Old and New London Part 81

in Southwark, and one in Old Fish Street.

"In the month of May, 1718," says Mr. Hotten, in his "History of Sign-boards," "one James Austin, 'inventor of the Persian ink-powder,'

desiring to give his customers a substantial proof of his grat.i.tude, invited them to the 'Boar's Head' to partake of an immense plum pudding--this pudding weighed 1,000 pounds--a baked pudding of one foot square, and the best piece of an ox roasted. The princ.i.p.al dish was put in the copper on Monday, May 12, at the 'Red Lion Inn,' by the Mint, in Southwark, and had to boil fourteen days. From there it was to be brought to the 'Swan Tavern,' in Fish Street Hill, accompanied by a band of music, playing 'What lumps of pudding my mother gave me!' One of the instruments was a drum in proportion to the pudding, being 18 feet 2 inches in length, and 4 feet in diameter, which was drawn by 'a device fixed on six a.s.ses.' Finally, the monstrous pudding was to be divided in St. George's Fields; but apparently its smell was too much for the gluttony of the Londoners. The escort was routed, the pudding taken and devoured, and the whole ceremony brought to an end before Mr. Austin had a chance to regale his customers." Puddings seem to have been the _forte_ of this Austin. Twelve or thirteen years before this last pudding he had baked one, for a wager, ten feet deep in the Thames, near Rotherhithe, by enclosing it in a great tin pan, and that in a sack of lime. It was taken up after about two hours and a half, and eaten with great relish, its only fault being that it was somewhat overdone. The bet was for more than 100.

In the burial-ground of St. Michael's Church, hard by, rested all that was mortal of one of the waiters of this tavern. His tomb, in Purbeck stone, had the following epitaph:--

"Here lieth the bodye of Robert Preston, late drawer at the 'Boar's Head Tavern,' Great Eastcheap, who departed this life March 16, Anno Domini 1730, aged twenty-seven years.

"Bacchus, to give the toping world surprise, Produc'd one sober son, and here he lies.

Tho' nurs'd among full hogsheads, he defy'd The charm of wine, and every vice beside.

O reader, if to justice thou'rt inclined, Keep honest Preston daily in thy mind.

He drew good wine, took care to fill his pots, Had sundry virtues that outweighed his fauts (_sic_).

You that on Bacchus have the like dependence, Pray copy Bob in measure and attendance."

Goldsmith visited the "Boar's Head," and has left a delightful essay upon his day-dreams there, totally forgetting that the original inn had perished in the Great Fire. "The character of Falstaff," says the poet, "even with all his faults, gives me more consolation than the most studied efforts of wisdom. I here behold an agreeable old fellow forgetting age, and showing me the way to be young at sixty-five. Surely I am well able to be as merry, though not so comical as he. Is it not in my power to have, though not so much wit, at least as much vivacity?

Age, care, wisdom, reflection, be gone! I give you to the winds. Let's have t'other bottle. Here's to the memory of Shakespeare, Falstaff, and all the merry men of Eastcheap!

"Such were the reflections which naturally arose while I sat at the 'Boar's Head Tavern,' still kept at Eastcheap. Here, by a pleasant fire, in the very room where old Sir John Falstaff cracked his jokes, in the very chair which was sometimes honoured by Prince Henry, and sometimes polluted by his immortal merry companions, I sat and ruminated on the follies of youth, wished to be young again, but was resolved to make the best of life whilst it lasted, and now and then compared past and present times together. I considered myself as the only living representative of the old knight, and transported my imagination back to the times when the Prince and he gave life to the revel. The room also conspired to throw my reflections back into antiquity. The oak floor, the Gothic windows, and the ponderous chimney-piece had long withstood the tooth of time. The watchman had gone twelve. My companions had all stolen off, and none now remained with me but the landlord. From him I could have wished to know the history of a tavern that had such a long succession of customers. I could not help thinking that an account of this kind would be a pleasing contrast of the manners of different ages.

