Old and New London Part 5

Another story records the first visit to the "Devil" of Randolph, a clever poet and dramatist, who became a clergyman, and died young. The young poet, who had squandered all his money away in London pleasures, on a certain night, before he returned to Cambridge, resolved to go and see Ben and his a.s.sociates at the "Devil," cost what it might. But there were two great obstacles--he was poor, and he was not invited.

Nevertheless, drawn magnetically by the voices of the ill.u.s.trious men in the Apollo, Randolph at last peeped in at the door among the waiters.

Ben's quick eye soon detected the eager, pale face and the scholar's threadbare habit. "John Bo-peep," he shouted, "come in!" a summons Randolph gladly obeyed. The club-men instantly began rhyming on the meanness of the intruder's dress, and told him if he could not at once make a verse he must call for a quart of sack. There being four of his tormentors, Randolph, ready enough at such work, replied as quick as lightning:--

"I, John Bo-peep, and you four sheep, With each one his good fleece; If that you are willing to give me your s.h.i.+lling, 'Tis fifteen pence apiece."

"By the Lord!" roared the giant president, "I believe this is my son Randolph!" and on his owning himself, the young poet was kindly entertained, spent a glorious evening, was soaked in sack, "sealed of the tribe of Ben," and became one of the old poet's twelve adopted sons.

Shakerley Marmion, a contemporary dramatist of the day, has left a glowing Rubenesque picture of the Apollo evenings, evidently coloured from life. Careless, one of his characters, tells his friends he is full of oracles, for he has just come from Apollo. "From Apollo?" says his wondering friend. Then Careless replies, with an inspired fervour worthy of a Cavalier poet who fought bravely for King Charles:--

"From the heaven Of my delight, where the boon Delphic G.o.d Drinks sack and keep his baccha.n.a.lia, And has his incense and his altars smoking, And speaks in sparkling prophecies; thence I come, My brains perfumed with the rich Indian vapour, And heightened with conceits....

And from a mighty continent of pleasure Sails thy brave Careless."

Simon Wadloe, the host of the "Devil," who died in 1627, seems to have been a witty b.u.t.t of a man, much such another as honest Jack Falstaff; a merry boon companion, not only witty himself, but the occasion of wit in others, quick at repartee, fond of proverbial sayings, curious in his wines. A good old song, set to a fine old tune, was written about him, and called "Old Sir Simon the King." This was the favourite old-fas.h.i.+oned ditty in which Fielding's rough and jovial Squire Western afterwards delighted.

Old Simon's successor, John Wadloe (probably his son), made a great figure at the Restoration procession by heading a band of young men all dressed in white. After the Great Fire John rebuilt the "Sun Tavern,"

behind the Royal Exchange, and was loyal, wealthy, and foolish enough to lend King Charles certain considerable sums, duly recorded in Exchequer doc.u.ments, but not so duly paid.

In the troublous times of the Commonwealth the "Devil" was the favourite haunt of John Cottington, generally known as "Mull Sack," from his favourite beverage of spiced sherry negus. This impudent rascal, a sweep who had turned highwayman, with the most perfect impartiality rifled the pockets alternately of Cavaliers and Roundheads. Gold is of no religion; and your true cut-purse is of the broadest and most sceptical Church. He emptied the pockets of Lord Protector Cromwell one day, and another he stripped Charles II., then a Bohemian exile at Cologne, of plate valued at 1,500. One of his most impudent exploits was stealing a watch from Lady Fairfax, that brave woman who had the courage to denounce, from the gallery at Westminster Hall, the persons whom she considered were about to become the murderers of Charles I. "This lady" (and a portly handsome woman she was, to judge by the old portraits), says a pamphlet-writer of the day, "used to go to a lecture on a week-day to Ludgate Church, where one Mr. Jacomb preached, being much followed by the Puritans. Mull Sack, observing this, and that she constantly wore her watch hanging by a chain from her waist, against the next time she came there dressed himself like an officer in the army; and having his comrades attending him like troopers, one of them takes off the pin of a coach-wheel that was going upwards through the gate, by which means it falling off, the pa.s.sage was obstructed, so that the lady could not alight at the church door, but was forced to leave her coach without. Mull Sack, taking advantage of this, readily presented himself to her ladys.h.i.+p, and having the impudence to take her from her gentleman usher who attended her alighting, led her by the arm into the church; and by the way, with a pair of keen sharp scissors for the purpose, cut the chain in two, and got the watch clear away, she not missing it till the sermon was done, when she was going to see the time of the day."

