Old and New London Part 13

"A stag-beetle, whose horns, worn in a ring, are good against the cramp.

"A mountain cabbage--one reported 300 feet high."

The author of "Hudibras," who died in 1680, attacked the Royal Society for experiments that seemed to him futile and frivolous, in a severe and bitter poem, ent.i.tled, "The Elephant in the Moon," the elephant proving to be a mouse inside a philosopher's telescope. The poem expresses the current opinion of the society, on which King Charles II. is once said to have played a joke.

In 1726-27 Swift, too, had his bitter jeer at the society. In Laputa, he thus describes the experimental philosophers:--

"The first man I saw," he says, "was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, s.h.i.+rt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cuc.u.mbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers. He told me he did not doubt that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with suns.h.i.+ne at a reasonable rate; but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me 'to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cuc.u.mbers.' I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them. I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder, who likewise showed me a treatise he had written concerning the 'Malleability of Fire,' which he intended to publish.

"There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a new method of building houses, by beginning at the roof and working downward to the foundation; which he justified to me by the like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider. I went into another room, where the walls and ceilings were all hung round with cobwebs, except a narrow pa.s.sage for the architect to go in and out. At my entrance, he called aloud to me 'not to disturb his webs.' He lamented 'the fatal mistake the world had been so long in, of using silk-worms, while we had such plenty of domestic insects who infinitely excelled the former, because they understood how to weave as well as spin.' And he proposed, farther, 'that, by employing spiders, the charge of dying silks would be wholly saved;' whereof I was fully convinced when he showed me a vast number of flies, most beautifully coloured, wherewith he fed his spiders, a.s.suring us, 'that the webs would take a tincture from them;' and, as he had them of all hues, he hoped to fit everybody's fancy, as soon as he could find proper food for the flies, of certain gums, oils, and other glutinous matter, to give a strength and consistence to the threads."

Mr. Grosley, who, in 1770, at Lausanne, published a book on London, has drawn a curious picture of the society at that date. "The Royal Society," he says, "combines within itself the purposes of the Parisian Academy of Sciences and that of Inscriptions; it cultivates, in fact, not only the higher branches of science, but literature also. Every one, whatever his position, and whether English or foreign, who has made observations which appear to the society worthy of its attention, is allowed to submit them to it either by word of mouth or in writing. I once saw a joiner, in his working clothes, announce to the society a means he had discovered of explaining the causes of tides. He spoke a long time, evidently not knowing what he was talking about; but he was listened to with the greatest attention, thanked for his confidence in the value of the society's opinion, requested to put his ideas into writing, and conducted to the door by one of the princ.i.p.al members.

"The place in which the society holds its meetings is neither large nor handsome. It is a long, low, narrow room, only furnished with a table (covered with green cloth), some morocco chairs, and some wooden benches, which rise above each other along the room. The table, placed in front of the fire-place at the bottom of the room, is occupied by the president (who sits with his back to the fire) and the secretaries. On this table is placed a large silver-gilt mace, similar to the one in use in the House of Commons, and which, as is the case with the latter, is laid at the foot of the table when the society is in committee. The president is preceded on his entrance and departure by the beadle of the society, bearing this mace. He has beside him, on his table, a little wooden mallet for the purpose of imposing silence when occasion arises, but this is very seldom the case. With the exception of the secretaries and the president, everyone takes his place hap-hazard, at the same time taking great pains to avoid causing any confusion or noise. The society may be said to consist, as a body corporate, of a committee of about twenty persons, chosen from those of its a.s.sociates who have the fuller opportunities of devoting themselves to their favourite studies. The president and the secretaries are _ex-officio_ members of the committee, which is renewed every year--an arrangement which is so much the more necessary that, in 1765, the society numbered 400 British members, of whom more than forty were peers of the realm, five of the latter being most a.s.siduous members of the committee.

"The foreign honorary members, who number about 150, comprise within their number all the most famous learned men of Europe, and amongst them we find the names of D'Alembert, Bernouilli, Bonnet, Buffon, Euler, Jussieu, Linne, Voltaire, &c.; together with those, in simple alphabetical order, of the Dukes of Braganza, &c., and the chief Ministers of many European sovereigns."

