previously to its interment at Epsom. Lord Baltimore was succeeded by the wild beasts, who kept possession in their narrow unhealthy cages till the death of the poor elephant in 1826, which conspiring with the new spirit of improvement to call final attention to this excresence in the Strand, it was adjudged to be rooted out. The death of this unfortunate animal, who seems to have had just reason enough to grow mad, had its proper effect, in exciting the public to guard against similar evils; nor is it likely that these intelligent and noble creatures, nor indeed any others, will undergo such a monstrous state of existence again. Passing one day by Exeter Change, we beheld a sight strange enough to witness in a great thoroughfare—a fine horse startled, and pawing the ground, at the roar of lions and tigers. It was at the time, we suppose, when the beasts were being fed.
1. Gay’s Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London, book ii. 2. Pennant, ut supra, p. 139. 3. Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii., p. 397. 4. Biographia Dramatica, from Oldys’s MS. Notes on Langbaine. 5. Censure Literaria, vol. i., p. 176. 6. State Poems, vol. ii., p. 143. 7. Boswell, vol. i., p. 383. 8. Boswell, vol. iii., p. 331. 9. Dugdale’s Antiquities of Westminster. Heraldic MS. in the Museum, quoted-in Londinium Redivivum (vol. ii., p. 282). Brydges’s Collins’s Peeraqe. Belsham’s Life of Lindsey. We have been thus minute in tracing the occupancies of this house, from the interest excited by some of the members connected with it. Pennant says, upon the authority of the Sydney Papers, that Leicester bequeathed it to his son-in-law, which appears probable, since the latter possessed it. Perhaps the herald was confused by the name of Robert, which belonged both to son and son-in-law. 10. Howell’s State Trials, vol. i., p. 1343. 11. Todd’s edit, of Spenser, vol. i., p. 141. 12. Godwin’s History of the Commonwealth, vol. i., p.
410. 13. Boswell, vol. iv., p. 276. 14. Trivia; or The Art of Walking the Streets of London, book iii. Of a similar, and more perplexing facetiousness was the trick of extracting wigs out of hackney coaches. “The Thieves,” says the Weekly Journal (March 30, 1717), “have got such a villanous way now of robbing gentlemen, that they cut holes through the backs of hackney coaches, and take away their wigs, or fine head-dresses of gentlewomen; so a gentleman was served last Sunday in Tooley Street, and another but last Tuesday in Fenchurch Street; wherefore this may serve as a caution to gentlemen and gentlewomen that ride singlc in the night-time, to sit en the fore-seat, which will prevent that way of robbing.”—Malcolm’s Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth century, second edit., vol. i., p. 104. 15. Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii. 16. Second Part of Henry IV., act 3, sc. 2. 17. Birch’s Negotiations, pp. 206, 207, quoted in the work above mentioned, p. 189. Whenever we quote from any authorities but the original, we beg the reader to bear in mind, first, that we always notice our having done so; and, secondly, that we make a point of comparing the originals with the report. Both Monmouth and Birch, for example, have been consulted in the present instance. 18. We allude to the celebrated saying of Gibbon respecting the Fairy Queen. 19. In his Letters on the English Nation. But we quote from memory. 20. We conclude so from our authorities in both instances. Mr Malcolm’s Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii., p. 398. 21. See his life in Chambers’s General Biographical Dictionary, vol. v., p. 280. 22. General Biographical Dictionary, 8vo., 1812, vol. vii. 23. Letters on the English Nation. 24. Life, in Chalmer’s English Poets, p. 26. 25. Spence’s Anecdotes, p. 376. 26. Idem, p. 46. 27. Memoirs of the Life, Writings, etc., of William Congreve, Esq., 1730, p. 11. Curll discreetly omits his name in the titlepage. [On reconsidering this interview (though we have no longer the book by us, and therefore speak from memory), we are doubtful whether the lady was not Mrs Bracegirdle, instead of the duchess]. 28. Lives of the Poets, etc., by Mr Cibber and others, 1753. 29. Pennant’s London, ut supra, p. 124. Swift’s Letters to Stella. The particulars of the case are taken from Howell’s State Trials, vol. xii., p. 947. 30. “Captain Baily, said to have accompanied Raleigh in his last expedition to Guiana, employed four hackney coaches, with drivers in liveries, to ply at the May-pole in the Strand, fixing his own rates, about the year 1634. Baily’s coaches seem to have been the first of what are now called hackney-coaches; a term at that time applied indiscriminately to all coaches let for hire.” The favourite Buckingham, about the year 1619, introduced the sedan. The post-chaise, invented in France, was introduced by Mr Tull, son of the well-known writer on husbandry. The stage first came in about the year 1775; and mail-coaches appeared in 1785.—See a note to the Tatler, as above, vol. iv., p. 415. 31. This was written in 1834. 32. The faults of the New Church are, that is is too small for the steeple; that it is divided into two stories, which make it still smaller; that the entablature on the north and south parts is too frequently interrupted; that pediments are “affectedly put over each projection;” in a word, that a little object is cut up into too many little parts, and rendered fantastic with embellishment. See the opinions of Gwynn, Ralph, and Malton, quoted in Brayley’s London and Middlesex, vol. iv., p. 199. 33. Life of James I., quoted in Pennant, p. 155. 34. L’Estrange’s Life of Charles I., quoted in D’Israeli’s Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles I.. vol. ii., p. 218. 35. L’Estrange’s Life of Charles I. 36. Steenie—a familiarisation of Stephen. The name was given
