Old and New London Part 4

In the reign of Queen Anne those pests of the London streets, the "Mohocks," seem to have infested Fleet Street. These drunken desperadoes--the predecessors of the roysterers who, in the times of the Regency, "boxed the Charlies," broke windows, and stole knockers--used to find a cruel pleasure in surrounding a quiet homeward-bound citizen and p.r.i.c.king him with their swords. Addison makes worthy Sir Roger de Coverley as much afraid of these night-birds as Swift himself; and the old baronet congratulates himself on escaping from the clutches of "the emperor and his black men," who had followed him half-way down Fleet Street. He, however, boasts that he threw them out at the end of Norfolk Street, where he doubled the corner, and scuttled safely into his quiet lodgings.

From Elizabethan times downwards, Fleet Street was a favourite haunt of showmen. Concerning these popular exhibitions Mr. n.o.ble has, with great industry, collected the following curious enumeration:--

"Ben Jonson," says our trusty authority, "in _Every Man in his Humour_, speaks of 'a new motion of the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale, at Fleet Bridge.' In 1611 'the Fleet Street mandrakes' were to be seen for a penny; and years later the giants of St. Dunstan's clock caused the street to be blocked up, and people to lose their time, their temper, and their money. During Queen Anne's reign, however, the wonders of Fleet Street were at their height. In 1702 a model of Amsterdam, thirty feet long by twenty feet wide, which had taken twelve years in making, was exhibited in Bell Yard; a child, fourteen years old, without thighs or legs, and eighteen inches high, was to be seen 'at the "Eagle and Child," a grocer's shop, near Shoe Lane;' a great Lincolns.h.i.+re ox, nineteen hands high, four yards long, as lately shown at Cambridge, was on view 'at the "White Horse," where the great elephant was seen;' and 'between the "Queen's Head" and "Crooked Billet," near Fleet Bridge,'

were exhibited daily 'two strange, wonderful, and remarkable monstrous creatures--an old she-dromedary, seven feet high and ten feet long, lately arrived from Tartary, and her young one; being the greatest rarity and novelty that ever was seen in the three kingdomes before.' In 1710, at the 'Duke of Marlborough's Head,' in Fleet Street (by Shoe Lane), was exhibited the 'moving picture' mentioned in the _Tatler_; and here, in 1711, 'the great posture-master of Europe,' eclipsing the deceased Clarke and Higgins, greatly startled sight-seeing London. 'He extends his body into all deformed shapes; makes his hip and shoulder-bones meet together; lays his head upon the ground, and turns his body round twice or thrice, without stirring his face from the spot; stands upon one leg, and extends the other in a perpendicular line half a yard above his head; and extends his body from a table with his head a foot below his heels, having nothing to balance his body but his feet; with several other postures too tedious to mention.'

"And here, in 1718, De Hightrehight, the fire-eater, ate burning coals, swallowed flaming brimstone, and sucked a red-hot poker, five times a day!

"What will my billiard-loving friends say to the St. Dunstan's Inquest of the year 1720? 'Item, we present Thomas Bruce, for suffering a gaming-table (called a billiard-table, where people commonly frequent and game) to be kept in his house.' A score of years later, at the end of Wine Office Court, was exhibited an automaton clock, with three figures or statues, which at the word of command poured out red or white wine, represented a grocer shutting up his shop and a blackamoor who struck upon a bell the number of times asked. Giants and dwarfs were special features in Fleet Street. At the 'Rummer,' in Three Kings'

Court, was to be seen an Ess.e.x woman, named Gordon, not nineteen years old, though seven feet high, who died in 1737. At the 'Blew Boar and Green Tree' was on view an Italian giantess, above seven feet, weighing 425 lbs., who had been seen by ten reigning sovereigns. In 1768 died, in s.h.i.+re Lane, Edward Bamford, another giant, seven feet four inches in height, who was buried in St. Dunstan's, though 200 was offered for his body for dissection. At the 'Globe,' in 1717, was shown Matthew Buckinger, a German dwarf, born in 1674, without hands, legs, feet, or thighs, twenty-nine inches high; yet can write, thread a needle, shuffle a pack of cards, play skittles, &c. A facsimile of his writing is among the Harleian MSS. And in 1712 appeared the Black Prince and his wife, each three feet high; and a Turkey horse, two feet odd high and twelve years old, in a box. Modern times have seen giants and dwarfs, but have they really equalled these? In 1822 the exhibition of a mermaid here was put a stop to by the Lord Chamberlain."