During the dispute about lightning conductors (after St. Bride's Church was struck in 1764), in the year 1772, George III. (says Mr. Weld, in his "History of the Royal Society") is stated to have taken the side of Wilson--not on scientific grounds, but from political motives; he even had blunt conductors fixed on his palace, and actually endeavoured to make the Royal Society rescind their resolution in favour of pointed conductors. The king, it is declared, had an interview with Sir John Pringle, during which his Majesty earnestly entreated him to use his influence in supporting Mr. Wilson. The reply of the president was highly honourable to himself and the society whom he represented. It was to the effect that duty as well as inclination would always induce him to execute his Majesty's wishes to the utmost of his power; "But, sire,"

said he, "I cannot reverse the laws and operations of Nature." It is stated that when Sir John regretted his inability to alter the laws of Nature, the king replied, "Perhaps, Sir John, you had better resign." It was shortly after this occurrence that a friend of Dr. Franklin's wrote this epigram:--

"While you, great George, for knowledge hunt, And sharp conductors change for blunt, The nation's out of joint; Franklin a wiser course pursues, And all your thunder useless views, By keeping to the point."

A strange scene in the Royal Society in 1710 (Queen Anne) deserves record. It ended in the expulsion from the council of that irascible Dr.

Woodward who once fought a duel with Dr. Mead inside the gate of Gresham College. "The sense," says Mr. Ward, in his "Memoirs," "entertained by the society of Sir Hans Sloane's services and virtues was evinced by the manner in which they resented an insult offered him by Dr. Woodward, who, as the reader is aware, was expelled the council. Sir Hans was reading a paper of his own composition, when Woodward made some grossly insulting remarks. Dr. Sloane complained, and moreover stated that Dr.

Woodward had often affronted him by making grimaces at him; upon which Dr. Arbuthnot rose and begged to be 'informed what distortion of a man's face const.i.tuted a grimace.' Sir Isaac Newton was in the chair when the question of expulsion was agitated, and when it was pleaded in Woodward's favour that 'he was a good natural philosopher,' Sir Isaac remarked that in order to belong to that society a man ought to be a good moral philosopher as well as a natural one."

The Scottish Society held its meetings in Crane Court. "Elizabeth," says Mr. Timbs, "kept down the number of Scotsmen in London to the astonis.h.i.+ngly small one of fifty-eight; but with James I. came such a host of traders and craftsmen, many of whom failing to obtain employment, gave rise, as early as 1613, to the inst.i.tution of the 'Scottish Box,' a sort of friendly society's treasury, when there were no banks to take charge of money. In 1638 the company, then only twenty, met in Lamb's Conduit Street. In this year upwards of 300 poor Scotsmen, swept off by the great plague of 1665-66, were buried at the expense of the 'box,' while numbers more were nourished during their sickness, without subjecting the parishes in which they resided to the smallest expense.

"In the year 1665 the 'box' was exalted into the character of a corporation by a royal charter, the expenses attendant on which were disbursed by gentlemen who, when they met at the 'Cross Keys,' in Covent Garden, found their receipts to be 116 8s. 5d. The character of the times is seen in one of their regulations, which imposed a fine of 2s.

6d. for every oath used in the course of their quarterly business.

"Presents now flocked in. One of the corporation gave a silver cup; another, an ivory mallet or hammer for the chairman; and among the contributors we find Gilbert Burnet, afterwards bishop, giving 1 half-yearly. In no very Scotsman-like spirit the governors distributed each quarter-day all that had been collected during the preceding interval. But in 1775 a permanent fund was established. The hospital now distributes about 2,200 a year, chiefly in 10 pensions to old people; and the princely bequest of 76,495 by Mr. W. Kinloch, who had realised a fortune in India, allows of 1,800 being given in pensions of 4 to disabled soldiers and sailors.

"All this is highly honourable to those connected, by birth or otherwise, with Scotland. The monthly meetings of the society are preceded by divine service in the chapel, which is in the rear of the house in Crane Court. Twice a year is held a festival, at which large sums are collected. On St. Andrew's Day, 1863, Viscount Palmerston presided, with the brilliant result of the addition of 1,200 to the hospital fund."

Appended to the account of the society already quoted we find the following remarkable "note by an Englishman":--

"It is not one of the least curious particulars in the history of the Scottish Hospital that it substantiates by doc.u.mentary evidence the fact that Scotsmen who have gone to England occasionally find their way back to their own country. It appears from the books of the corporation that in the year ending 30th November, 1850, the sum of 30 16s. 6d. was spent in pa.s.sages from London to Leith; and there is actually a corresponding society in Edinburgh to receive the _revenants_ and pa.s.s them on to their respective districts."