But my landlord could give me no information. He continued to doze and sot, and tell a tedious story, as most other landlords usually do, and, though he said nothing, yet was never silent. One good joke followed another good joke; and the best joke of all was generally begun towards the end of a bottle. I found at last, however, his wine and his conversation operate by degrees. He insensibly began to alter his appearance. His cravat seemed quilted into a ruff, and his breeches swelled out into a farthingale. I now fancied him changing s.e.xes; and as my eyes began to close in slumber, I imagined my fat landlord actually converted into as fat a landlady. However, sleep made but few changes in my situation. The tavern, the apartment, and the table continued as before. Nothing suffered mutation but my host, who was fairly altered into a gentlewoman, whom I knew to be Dame Quickly, mistress of this tavern in the days of Sir John; and the liquor we were drinking seemed converted into sack and sugar.

"'My dear Mrs. Quickly,' cried I (for I knew her perfectly well at first sight), 'I am heartily glad to see you. How have you left Falstaff, Pistol, and the rest of our friends below stairs?--brave and hearty, I hope?'"

Years after that amiable American writer, Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, followed in Goldsmith's steps, and came to Eastcheap, in 1818, to search for Falstaff relics; and at the "Masons' Arms," 12, Miles Lane, he was shown a tobacco-box and a sacramental cup from St. Michael's Church, which the poetical enthusiast mistook for a tavern goblet.

"I was presented," he says, "with a j.a.panned iron tobacco-box, of gigantic size, out of which, I was told, the vestry smoked at their stated meetings from time immemorial, and which was never suffered to be profaned by vulgar hands, or used on common occasions. I received it with becoming reverence; but what was my delight on beholding on its cover the identical painting of which I was in quest! There was displayed the outside of the 'Boar's Head Tavern;' and before the door was to be seen the whole convivial group at table, in full revel, pictured with that wonderful fidelity and force with which the portraits of renowned generals and commodores are ill.u.s.trated on tobacco-boxes, for the benefit of posterity. Lest, however, there should be any mistake, the cunning limner had warily inscribed the names of Prince Hal and Falstaff on the bottom of their chairs.

"On the inside of the cover was an inscription, nearly obliterated, recording that the box was the gift of Sir Richard Gore, for the use of the vestry meetings at the Boar's Head Tavern, and that it was 'repaired and beautified by his successor, Mr. John Packard, 1767.' Such is a faithful description of this august and venerable relic; and I question whether the learned Scriblerius contemplated his Roman s.h.i.+eld, or the Knights of the Round Table the long-sought Saint-greal, with more exultation.

"The great importance attached to this memento of ancient revelry (the cup) by modern churchwardens at first puzzled me; but there is nothing sharpens the apprehension so much as antiquarian research; for I immediately perceived that this could be no other than the identical 'parcel-gilt goblet' on which Falstaff made his loving but faithless vow to Dame Quickly; and which would, of course, be treasured up with care among the regalia of her domains, as a testimony of that solemn contract.

"'Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, on Wednesday in Whitsun-week, when the prince broke thy head for likening his father to a singing-man of Windsor; thou didst swear to me then, as I was was.h.i.+ng thy wound, to marry me, and make me my lady, thy wife. Canst thou deny it?' (_Henry IV._, part ii.)

" ... For my part, I love to give myself up to the illusions of poetry.

A hero of fiction, that never existed, is just as valuable to me as a hero of history that existed a thousand years since; and, if I may be excused such an insensibility to the common ties of human nature, I would not give up fat Jack for half the great men of ancient chronicles. What have the heroes of yore done for me or men like me?

They have conquered countries of which I do not enjoy an acre; or they have gained laurels of which I do not inherit a leaf; or they have furnished examples of hare-brained prowess, which I have neither the opportunity nor the inclination to follow. But old Jack Falstaff!--kind Jack Falstaff!--sweet Jack Falstaff!--has enlarged the boundaries of human enjoyment; he has added vast regions of wit and good humour, in which the poorest man may revel; and has bequeathed a never-failing inheritance of jolly laughter, to make mankind merrier and better to the latest posterity."