In old times Fleet Street was rendered picturesque, not only by its many gable-ended houses adorned with quaint carvings and plaster stamped in patterns, but also by the countless signs, gay with gilding and painted with strange devices, which hung above the shop-fronts. Heraldry exhausted all its stores to furnish emblems for different trades. Lions blue and red, falcons, and dragons of all colours, alternated with heads of John the Baptist, flying pigs, and hogs in armour. On a windy day these huge ma.s.ses of painted timber creaked and waved overhead, to the terror of nervous pedestrians, nor were accidents by any means rare. On the 2nd of December, 1718 (George I.), a signboard opposite Bride Lane, Fleet Street, having loosened the brickwork by its weight and movement, suddenly gave way, fell, and brought the house down with it, killing four persons, one of whom was the queen's jeweller. It was not, however, till 1761 (George III.) that these dangerous signboards were ordered to be placed flat against the walls of the houses.

When Dr. Johnson said, "Come and let us take a walk down Fleet Street,"

he proposed a no very easy task. The streets in his early days, in London, had no side-pavements, and were roughly paved, with detestable gutters running down the centre. From these gutters the jumbling coaches of those days liberally scattered the mud on the unoffending pedestrians who happened to be crossing at the time. The sedan-chairs, too, were awkward impediments, and choleric people were disposed to fight for the wall. In 1766, when Lord Eldon came to London as a schoolboy, and put up at that humble hostelry the "White Horse," in Fetter Lane, he describes coming home from Drury Lane with his brother in a sedan.

Turning out of Fleet Street into Fetter Lane, some rough fellows pushed against the chair at the corner and upset it, in their eagerness to pa.s.s first. Dr. Johnson's curious nervous habit of touching every street-post he pa.s.sed was cured in 1766, by the laying down of side-pavements. On that occasion it is said two English paviours in Fleet Street bet that they would pave more in a day than four Scotchmen could. By three o'clock the Englishmen had got so much ahead that they went into a public-house for refreshment, and, afterwards returning to their work, won the wager.

In the Wilkes' riot of 1763, the mob burnt a large jack-boot in the centre of Fleet Street, in ridicule of Lord Bute; but a more serious affray took place in this street in 1769, when the noisy Wilkites closed the Bar, to stop a procession of 600 loyal citizens _en route_ to St.

James's to present an address denouncing all attempts to spread sedition and uproot the const.i.tution. The carriages were pelted with stones, and the City marshal, who tried to open the gates, was bedaubed with mud.

Mr. Boehm and other loyalists took shelter in "Nando's Coffee House."

About 150 of the frightened citizens, pa.s.sing up Chancery Lane, got to the palace by a devious way, a hea.r.s.e with two white horses and two black following them to St. James's Palace. Even there the Riot Act had to be read and the Guards sent for. When Mr. Boehm fled into "Nando's,"

in his alarm, he sent home his carriage containing the address. The mob searched the vehicle, but could not find the paper, upon which Mr.

Boehm hastened to the Court, and arrived just in time with the important doc.u.ment.