Buckingham by James I., in reference to the beauty of St. Stephen,
whose face, during his martyrdom, is described in the New Testament
as shining like that of an angel. 37. See the account of the Paradise of Glory, in vol. ii., p. 225. 38. Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq., 2nd edition, vol. i., p. 309. 39. Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq., 2nd edition, vol. i., p. 357. 40. Lives and Letters, as above. 41. See three Poems in his Genuine Remains—Chalmers’s British Poets, vol. viii., p. 187. 42. British Poets, vol. vii., p. 101. 43. Londinium Redivivum, vol. iv., p. 410. 44. Gentleman’s Magazine for 1793, p. 88. 45. Memoirs and Correspondence, as above, vol. i., p. 182. 46. Memoirs and Correspondence, as above, vol. ii., p. 348. 47. Ibid., vol. iii., p. 75. 48. Ibid., p. 185. 49. Memoirs and Correspondence, as above, vol. iv., p. 81. 50. Granger’s Biographical History of England, 1824, vol. v., p. 356. 51. Pennant, ut supra, p. 144. 52. Where he likens Jupiter’s house in the Milky Way to the palace of Augustus:— “Hic locus est, quem, si verbis audacia detur, Which Sandys, by a felicitous conceit in the taste of his age (and of Ovid too), has transferred to the palace of Charles the First, and rendered still more applicable to the Milky Way:— “This glorious roofe I would not doubt to call, 53. Pennant, p. 147. 54. It was a joke, probably invented, against a late festive alderman, that some lover of Terence, at a public dinner, having toasted two royal brothers, who were present, under the title of the Adelphl (the Greek word for “brothers”), the Alderman said, that as they were on the subject of streets, “he would beg leave to propose ‘Finsbury Square.’” 55. Boswell, vol. iv., p. 102. 56. Id., p. 106. 57. Boswell, vol. i., p. 225. 58. Near Holland House, Kensington. Addison died in that house. 59. “York Stairs,” says the author of the Critical Reviews of Public Buildings, quoted in Brayley’s London and Middlesex, “form unquestionably the most perfect piece of building that does honour to Inigo Jones: it is planned in so exquisite a taste, formed of such equal and harmonious parts, and adorned with such proper and elegant decorations, that nothing can be censured or added. It is at once happy in its situation beyond comparison, and fancied in a style exactly suited to that situation. The rock-work, or rustic, can never be better introduced than in buildings by the side of water; and, indeed, it is a great question whether it ought to have been made use of anywhere else. On the side next the river appear the arms of the Villiers family; and on the north front is inscribed their motto: Fidei Coticula Crux,—The Cross is the touch-stone of faith. On this side is a small terrace, planted with lime-trees; the whole supported by a rate raised upon the houses in the neighbouring streets; and being inclosed from the public, forms an agreeable promenade for the inhabitants.” 60. Diary, vol. i., p. 221. 61. Memoirs of John Evelyn, Esq. Second edit., vol.
ii., p. 364. 62. In 1596, Northampton writes thus to Lord Burghley (Essex’s great enemy), upon presenting to him a devotional composition. “The weight of your lordship s piercing judgment held me in so reverend an awe, as before I were encouraged by two or three of my friends, who had a taste, I durst not present this treatise to your view: but since their partiality hath made me thus bold, my own affection to sanctify this labour to yourself hath made me impudent.” Yet in the year succeeding, our authority observes, he has the following passage in a letter to Essex:—“Some friend of mine means this day, before night, to merit my devotion and uttermost gratitude by seeking to do good to you; the success whereof my prayers in the meantime shall recommend to that best gale of wind that may favour it. Your lordship, by your last purchase, hath almost enraged the dromedary that would have won the Queen of Sheba’s favour by bringing pearls. If you could once be as fortunate in dragging old Leviathan (Burghley) and his cub, tortuosum colubrum (Sir Robert Cecil), as the prophet termeth them, out of this den of mischievous device, the better part of the world would prefer your virtue to that of Hercules.” See Memoirs of the Peers of James I., p. 240. Such “wise men” are the worst of fools. And here he was acting, as such men are apt to do, like one of the commonest fools, in saying such contradictory things under his own hand. 63. Vol iv., p. 308. 64. Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in the Autobiography, p. 110. 65. Boswell, vol. i., p. 81. 66. The author of a History of the Clubs of London (vol. ii. p. 3), says that this is not the Beef-Steak Club of which Eastcourt, the comedian, was steward, and Mrs Woffington president. He derives its origin from an accidental dinner taken by Lord Peterborough in the scenic room of Rich the Harlequin, over Covent Garden Theatre. The original gridiron, on which Rich broiled the Peer’s beef-steak, is still preserved, as the palladium of the Club; and the members have it engraved on their buttons. It has generally, we believe, admitted the leading men of the day, of whatever description, provided they can joke and bear joking, The author just mentioned says, that Lord Sandwich’s and Wilkie’s days are generally quoted as the golden period of the society.
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