The very name of the "Boar's Head," Eastcheap, recalls a thousand Shakespearian recollections; for here Falstaff came panting from Gads.h.i.+ll; here he snored behind the arras while Prince Harry laughed over his unconscionable tavern bill; and here, too, took place that wonderful scene where Falstaff and the prince alternately pa.s.sed judgment on each other's follies, Falstaff acting the prince's father, and Prince Henry retorts by taking up the same part. As this is one of the finest efforts of Shakespeare's comic genius, a short quotation from it, on the spot where the same was supposed to take place, will not be out of place.

"_Fal._ Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy time, but also how thou art accompanied; for though the camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted the more it wears. That thou art my son, I have partly thy mother's word, partly my own opinion; but chiefly a villainous trick of thine eye, and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip, that doth warrant me. If then thou be son to me, here lies the point;--why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher, and eat blackberries? a question not to be asked. Shall a son of England prove a thief, and take purses? a question to be asked. There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch.

This pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile: so doth the company thou keepest; for, Harry, now I do not speak to thee in drink, but in tears; not in pleasure, but in pa.s.sion; not in words only, but in woes also;--and yet there is a virtuous man, whom I have often noted in thy company, but I know not his name.

"_P. Hen._ What manner of man, an it like your Majesty?

"_Fal._ A good portly man, i' faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most n.o.ble carriage; and, as I think, his age some fifty, or, by 'r Lady, inclining to three score. And, now I remember me, his name is Falstaff. If that man should be lewdly given, he deceiveth me; for, Henry, I see virtue in his looks. If, then, the tree may be known by the fruit, as the fruit by the tree, then, peremptorily I speak it, there is virtue in that Falstaff. Him keep with; the rest banish.

"_P. Hen._ Swearest thou, ungracious boy? Henceforth ne'er look on me. Thou art violently carried away from grace. There is a devil haunts thee, in the likeness of a fat old man; a tun of man is thy companion. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting hutch of beastliness, that swoln parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years?

Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? Wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it? Wherein cunning, but in his craft? Wherein crafty, but in villany? Wherein villanous, but in all things? Wherein worthy, but in nothing?

"_Fal._ But to say I know more harm in him than in myself were to say more than I know. That he is old (the more the pity!), his white hairs do witness it; but that he is (saving your reverence) a wh.o.r.e-master, that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault, G.o.d help the wicked! If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is d.a.m.ned. If to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh's lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord! Banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins; but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant, being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff--banish not him thy Harry's company; banish not him thy Harry's company!

Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world!"

"In Love Lane," says worthy Strype, "on the north-west corner, entering into Little Eastcheap, is the Weigh-house, built on the ground where the church of St. Andrew Hubbard stood before the fire of 1666. Which said Weigh-house was before in Cornhill. In this house are weighed merchandizes brought from beyond seas to the king's beam, to which doth belong a master, and under him four master porters, with labouring porters under them. They have carts and horses to fetch the goods from the merchants' warehouses to the beam, and to carry them back. The house belongeth to the Company of Grocers, in whose gift the several porters', &c., places are. But of late years little is done in this office, as wanting a compulsive power to constrain the merchants to have their goods weighed, they alleging it to be an unnecessary trouble and charge."

In former times it was the usual practice for merchandise brought to London by foreign merchants to be weighed at the king's beam in the presence of sworn officials. The fees varied from 2d. to 3s. a draught; while for a bag of hops the uniform charge was 6d.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WEIGH-HOUSE CHAPEL (_see page 563_).]

The Presbyterian Chapel in the Weigh-house was founded by Samuel Slater and Thomas Kentish, two divines driven by the Act of Uniformity from St.