The treason trials of 1794 brought more noise and trouble to Fleet Street. Hardy, the secretary to the London Corresponding Society, was a shoemaker at No. 161; and during the trial of this approver of the French Revolution, Mr. John Scott (afterwards Lord Eldon) was in great danger from a Fleet Street crowd. "The mob," he says, "kept thickening round me till I came to Fleet Street, one of the worst parts that I had to pa.s.s through, and the cries began to be rather threatening. 'Down with him!' 'Now is the time, lads; do for him!' and various others, horrible enough; but I stood up, and spoke as loud as I could: 'You may do for me, if you like; but, remember, there will be another Attorney-General before eight o'clock to-morrow morning, and the king will not allow the trials to be stopped.' Upon this one man shouted out, 'Say you so? you are right to tell us. Let us give him three cheers, my lads!' So they actually cheered me, and I got safe to my own door."

There was great consternation in Fleet Street in November, 1820, when Queen Caroline, attended by 700 persons on horseback, pa.s.sed publicly through it to return thanks at St. Paul's. Many alarmed people barricaded their doors and windows. Still greater was the alarm in August, 1821, when the queen's funeral procession went by, after the deplorable fight with the Horse Guards at c.u.mberland Gate, when two of the rioters were killed.

With this rapid sketch of a few of the events in the history of Fleet Street, we begin our patient peregrination from house to house.

CHAPTER IV.

FLEET STREET (_continued_).

Dr. Johnson in Ambuscade at Temple Bar--The First Child--Dryden and Black Will--Rupert's Jewels--Telson's Bank--The Apollo Club at the "Devil"--"Old Sir Simon the King"--"Mull Sack"--Dr. Johnson's Supper to Mrs. Lennox--Will Waterproof at the "c.o.c.k"--The Duel at "d.i.c.k's Coffee House"--Lintot's Shop--Pope and Warburton--Lamb and the _Albion_--The Palace of Cardinal Wolsey--Mrs. Salmon's Waxwork--Isaak Walton--Praed's Bank--Murray and Byron--St.

Dunstan's--Fleet Street Printers--h.o.a.re's Bank and the "Golden Bottle"--The Real and Spurious "Mitre"--Hone's Trial--Cobbett's Shop--"Peele's Coffee House."

There is a delightful pa.s.sage in an almost unknown essay by Dr. Johnson that connects him indissolubly with the neighbourhood of Temple Bar. The essay, written in 1756 for the _Universal Visitor_, is ent.i.tled "A Project for the Employment of Authors," and is full of humour, which, indeed, those who knew him best considered the chief feature of Johnson's genius. We rather pride ourselves on the discovery of this pleasant bit of autobiography:--"It is my practice," says Johnson, "when I am in want of amus.e.m.e.nt, to place myself for an hour at Temple Bar, or any other narrow pa.s.s much frequented, and examine one by one the looks of the pa.s.sengers, and I have commonly found that between the hours of eleven and four every sixth man is an author. They are seldom to be seen very early in the morning or late in the evening, but about dinner-time they are all in motion, and have one uniform eagerness in their faces, which gives little opportunity of discerning their hopes or fears, their pleasures or their pains. But in the afternoon, when they have all dined, or composed themselves to pa.s.s the day without a dinner, their pa.s.sions have full play, and I can perceive one man wondering at the stupidity of the public, by which his new book has been totally neglected; another cursing the French, who fright away literary curiosity by their threat of an invasion; another swearing at his bookseller, who will advance no money without copy; another perusing as he walks his publisher's bill; another murmuring at an unanswerable criticism; another determining to write no more to a generation of barbarians; and another wis.h.i.+ng to try once again whether he cannot awaken the drowsy world to a sense of his merit." This extract seems to us to form an admirable companion picture to that in which we have already shown Goldsmith bantering his brother Jacobite, Johnson, as they looked up together at the grim heads on Temple Bar.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. t.i.tUS OATES.]