[Ill.u.s.tration: INTRODUCTION OF RANDOLPH TO BEN JONSON AT THE "DEVIL"

TAVERN (_see page 40_).]

The portrait of Mull Sack has the following verses beneath:--

"I walk the Strand and Westminster, and scorn To march i' the City, though I bear the horn.

My feather and my yellow band accord, To prove me courtier; my boot, spur, and sword, My smoking-pipe, scarf, garter, rose on shoe, Show my brave mind t' affect what gallants do.

I sing, dance, drink, and merrily pa.s.s the day, And, like a chimney, sweep all care away."

In Charles II.'s time the "Devil" became frequented by lawyers and physicians. The talk now was about drugs and lat.i.tats, jalap and the law of escheats. Yet, still good company frequented it, for Steele describes Bickerstaff's sister Jenny's wedding entertainment there in October, 1709; and in 1710 (Queen Anne) Swift writes one of those charming letters to Stella to tell her that he had dined on October 12th at the "Devil," with Addison and Dr. Garth, when the good-natured doctor, whom every one loved, stood treat, and there must have been talk worth hearing. In the Apollo chamber the intolerable court odes of Colley Cibber, the poet laureate, used to be solemnly rehea.r.s.ed with fitting music; and Pope, in "The Dunciad," says, scornfully:--

"Back to the 'Devil' the loud echoes roll, And 'Coll' each butcher roars in Hockly Hole."

But Colley had talent and he had bra.s.s, and it took many such lines to put him down. A good epigram on these public recitations runs thus:--

"When laureates make odes, do you ask of what sort?

Do you ask if they're good or are evil?

You may judge: from the 'Devil' they come to the Court, And go from the Court to the 'Devil.'"

Dr. Kenrick afterwards gave lectures on Shakespeare at the Apollo. This Kenrick, originally a rule-maker, and the malicious a.s.sailant of Johnson and Garrick, was the Croker of his day. He originated the _London Review_, and when he a.s.sailed Johnson's "Shakespeare," Johnson laughingly replied, "That he was not going to be bound by Kenrick's rules."

In 1746 the Royal Society held its annual dinner in the old consecrated room, and in the year 1752 concerts of vocal and instrumental music were given in the same place. It was an upstairs chamber, probably detached from the tavern, and lay up a "close," or court, like some of the old Edinburgh taverns.

The last ray of light that fell on the "Devil" was on a memorable spring evening in 1751. Dr. Johnson (aged forty-two), then busy all day with his six amanuenses in a garret in Gough Square compiling his Dictionary, at night enjoyed his elephantine mirth at a club in Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row. One night at the club, Johnson proposed to celebrate the appearance of Mrs. Lennox's first novel, "The Life of Harriet Stuart," by a supper at the "Devil Tavern." Mrs. Lennox was a lady for whom Johnson--ranking her afterwards above Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Hannah More, or even his favourite, Miss Burney--had the greatest esteem. Sir John Hawkins, that somewhat malign rival of Boswell, describes the night in a manner, for him, unusually genial. "Johnson," says Hawkins (and his words are too pleasant to condense), "proposed to us the celebrating the birth of Mrs. Lennox's first literary child, as he called her book, by a whole night spent in festivity. Upon his mentioning it to me, I told him I had never sat up a night in my life; but he continuing to press me, and saying that I should find great delight in it, I, as did all the rest of the company, consented." (The club consisted of Hawkins, an attorney; Dr. Salter, father of a master of the Charter House; Dr.

Hawkesworth, a popular author of the day; Mr. Ryland, a merchant; Mr.

John Payne, a bookseller; Mr. Samuel Dyer, a young man training for a Dissenting minister; Dr. William M'Ghie, a Scotch physician; Dr. Barker and Dr. Bathurst, young physicians.) "The place appointed was the 'Devil Tavern;' and there, about the hour of eight, Mrs. Lennox and her husband (a tide-waiter in the Customs), a lady of her acquaintance, with the club and friends, to the number of twenty, a.s.sembled. The supper was elegant; Johnson had directed that a magnificent hot apple-pie should make a part of it, and this he would have stuck with bay leaves, because, forsooth, Mrs. Lennox was an auth.o.r.ess and had written verses; and, further, he had prepared for her a crown of laurel, with which, but not till he had invoked the Muses by some ceremonies of his own invention, he encircled her brows. The night pa.s.sed, as must be imagined, in pleasant conversation and harmless mirth, intermingled at different, periods with the refreshment of coffee and tea. About five a.m., Johnson's face shone with meridian splendour, though his drink had been only lemonade; but the far greater part of the company had deserted the colours of Bacchus, and were with difficulty rallied to partake of a second refreshment of coffee, which was scarcely ended when the day began to dawn. This phenomenon began to put us in mind of our reckoning; but the waiters were all so overcome with sleep that it was two hours before a bill could be had, and it was not till near eight that the creaking of the street-door gave the signal of our departure."