Katherine's in the Tower. The first-named minister, Slater, has distinguished himself by his devotion during the dreadful plague which visited London in 1625 (Charles I.). Kentish, of whom Calamy entertained a high opinion, had been persecuted by the Government. Knowle, another minister of this chapel, had fled to New England to escape Laud's cat-like gripe. In Cromwell's time he had been lecturer at Bristol Cathedral, and had there greatly exasperated the Quakers. Knowles and Kentish are said to have been so zealous as sometimes to preach till they fainted. In Thomas Reynolds's time a new chapel was built at the King's Weigh-house. Reynolds, a friend of the celebrated Howe, had studied at Geneva and at Utrecht. He died in 1727, declaring that, though he had hitherto dreaded death, he was rising to heaven on a bed of roses. After the celebrated quarrel between the subscribers and non-subscribers, a controversy took place about psalmody, which the Weigh-house ministers stoutly defended. Samuel Wilton, another minister of Weigh-house Chapel, was a pupil of Dr. Kippis, and an apologist for the War of Independence. John Clayton, chosen for this chapel in 1779, was the son of a Lancas.h.i.+re cotton-bleacher, and was converted by Romaine, and patronised by the excellent Countess of Huntingdon; he used to relate how he had been pelted with rotten eggs when preaching in the open air near Christchurch. While itinerating for Lady Huntingdon, Clayton became acquainted with Sir H. Trelawney, a young Cornish baronet, who became a Dissenting minister, and eventually joined the "Rational party." An interesting anecdote is told of Trelawney's marriage in 1778. For his bride he took a beautiful girl, who, apparently without her lover's knowledge, annulled a prior engagement, in order to please her parents by securing for herself a more splendid station. The spectacle was a gay one when, after their honeymoon, Sir Harry and his wife returned to his seat at Looe, to be welcomed home by his friend Clayton and the servants of the establishment. The young baronet proceeded to open a number of letters, and during the perusal of one in particular his countenance changed, betokening some shock sustained by his nervous system. Evening wore into night, but he would neither eat nor converse. At length he confessed to Clayton that he had received an affecting expostulation from his wife's former lover, who had written, while ignorant of the marriage, calling on Trelawney as a gentleman to withdraw his claims on the lady's affections. This affair is supposed to have influenced Sir Harry more or less till the end of his days, although his married life continued to flow on happily.

Clayton was ordained at the Weigh House Chapel in 1778; the church, with one exception, unanimously voted for him--the one exception, a lady, afterwards became the new minister's wife. Of Clayton Robert Hall said, "He was the most favoured man I ever saw or ever heard of." He died in 1843. Clayton's successor, the eloquent Thomas Binney, was pastor of Weigh House Chapel for more than forty years. So ends the chronicle of the Weigh House worthies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MILES COVERDALE (_see page 574_).]

CHAPTER L.

THE MONUMENT AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD.

The Monument--How shall it be fas.h.i.+oned?--Commemorative Inscriptions--The Monument's Place in History--Suicides and the Monument--The Great Fire of London--On the Top of the Monument by Night--The Source of the Fire--A Terrible Description--Miles Coverdale--St. Magnus, London Bridge.