That quiet grave house (No. 1), that seems to demurely huddle close to Temple Bar, as if for protection, is the oldest banking-house in London except one. For two centuries gold has been shovelled about in those dark rooms, and reams of bank-notes have been shuffled over by practised thumbs. Private banks originated in the stormy days before the Civil War, when wealthy citizens, afraid of what might happen, entrusted their money to their goldsmiths to take care of till the troubles had blown over. In the reign of Charles I., Francis Child, an industrious apprentice of the old school, married the daughter of his master, William Wheeler, a goldsmith, who lived one door west of Temple Bar, and in due time succeeded to his estate and business. In the first London Directory (1677), among the fifty-eight goldsmiths, thirty-eight of whom lived in Lombard Street, "Blanchard & Child," at the "Marygold," Fleet Street, figure conspicuously as "keeping running cashes." The original Marygold (sometimes mistaken for a rising sun), with the motto, "Ainsi mon ame," gilt upon a green ground, elegantly designed in the French manner, is still to be seen in the front office, and a marigold in full bloom still blossoms on the bank cheques. In the year 1678 it was at Mr.

Blanchard's, the goldsmith's, next door to Temple Bar, that Dryden the poet, bruised and angry, deposited 50 as a reward for any one who would discover the bullies of Lord Rochester who had beaten him in Rose Alley for some scurrilous verses really written by the Earl of Dorset. The advertis.e.m.e.nt promises, if the discoverer be himself one of the actors, he shall still have the 50, without letting his name be known or receiving the least trouble by any prosecution. Black Will's cudgel was, after all, a clumsy way of making a repartee. Late in Charles II.'s reign Alderman Backwell entered the wealthy firm; but he was ruined by the iniquitous and arbitrary closing of the Exchequer in 1672, when the needy and unprincipled king pocketed at one swoop more than a million and a half of money, which he soon squandered on his shameless mistresses and unworthy favourites. In that quaint room over Temple Bar the firm still preserve the dusty books of the unfortunate alderman, who fled to Holland. There, on the sallow leaves over which the poor alderman once groaned, you can read the items of our sale of Dunkirk to the French, the dishonourable surrender of which drove the nation almost to madness, and hastened the downfall of Lord Clarendon, who was supposed to have built a magnificent house (on the site of Albemarle Street, Piccadilly) with some of the very money. Charles II. himself banked here, and drew his thousands with all the careless nonchalance of his nature. Nell Gwynne, Pepys, of the "Diary," and Prince Rupert also had accounts at Child's, and some of these ledgers are still h.o.a.rded over Temple Bar in that Venetian-looking room, approached by strange prison-like pa.s.sages, for which chamber Messrs. Child pay something less than 50 a year.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TEMPLE BAR AND THE "DEVIL TAVERN" (_see page 38_).]

When Prince Rupert died at his house in the Barbican, the valuable jewels of the old cavalry soldier, valued at 20,000, were disposed of in a lottery, managed by Mr. Francis Child, the goldsmith; the king himself, who took a half-business-like, half-boyish interest in the matter, counting the tickets among all the lords and ladies at Whitehall.

In North's "Life of Lord Keeper Guildford," the courtier and lawyer of the reign of Charles II., there is an anecdote that pleasantly connects Child's bank with the fees of the great lawyers who in that evil reign ruled in Chancery Lane:--

"The Lord Keeper Guildford's business increased," says his biographer, "even while he was solicitor, to be so much as to have overwhelmed one less dexterous; but when he was made Attorney-General, though his gains by his office were great, they were much greater by his practice, for that flowed in upon him like an orage, enough to overset one that had not an extraordinary readiness in business. His skull-caps, which he wore when he had leisure to observe his const.i.tution, as I touched before, were now destined to lie in a drawer, to receive the money that came in by fees. One had the gold, another the crowns and half-crowns, and another the smaller money. When these vessels were full, they were committed to his friend (the Hon. Roger North), who was constantly near him, to tell out the cash and put it into the bags according to the contents; and so they went to his treasurers, Blanchard & Child, goldsmiths, Temple Bar."