How one longs to dredge up some notes of such a night's conversation from the cruel river of oblivion! The Apollo Court, on the opposite side of Fleet Street, still preserves the memory of the great club-room at the "Devil."

[Ill.u.s.tration: TEMPLE BAR IN DR. JOHNSON'S TIME (_see page 29_).]

In 1764, on an Act pa.s.sing for the removal of the dangerous projecting signs, the weather-beaten picture of the saint, with the Devil gibbering over his shoulder, was nailed up flat to the front of the old gable-ended house. In 1775, Collins, a public lecturer and mimic, gave a satirical lecture at the "Devil" on modern oratory. In 1776 some young lawyers founded there a Pandemonium Club; and after that there is no further record of the "Devil" till it was pulled down and annexed by the neighbouring bankers. In Steele's time there was a "Devil Tavern" at Charing Cross, and a rival "Devil Tavern" near St. Dunstan's; but these compet.i.tors made no mark.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MULL SACK AND LADY FAIRFAX (_see page 40_).]

The "c.o.c.k Tavern" (201), opposite the Temple, has been immortalised by Tennyson as thoroughly as the "Devil" was by Ben Jonson. The playful verses inspired by a pint of generous port have made

"The violet of a legend blow Among the chops and steaks"

for ever, though old Will Waterproof has long since descended for the last time the well-known cellar-stairs. The poem which has embalmed his name was, we believe, written when Mr. Tennyson had chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields. At that time the room was lined with wainscoting, and the silver tankards of special customers hung in glittering rows in the bar. This tavern was shut up at the time of the Plague, and the advertis.e.m.e.nt announcing such closing is still extant. Pepys, in his "Diary," mentions bringing pretty Mrs. Knipp, an actress, of whom his wife was very jealous, here; and the gay couple "drank, eat a lobster, and sang, and mighty merry till almost midnight." On his way home to Seething Lane, the amorous Navy Office clerk with difficulty avoided two thieves with clubs, who met him at the entrance into the ruins of the Great Fire near St. Dunstan's. These dangerous meetings with Mrs. Knipp went on till one night Mrs. Pepys came to his bedside and threatened to pinch him with the red-hot tongs. The waiters at the "c.o.c.k" are fond of showing visitors one of the old tokens of the house in the time of Charles II. The old carved chimney-piece is of the age of James I.; and there is a doubtful tradition that the gilt bird that struts with such self-serene importance over the portal was the work of that great carver, Grinling Gibbons.

"d.i.c.k's Coffee House" (No. 8, south) was kept in George II.'s time by a Mrs. Yarrow and her daughter, who were much admired by the young Templars who patronised the place. The Rev. James Miller, reviving an old French comedietta by Rousseau, called "The Coffee House," and introducing malicious allusions to the landlady and her fair daughter, so exasperated the young barristers that frequented "d.i.c.k's," that they went in a body and hissed the piece from the boards. The author then wrote an apology, and published the play; but unluckily the artist who ill.u.s.trated it took the bar at "d.i.c.k's" as the background of his sketch.

The Templars went madder than ever at this, and the Rev. Miller, who translated Voltaire's "Mahomet" for Garrick, never came up to the surface again. It was at "d.i.c.k's" that Cowper the poet showed the first symptoms of derangement. When his mind was off its balance he read a letter in a newspaper at "d.i.c.k's," which he believed had been written to drive him to suicide. He went away and tried to hang himself; the garter breaking, he then resolved to drown himself; but, being hindered by some occurrence, repented for the moment. He was soon after sent to a madhouse in Huntingdon.