In Crane Court, says Mr. Timbs, lived Dryden Leach, the printer, who, in 1763, was arrested on a general warrant upon suspicion of having printed Wilkes's _North Briton_, No 45. Leach was taken out of his bed in the night, his papers were seized, and even his journeymen and servants were apprehended, the only foundation for the arrest being a hearsay that Wilkes had been seen going into Leach's house. Wilkes had been sent to the Tower for the No. 45. After much litigation, he obtained a verdict of 4,000, and Leach 300, damages from three of the king's messengers, who had executed the illegal warrant. Kearsley, the bookseller, of Fleet Street (whom we recollect by his tax-tables), had been taken up for publis.h.i.+ng No. 45, when also at Kearsley's were seized the letters of Wilkes, which seemed to fix upon him the writing of the obscene and blasphemous "Essay on Woman," and of which he was convicted in the Court of King's Bench and expelled the House of Commons. The author of this "indecent patchwork" was not Wilkes (says Walpole), but Thomas Potter, the wild son of the learned Archbishop of Canterbury, who had tried to fix the authors.h.i.+p on the learned and arrogant Warburton--a piece of matchless impudence worthy of Wilkes himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ROYAL SOCIETY'S HOUSE IN CRANE COURT (_see page 104_).]

Red Lion Court (No. 169), though an unlikely spot, has been, of all the side binns of Fleet Street, one of the most specially favoured by Minerva. Here Valpy published that interminable series of Latin and Greek authors, which he called the "Delphin Cla.s.sics," which Lamb's eccentric friend, George Dyer, of Clifford's Inn, laboriously edited, and which opened the eyes of the subscribers very wide indeed as to the singular richness of ancient literature. At the press of an eminent printer in this court, that useful and perennial serial the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (started in 1731) was partly printed from 1779 to 1781, and entirely printed from 1792 to 1820.

Johnson's Court, Fleet Street (a narrow court on the north side of Fleet Street, the fourth from Fetter Lane, eastward), was not named from Dr.

Johnson, although inhabited by him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Theodore E. Hook (_See page 110_).]

Dr. Johnson was living at Johnson's Court in 1765, after he left No. 1, Inner Temple Lane, and before he removed to Bolt Court. At Johnson's Court he made the acquaintance of Murphey, and he worked at his edition of "Shakespeare." He saw much of Reynolds and Burke. On the accession of George III. a pension of 300 a year had been bestowed on him, and from that time he became comparatively an affluent man. In 1763, Boswell had become acquainted with Dr. Johnson, and from that period his wonderful conversations are recorded. The indefatigable biographer describes, in 1763, being taken by Mr. Levett to see Dr. Johnson's library, which was contained in his garret over his Temple chambers, where the son of the well-known Lintot used to have his warehouse. The floor was strewn with ma.n.u.script leaves; and there was an apparatus for chemical experiments, of which Johnson was all his life very fond. Johnson often hid himself in this garret for study, but never told his servant, as the Doctor would never allow him to say he was not at home when he was.

"He"(Johnson), says Hawkins, "removed from the Temple into a house in Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, and invited thither his friend Mrs.

Williams. An upper room, which had the advantage of a good light and free air, he fitted up for a study and furnished with books, chosen with so little regard to editions or their external appearances as showed they were intended for use, and that he disdained the ostentation of learning."

"I returned to London," says Boswell, "in February, 1766, and found Dr.

Johnson in a good house in Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, in which he had accommodated Mrs. Williams with an apartment on the ground-floor, while Mr. Levett occupied his post in the garret. His faithful Francis was still attending upon him. He received me with much kindness. The fragments of our first conversation, which I have preserved, are these:--I told him that Voltaire, in a conversation with me, had distinguished Pope and Dryden, thus: 'Pope drives a handsome chariot, with a couple of neat, trim nags; Dryden, a coach and six stately horses.' Johnson: 'Why, sir, the truth is, they both drive coaches and six, but Dryden's horses are either galloping or stumbling; Pope's go at a steady, even trot.' He said of Goldsmith's 'Traveller,' which had been published in my absence, 'There's not been so fine a poem since Pope's time.' Dr. Johnson at the same time favoured me by marking the lines which he furnished to Goldsmith's 'Deserted Village,' which are only the last four:--

'That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away; While self-dependent power can time defy, As rocks resist the billows and the sky.'