Year by year the second Sir Francis Child grew in honour. He was alderman, sheriff, Lord Mayor, President of Christ's Hospital, and M.P.

for the City, and finally, dying in 1713, full of years, was buried under a grand black marble tomb in Fulham churchyard, and his account closed for ever. The family went on living in the suns.h.i.+ne. Sir Robert, the son of the Sir Francis, was also alderman of his ward; and, on his death, his brother, Sir Francis, succeeded to all his father's dignities, became an East Indian director, and in 1725 received the special thanks of the citizens for promoting a special act for regulating City elections. Another member of this family (Sir Josiah Child) deserves special mention as one of the earliest writers on political economy and a man much in advance of his time. He saw through the old fallacy about the balance of trade, and explained clearly the true causes of the commercial prosperity of the Dutch. He also condemned the practice of each parish paying for its own poor, an evil which all Poor-law reformers have endeavoured to alter. Sir Josiah was at the head of the East India Company, already feeling its way towards the gold and diamonds of India. His brother was Governor of Bombay, and by the marriage of his numerous daughters the rich merchant became allied to half the peers and peeresses of England. The grandson of Alderman Backwell married a daughter of the second Sir Francis Child, and his daughter married William Praed, the Truro banker, who early in the present century opened a bank at 189, Fleet Street. So, like three strands of a gold chain, the three banking families were welded together. In 1689 Child's bank seems to have for a moment tottered, but was saved by the timely loan of 1,400 proffered by that overbearing woman the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough. Hogarth is said to have made an oil sketch of the scene, which was sold at Hodgson's sale-room in 1834, and has since disappeared.

In Pennant's time (1793) the original goldsmith's shop seems to have still existed in Fleet Street, in connection with this bank. The princ.i.p.al of the firm was the celebrated Countess of Jersey, a former earl having a.s.sumed the name of Child on the countess inheriting the estates of her maternal grandfather, Robert Child, Esq., of Osterly Park, Middles.e.x. A small full-length portrait of this great beauty of George IV.'s court, painted by Lawrence in his elegant but meretricious manner, hangs in the first-floor room of the old bank. The last Child died early in this century. A descendant of Addison is a member of the present firm. In Chapter 1., Book I., of his "Tale of Two Cities,"

d.i.c.kens has sketched Child's bank with quite an Hogarthian force and colour. He has playfully exaggerated the smallness, darkness, and ugliness of the building, of which he describes the partners as so proud; but there is all his usual delightful humour, occasionally pa.s.sing into caricature:--

"Thus it had come to pa.s.s that Telson's was the triumphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Telson's down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet Street, and which were made the dingier by their own iron bars and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing 'the House,' you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a mis-spent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight."

In 1788 (George III.) the firm purchased the renowned "Devil Tavern,"

next door eastward, and upon the site erected the retiring row of houses up a dim court, now called Child's Place, finally absorbing the old place of revelry and hus.h.i.+ng the unseemly clatter of pewter pots and the clamorous shouts of "Score a pint of sherry in the Apollo" for ever.

The noisy "Devil Tavern" (No. 2, Fleet Street) had stood next the quiet goldsmith's shop ever since the time of James I. Shakespeare himself must, day after day, have looked up at the old sign of St. Dunstan tweaking the Devil by the nose, that flaunted in the wind near the Bar.

Perhaps the sign was originally a compliment to the goldsmith's men who frequented it, for St. Dunstan was, like St. Eloy, a patron saint of goldsmiths, and himself worked at the forge as an amateur artificer of church plate. It may, however, have only been a mark of respect to the saint, whose church stood hard by, to the east of Chancery Lane. At the "Devil" the Apollo Club, almost the first inst.i.tution of the kind in London, held its merry meetings, presided over by that grim yet jovial despot, Ben Jonson. The bust of Apollo, skilfully modelled from the head of the Apollo Belvidere, that once kept watch over the door, and heard in its time millions of witty things and scores of fond recollections of Shakespeare by those who personally knew and loved him, is still preserved at Child's bank. They also show there among their heirlooms "The Welcome," probably written by immortal Ben himself, which is full of a jovial inspiration that speaks well for the canary at the "Devil."