In 1681 a quarrel arose between two hot-headed gallants in "d.i.c.k's"

about the size of two dishes they had both seen at the "St. John's Head"

in Chancery Lane. The matter eventually was roughly ended at the "Three Cranes" in the Vintry--a tavern mentioned by Ben Jonson--by one of them, Rowland St. John, running his companion, John Stiles, of Lincoln's Inn, through the body. The St. Dunstan's Club, founded in 1796, holds its dinner at "d.i.c.k's."

The "Rainbow Tavern" (No. 15, south) was the second coffee-house started in London. Four years before the Restoration, Mr. Farr, a barber, began the trade here, trusting probably to the young Temple barristers for support. The vintners grew jealous, and the neighbours, disliking the smell of the roasting coffee, indicted Farr as a nuisance. But he persevered, and the Arabian drink became popular. A satirist had soon to write regretfully,--

"And now, alas! the drink has credit got, And he's no gentleman that drinks it not."

About 1780, according to Mr. Timbs, the "Rainbow" was kept by Alexander Moncrieff, grandfather of the dramatist who wrote _Tom and Jerry_.

Bernard Lintot, the bookseller, who published Pope's "Homer," lived in a shop between the two Temple gates (No. 16). In an inimitable letter to the Earl of Burlington, Pope has described how Lintot (Tonson's rival) overtook him once in Windsor Forest, as he was riding down to Oxford.

When they were resting under a tree in the forest, Lintot, with a keen eye to business, pulled out "a mighty pretty 'Horace,'" and said to Pope, "What if you amused yourself in turning an ode till we mount again?" The poet smiled, but said nothing. Presently they remounted, and as they rode on Lintot stopped short, and broke out, after a long silence: "Well, sir, how far have we got?" "Seven miles," replied Pope, navely. He told Pope that by giving the hungry critics a dinner of a piece of beef and a pudding, he could make them see beauties in any author he chose. After all, Pope did well with Lintot, for he gained 5,320 by his "Homer." Dr. Young, the poet, once unfortunately sent to Lintot a letter meant for Tonson, and the first words that Lintot read were: "That Bernard Lintot is so great a scoundrel." In the same shop, which was then occupied by Jacob Robinson, the publisher, Pope first met Warburton. An interesting account of this meeting is given by Sir John Hawkins, which it may not be out of place to quote here. "The friends.h.i.+p of Pope and Warburton," he says, "had its commencement in that bookseller's shop which is situate on the west side of the gateway leading down the Inner Temple Lane. Warburton had some dealings with Jacob Robinson, the publisher, to whom the shop belonged, and may be supposed to have been drawn there on business; Pope might have made a call of the like kind. However that may be, there they met, and entering into conversation, which was not soon ended, conceived a mutual liking, and, as we may suppose, plighted their faith to each other. The fruit of this interview, and the subsequent communications of the parties, was the publication, in November, 1739, of a pamphlet with this t.i.tle, 'A Vindication of Mr. Pope's "Essay on Man," by the Author of "The Divine Legation of Moses." Printed for J. Robinson.'" At the Middle Temple Gate, Benjamin Motte, successor to Ben Tooke, published Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," for which he had grudgingly given only 200.

The third door from Chancery Lane (No. 197, north side), Mr. Timbs points out, was in Charles II.'s time a tombstone-cutter's; and here, in 1684, Howel, whose "Letters" give us many curious pictures of his time, saw a huge monument to four of the Oxenham family, at the death of each of whom a white bird appeared fluttering about their bed. These miraculous occurrences had taken place at a town near Exeter, and the witnesses names duly appeared below the epitaph. No. 197 was afterwards Rackstrow's museum of natural curiosities and anatomical figures; and the proprietor put Sir Isaac Newton's head over the door for a sign.

Among other prodigies was the skeleton of a whale more than seventy feet long. Donovan, a naturalist, succeeded Rackstrow (who died in 1772) with his London museum. Then, by a harlequin change, No. 197 became the office of the _Albion_ newspaper. Charles Lamb was turned over to this journal from the _Morning Post_. The editor, John Fenwick, the "Bigot"

of Lamb's "Essay," was a needy, sanguine man, who had purchased the paper of a person named Lovell, who had stood in the pillory for a libel against the Prince of Wales. For a long time Fenwick contrived to pay the Stamp Office dues by money borrowed from compliant friends. "We,"

says Lamb, in his delightful way, "attached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation was now to write treason." Lamb hinted at possible abdications. Blocks, axes, and Whitehall tribunals were covered with flowers of so cunning a periphrasis--as, Mr. Bayes says, never naming the _thing_ directly--that the keen eye of an Attorney-General was insufficient to detect the lurking snake among them.