At night I supped with him at the 'Mitre' tavern, that we might renew our social intimacy at the original place of meeting. But there was now considerable difference in his way of living. Having had an illness, in which he was advised to leave off wine, he had, from that period, continued to abstain from it, and drank only water or lemonade."

"Mr. Beauclerk and I," says Boswell, in another place, "called on him in the morning. As we walked up Johnson's Court, I said, 'I have a veneration for this court,' and was glad to find that Beauclerk had the same reverential enthusiasm." The Doctor's removal Boswell thus duly chronicles:--"Having arrived," he says, "in London late on Friday, the 15th of March, 1776, I hastened next morning to wait on Dr. Johnson, at his house, but found he was removed from Johnson's Court, No. 7, to Bolt Court, No. 8, still keeping to his favourite Fleet Street. My reflection at the time, upon this change, as marked in my journal, is as follows: 'I felt a foolish regret that he had left a court which bore his name; but it was not foolish to be affected with some tenderness of regard for a place in which I had seen him a great deal, from whence I had often issued a better and a happier man than when I went in; and which had often appeared to my imagination, while I trod its pavement in the solemn darkness of the night, to be sacred to wisdom and piety.'"

Johnson was living at Johnson's Court when he was introduced to George III., an interview in which he conducted himself, considering he was an ingrained Jacobite, with great dignity, self-respect, and good sense.

That clever, but most shameless and scurrilous, paper, _John Bull_, was started in Johnson's Court, at the close of 1820. Its specific and real object was to slander unfortunate Queen Caroline and to torment, stigmatise, and blacken "the Brandenburg House party," as her honest sympathisers were called. Theodore Hook was chosen editor, because he knew society, was quick, witty, satirical, and thoroughly unscrupulous.

For his "splendid abuse"--as his biographer, the unreverend Mr. Barham, calls it--he received the full pay of a greedy hireling. Tom Moore and the Whigs now met with a terrible adversary. Hook did not hew or stab, like Churchill and the old rough lampooners of earlier days, but he filled crackers with wild fire, or laughingly stuck the enemies of George IV. over with pins. Hook had only a year before returned from the Treasurys.h.i.+p of the Mauritius, charged with a defalcation of 15,000--the result of the grossest and most culpable neglect. Hungry for money, as he had ever been, he was eager to show his zeal for the master who had hired his pen. Hook and Daniel Terry, the comedian, joined to start the new satirical paper; but Miller, a publisher in the Burlington Arcade, was naturally afraid of libel, and refused to have anything to do with the new venture. With Miller, as Hook said in his clever, punning way, all argument in favour of it proved Newgate-ory.

Hook at first wanted to start a magazine upon the model of _Blackwood_, but the final decision was for a weekly newspaper, to be called _John Bull_, a t.i.tle already discussed for a previous scheme by Hook and Elliston. The first number appeared on Sat.u.r.day, December 16, 1820, in the publis.h.i.+ng office, No. 11, Johnson's Court. The modest projectors only printed seven hundred and fifty copies of the first number, but the sale proved considerable. By the sixth week the sale had reached ten thousand weekly. The first five numbers were reprinted, and the first two actually stereotyped.

Hook's favourite axiom--worthy of such a satirist--was "that there was always a concealed wound in every family, and the point was to strike exactly at the source of pain." Hook's clerical elder brother, Dr. James Hook, the author of "Pen Owen" and other novels, and afterwards Dean of Worcester, a.s.sisted him; but Terry was too busy in what Sir Walter Scott, his great friend and sleeping partner, used to call "_Terry_fying the novelists by not very brilliant adaptations of their works." Dr.

Maginn, summoned from Cork to edit a newspaper for Hook (who had bought up two dying newspapers for the small expenditure of three hundred guineas), wrote only one article for the _Bull_. Mr. Haynes Bayley contributed some of his graceful verses, and Ingoldsby (Barham) some of his rather ribald fun. The anonymous editor of _John Bull_ became for a time as much talked about as Junius in earlier times. By many witty James Smith was suspected, but his fun had not malignity enough for the Tory purposes of those bitter days. Latterly Hook let Alderman Wood alone, and set all his staff on Hume, the great economist, and the Hon.