It used to stand over the chimney-piece, written in gilt letters on a black board, and some of the wittiest and wisest men of the reigns of James and Charles must have read it over their cups. The verses run,--

"Welcome all who lead or follow To the oracle of Apollo," &c.

Beneath these verses some enthusiastic disciple of the author has added the brief epitaph inscribed by an admirer on the crabbed old poet's tombstone in Westminster Abbey,--

"O, rare Ben Jonson."

The rules of the club (said to have been originally cut on a slab of black marble) were placed above the fire-place. They were devised by Ben Jonson, in imitation of the rules of the Roman entertainments, collected by the learned Lipsius; and, as Leigh Hunt says, they display the author's usual style of elaborate and compiled learning, not without a taste of that dictatorial self-sufficiency that made him so many enemies. They were translated by Alexander Brome, a poetical attorney of the day, who was one of Ben Jonson's twelve adopted poetical sons. We have room only for the first few, to show the poetical character of the club:--

"Let none but guests or clubbers. .h.i.ther come; Let dunces, fools, and sordid men keep home; Let learned, civil, merry men b' invited, And modest, too; nor be choice liquor slighted.

Let nothing in the treat offend the guest: More for delight than cost prepare the feast."

The later rules forbid the discussion of serious and sacred subjects. No itinerant fiddlers (who then, as now, frequented taverns) were to be allowed to obtrude themselves. The feasts were to be celebrated with laughing, leaping, dancing, jests, and songs, and the jests were to be "without reflection." No man (and this smacks of Ben's arrogance) was to recite "insipid" poems, and no person was to be pressed to write verse.

There were to be in this little Elysium of an evening no vain disputes, and no lovers were to mope about unsocially in corners. No fighting or brawling was to be tolerated, and no gla.s.ses or windows broken, or was tapestry to be torn down in wantonness. The rooms were to be kept warm; and, above all, any one who betrayed what the club chose to do or say was to be, _nolens volens_, banished. Over the clock in the kitchen some wit had inscribed in neat Latin the merry motto, "If the wine of last night hurts you, drink more to-day, and it will cure you"--a happy version of the dangerous axiom of "Take a hair of the dog that bit you."

At these club feasts the old poet with "the mountain belly and the rocky face," as he has painted himself, presided, ready to enter the ring against all comers. By degrees the stern man with the worn features, darkened by prison cell and hardened by battle-fields, had mellowed into a Falstaff. Long struggles with poverty had made Ben arrogant, for he had worked as a bricklayer in early life and had served in Flanders as a common soldier; he had killed a rival actor in a duel, and had been in danger of having his nose slit in the pillory for a libel against King James's Scotch courtiers. Intellectually, too, Ben had reason to claim a sort of sovereignty over the minor poets. His _Every Man in his Humour_ had been a great success; Shakespeare had helped him forward, and been his bosom friend. Parts of his _Seja.n.u.s_, such as the speech of Envy, beginning,--

"Light, I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, Wis.h.i.+ng thy golden splendour pitchy darkness,"

are as sublime as his songs, such as

"Drink to me only with thine eyes,"

are graceful, serious, and lyrical. The great compa.s.s of his power and the command he had of the lyre no one could deny; his learning Donne and Camden could vouch for. He had written the most beautiful of court masques; his Bobadil some men preferred to Falstaff. Alas! no Pepys or Boswell has noted the talk of those evenings.

A few glimpses of the meetings we have, and but a few. One night at the "Devil" a country gentleman was boastful of his property. It was all he had to boast about among the poets; Ben, chafed out of all decency and patience, at last roared, "What signify to us your dirt and your clods?

Where you have an acre of land I have ten acres of wit!" "Have you so, good Mr. Wise-acre," retorted Master Shallow. "Why, now, Ben," cried out a laughing friend, "you seem to be quite stung." "I' faith, I never was so p.r.i.c.ked by a hobnail before," growled Ben, with a surly smile.