At the south-west corner of Chancery Lane (No. 193) once stood an old house said to have been the residence of that unfortunate reformer, Sir John Oldcastle, Baron Cobham, who was burnt in St. Giles's Fields in 1417 (Henry V.). In Charles II.'s reign the celebrated Whig Green Ribbon Club used to meet here, and from the balcony flourish their periwigs, discharge squibs, and wave torches, when a great Protestant procession pa.s.sed by, to burn the effigy of the Pope at the Temple Gate. The house, five stories high and covered with carvings, was pulled down for City improvements in 1799.

Upon the site of No. 192 (east corner of Chancery Lane) the father of Cowley, that fantastic poet of Charles II.'s time, it is said carried on the trade of a grocer. In 1740 a later grocer there sold the finest caper tea for 24s. per lb., his fine green for 18s. per lb., hyson at 16s. per lb., and bohea at 7s. per lb.

No house in Fleet Street has a more curious pedigree than that gilt and painted shop opposite Chancery Lane (No. 17, south side), falsely called "the palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey." It was originally the office of the Duchy of Cornwall, in the reign of James I. It is just possible that it was the house originally built by Sir Amyas Paulet, at Wolsey's command, in resentment for Sir Amyas having set Wolsey, when a mere parish priest, in the stocks for a brawl. Wolsey, at the time of the ignominious punishment, was schoolmaster to the children of the Marquis of Dorset. Paulet was confined to this house for five or six years, to appease the proud cardinal, who lived in Chancery Lane. Sir Amyas rebuilt his prison, covering the front with badges of the cardinal. It was afterwards "Nando's," a famous coffee-house, where Thurlow picked up his first great brief. One night Thurlow, arguing here keenly about the celebrated Douglas case, was heard by some lawyers with delight, and the next day, to his astonishment, was appointed junior counsel. This cause won him a silk gown, and so his fortune was made by that one lucky night at "Nando's." No. 17 was afterwards the place where Mrs. Salmon (the Madame Tussaud of early times) exhibited her waxwork kings and queens. There was a figure on crutches at the door; and Old Mother s.h.i.+pton, the witch, kicked the astonished visitor as he left.

Mrs. Salmon died in 1812. The exhibition was then sold for 500, and removed to Water Lane. When Mrs. Salmon first removed from St.

Martin's-le-Grand to near St. Dunstan's Church, she announced, with true professional dignity, that the new locality "was more convenient for the quality's coaches to stand unmolested." Her "Royal Court of England"

included 150 figures. When the exhibition removed to Water Lane, some thieves one night got in, stripped the effigies of their finery, and broke half of them, throwing them into a heap that almost touched the ceiling.

Tonson, Dryden's publisher, commenced business at the "Judge's Head,"

near the Inner Temple gate, so that when at the Kit-Kat Club he was not far from his own shop. One day Dryden, in a rage, drew the greedy bookseller with terrible force:--

"With leering looks, bull-faced, and speckled fair, With two left legs and Judas-coloured hair, And frowzy pores that taint the ambient air."

The poet promised a fuller portrait if the "dog" tormented him further.

Opposite Mrs. Salmon's, two doors west of old Chancery Lane, till 1799, when the lawyer's lane was widened, stood an old, picturesque, gabled house, which was once the milliner's shop kept, in 1624, by that good old soul, Isaak Walton. He was on the Vestry Board of St. Dunstan's, and was constable and overseer for the precinct next Temple Bar; and on pleasant summer evenings he used to stroll out to the Tottenham fields, rod in hand, to enjoy the gentle sport which he so much loved. He afterwards (1632) lived seven doors up Chancery Lane, west side, and there married the sister of that good Christian, Bishop Ken, who wrote the "Evening Hymn," one of the most simply beautiful religious poems ever written. It is pleasant in busy Fleet Street to think of the good old citizen on his guileless way to the river Lea, conning his verses on the delights of angling.

Praed's Bank (No. 189, north side) was founded early in the century by Mr. William Praed, a banker of Truro. The house had been originally the shop of Mrs. Salmon, till she moved to opposite Chancery Lane, and her wax kings and frail queens were replaced by piles of strong boxes and chests of gold. The house was rebuilt in 1802, from the designs of Sir John Soane, whose curious museum still exists in Lincoln's Inn Fields.