Henry Grey Bennett.

Several prosecutions followed, says Mr. Barham, that for libel on the Queen among the rest; but the grand attempt on the part of the Whigs to crush the paper was not made till the 6th of May, 1821. A short and insignificant paragraph, containing some observations upon the Hon.

Henry Grey Bennett, a brother of Lord Tankerville's, was selected for attack, as involving a breach of privilege; in consequence of which the printer, Mr. H.F. Cooper, the editor, and Mr. Shackell were ordered to attend at the bar of the House of Commons. A long debate ensued, during which Ministers made as fair a stand as the nature of the case would admit in behalf of their guerrilla allies, but which terminated at length in the committal of Cooper to Newgate, where he was detained from the 11th of May till the 11th of July, when Parliament was prorogued.

Meanwhile the most strenuous exertions were made to detect the real delinquents--for, of course, honourable gentlemen were not to be imposed upon by the unfortunate "men of straw" who had fallen into their clutches, and who, by the way, suffered for an offence of which their judges and accusers openly proclaimed them to be not only innocent, but incapable. The terror of imprisonment and the various arts of cross-examination proving insufficient to elicit the truth, recourse was had to a simpler and more conciliatory mode of treatment--bribery. The storm had failed to force off the editorial cloak--the golden beams were brought to bear upon it. We have it for certain that an offer was made to a member of the establishment to stay all impending proceedings, and, further, to pay down a sum of 500 on the names of the actual writers being given up. It was rejected with disdain, while such were the precautions taken that it was impossible to fix Hook, though suspicion began to be awakened, with any share in the concern. In order, also, to cross the scent already hit off, and announced by sundry deep-mouthed pursuers, the following "Reply"--framed upon the principle, we presume, that in literature, as in love, everything is fair--was thrown out in an early number:--

"MR. THEODORE HOOK.

"The conceit of some people is amazing, and it has not been unfrequently remarked that conceit is in abundance where talent is most scarce. Our readers will see that we have received a letter from Mr. Hook, disowning and disavowing all connection with this paper. Partly out of good nature, and partly from an anxiety to show the gentleman how little desirous we are to be a.s.sociated with him, we have made a declaration which will doubtless be quite satisfactory to his morbid sensibility and affected squeamishness. We are free to confess that two things surprise us in this business; the first, that anything which we have thought worth giving to the public should have been mistaken for Mr. Hook's; and, secondly that _such a person_ as Mr. Hook should think himself disgraced by a connection with _John Bull_."

For sheer impudence this, perhaps, may be admitted to "defy compet.i.tion"; but in point of tact and delicacy of finish it falls infinitely short of a subsequent notice, a perfect gem of its cla.s.s, added by way of clenching the denial:--

"We have received Mr. Theodore Hook's second letter. We are ready to confess that we may have appeared to treat him too unceremoniously, but we will put it to his own feelings whether the terms of his denial were not, in some degree, calculated to produce a little asperity on our part. We shall never be ashamed, however, to do justice, and we readily declare that we meant no kind of imputation on Mr. Hook's personal character."

The ruse answered for awhile, and the paper went on with unabated audacity.

The death of the Queen, in the summer of 1821, produced a decided alteration in the tone and temper of the paper. In point of fact its occupation was now gone. The main, if not the sole, object of its establishment had been brought about by other and unforeseen events. The combination it had laboured so energetically to thwart was now dissolved by a higher and resistless agency. Still, it is not to be supposed that a machine which brought in a profit of something above 4,000 per annum, half of which fell to the share of Hook, was to be lightly thrown up, simply because its original purpose was attained. The dissolution of the "League" did not exist then as a precedent. The Queen was no longer to be feared; but there were Whigs and Radicals enough to be held in check, and, above all, there was a handsome income to be realised.

"Latterly Hook's desultory nature made him wander from the _Bull_, which might have furnished the thoughtless and heartless man of pleasure with an income for life. The paper naturally lost sap and vigour, at once declined in sale, and sank into a mere respectable club-house and party organ." "Mr. Hook," says Barham, "received to the day of his death a fixed salary, but the proprietors.h.i.+p had long since pa.s.sed into other hands."

CHAPTER X.