The Monument, a fluted Doric column, raised to commemorate the Great Fire of London, was designed by Wren, who, as usual, was thwarted in his original intentions. It stands 202 feet from the site of the baker's house in Pudding Lane where the fire first broke out. Wren's son, in his "Parentalia," thus describes the difficulties which his father met with in carrying out his design. Says Wren, Junior: "In the place of the bra.s.s urn on the top (which is not artfully performed, and was set up contrary to his opinion) was originally intended a colossal statue in bra.s.s gilt of King Charles II., as founder of the new City, in the manner of the Roman pillars, which terminated with the statues of their Caesars; or else a figure erect of a woman crown'd with turrets, holding a sword and cap of maintenance, with other ensigns of the City's grandeur and re-erection. The alt.i.tude from the pavement is 202 feet; the diameter of the shaft (or body) of the column is 15 feet; the ground bounded by the plinth or lowest part of the pedestal is 28 feet square, and the pedestal in height is 40 feet. Within is a large staircase of black marble, containing 345 steps 10-1/2 inches broad and 6 inches risers. Over the capital is an iron balcony encompa.s.sing a cippus, or meta, 32 feet high, supporting a blazing urn of bra.s.s gilt. Prior to this the surveyor (as it appears by an original drawing) had made a design of a pillar of somewhat less proportion--viz., 14 feet in diameter, and after a peculiar device; for as the Romans expressed by _relievo_ on the pedestals and round the shafts of their columns the history of such actions and incidents as were intended to be thereby commemorated, so this monument of the conflagration and resurrection of the City of London was represented by a pillar in flames. The flames, blazing from the loopholes of the shaft (which were to give light to the stairs within), were figured in bra.s.s-work gilt; and on the top was a phoenix rising from her ashes, of bra.s.s gilt likewise."

The following are, or rather were, the inscriptions on the four sides of the Monument:--

SOUTH SIDE.

"Charles the Second, son of Charles the Martyr, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, a most generous prince, commiserating the deplorable state of things, whilst the ruins were yet smoking, provided for the comfort of his citizens and the ornament of his city, remitted their taxes, and referred the pet.i.tions of the magistrates and inhabitants to the Parliament, who immediately pa.s.sed an Act that public works should be restored to greater beauty with public money, to be raised by an imposition on coals; that churches, and the Cathedral of Saint Paul, should be rebuilt from their foundations, with all magnificence; that bridges, gates, and prisons should be new made, the sewers cleansed, the streets made straight and regular, such as were steep levelled, and those too narrow made wider; markets and shambles removed to separate places. They also enacted that every house should be built with party-walls, and all in front raised of equal height, and those walls all of square stone or brick, and that no man should delay building beyond the s.p.a.ce of seven years. Moreover, care was taken by law to prevent all suits about their bounds. Also anniversary prayers were enjoined; and to perpetuate the memory hereof to posterity, they caused this column to be erected. The work was carried on with diligence, and London is restored, but whether with greater speed or beauty may be made a question. At three years' time the world saw that finished which was supposed to be the business of an age."

NORTH SIDE.

"In the year of Christ 1666, the second day of September, eastward from hence, at the distance of two hundred and two feet (the height of this column), about midnight, a most terrible fire broke out, which, driven on by a high wind, not only wasted the adjacent parts, but also places very remote, with incredible noise and fury. It consumed eighty-nine churches, the City gates, Guildhall, many public structures, hospitals, schools, libraries, a vast number of stately edifices, thirteen thousand two hundred dwelling-houses, four hundred streets. Of the six-and-twenty wards it utterly destroyed fifteen, and left eight others shattered and half burnt.

The ruins of the City were four hundred and thirty-six acres, from the Tower by the Thames side to the Temple Church, and from the north-east along the City wall to Holborn Bridge. To the estates and fortunes of the citizens it was merciless, but to their lives very favourable, that it might in all things resemble the last conflagration of the world. The destruction was sudden, for in a small s.p.a.ce of time the City was seen most flouris.h.i.+ng, and reduced to nothing. Three days after, when this fatal fire had baffled all human counsels and endeavours in the opinion of all, it stopped as it were by a command from Heaven, and was on every side extinguished."

EAST SIDE.

"This pillar was begun, Sir Richard Ford, Knight, being Lord Mayor of London, In the year 1671, Carried on In the Mayoralties of Sir George Waterman, Kt. } Sir Robert Hanson, Kt. } Sir William Hooker, Kt. } Lord Mayors, Sir Robert Viner, Kt. } Sir Joseph Sheldon, Kt. } And finished, Sir Thomas Davies being Lord Mayor, in the year 1677."

WEST SIDE.