We have brought our Georges to London city, and if we would behold its
aspect may see it in Hogarth's lively perspective of Cheapside or read
of it in a hundred contemporary books which paint the manners of that
age. Our dear old Spectator looks smiling upon the streets, with their
innumerable signs, and describes them with his charming humor. "Our
streets are filled with Blue Boars, Black Swans, and Red Lions, not to
mention Flying Pigs and Hogs in Armor, with other creatures more
extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa." A few of these
quaint old figures still remain in London town. You may still see
there, and over its old hostel in Ludgate Hill, the "Belle Sauvage" to
whom the Spectator so pleasantly alludes in that paper; and who was,
probably, no other than the sweet American Pocahontas,[25] who rescued
from death the daring Captain Smith. There is the "Lion's Head," down
whose jaws the Spectator's own letters were passed; and over a great
banker's in Fleet Street, the effigy of the wallet, which the founder
of the firm bore when he came into London a country boy.
[Footnote 24: From the "Four Georges."]
[Footnote 25: Pocahontas, after her marriage with John Rolfe in 1616,
went to England. She spent some time in London, but in March of the
following year died at Gravesend. Her exact burial place is unknown.]
People this street, so ornamented, with crowds of swinging chairmen,
with servants bawling to clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his cassock,
his lackey marching before him; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack, tripping to
chapel, her footboy carrying her ladyship's great prayer book; with
itinerant tradesmen, singing their hundred cries (I remember forty years
ago, as a boy in London city, a score of cheery, familiar cries that are
silent now). Fancy the beaux thronging to the chocolate-houses, tapping
their snuff-boxes as they issue thence, their periwigs appearing over
the red curtains. Fancy Saccharissa,[26] beckoning and smiling from the
upper windows, and a crowd of soldiers brawling and bustling at the
door--gentlemen of the Life Guards, clad in scarlet, with blue facings,
and laced with gold at the seams; gentlemen of the Horse Grenadiers, in
their caps of sky-blue cloth, with the garter embroidered on the front
in gold and silver; men of the Halberdiers, in their long red coats, as
bluff Harry left them, with their ruff and velvet flat caps. Perhaps the
King's Majesty himself is going to St. James's as we pass. If he is
going to Parliament, he is in his coach-and-eight, surrounded by his
guards and the high officers of his crown. Otherwise his Majesty only
uses a chair, with six footmen walking before, and six yeomen of the
guard at the sides of the sedan. The officers in waiting follow the king
in coaches. It must be rather slow work.
[Footnote 26: Saccharissa is the name under which Lady Dorothy Sidney
is known through some of the poems of Waller, who wrote her praises
under that name. She was of the family of Penshurst, to which belonged
Sir Philip and Algernon Sidney.]
Our _Spectator_ and _Tatler_ are full of delightful glimpses of the
town life of those days. In the company of that charming guide, we may
go to the opera, the comedy, the puppet show, the auction, even the
cockpit; we can take boat at Temple Stairs, and accompany Sir Roger de
Coverley and Mr. Spectator to Spring Garden--it will be called
Vauxhall a few years hence, when Hogarth will paint for it. Would you
not like to step back into the past, and be introduced to Mr.
Addison?--not the Right Honorable Joseph Addison, Esq., George the
First's Secretary of State, but to the delightful painter of
contemporary manners; the man who, when in good humor himself, was the
pleasantest companion in all England. I should like to go into
Lockit's with him, and drink a bowl along with Sir R. Steele (who has
just been knighted by King George, and who does not happen to have
any money to pay his share of the reckoning). I should not care to
follow Mr. Addison to his secretary's office in Whitehall. There we
get into politics. Our business is pleasure, and the town, and the
coffee-house, and the theater, and the Mall. Delightful Spectator!
kind friend of leisure hours! happy companion! true Christian
gentleman! How much greater, better, you are than the king Mr.
Secretary kneels to!
You can have foreign testimony about old-world London, if you like;
and my before-quoted friend, Charles Louis, Baron de Pöllnitz, will
conduct us to it. "A man of sense," says he, "or a fine gentleman, is
never at a loss for company in London, and this is the way the latter
passes his time. He rises late, puts on a frock and, leaving his sword
at home, takes his cane, and goes where he pleases. The park is
commonly the place where he walks, because 'tis the Exchange for men
of quality. 'Tis the same thing as the Tuileries at Paris, only the
park has a certain beauty and simplicity which can not be described.
The grand walk is called the Mall; is full of people at every hour of
the day, but especially at morning and evening, when their Majesties
often walk with the royal family, who are attended only by a
half-dozen yeomen of the guard, and permit all persons to walk at the
same time with them. The ladies and gentlemen always appear in rich
dresses, for the English, who twenty years ago did not wear gold lace
but in their army, are now embroidered and bedaubed as much as the
French.
"I speak of persons of quality; for the citizen still contents himself
with a suit of fine cloth, a good hat and wig, and fine linen.
Everybody is well clothed here, and even the beggars don't make so
ragged an appearance as they do elsewhere." After our friend, the man
of quality, has had his morning or undress walk in the Mall, he goes
home to dress, and then saunters to some coffee-house or
chocolate-house frequented by the persons he would see. "For 'tis a
rule with the English to go once a day at least to houses of this
sort, where they talk of business and news, read the papers, and often
look at one another without opening their lips. And 'tis very well
they are so mute; for were they all as talkative as people of other
nations, the coffee-houses would be intolerable, and there would be no
hearing what one man said where there are so many. The chocolate-house
in St. James's Street, where I go every morning to pass away time, is
always so full that a man can scarce turn about in it."
Delightful as London city was, King George I liked to be out of it as
much as ever he could; and when there, passed all his time with his
Germans. It was with them as with Blucher, one hundred years
afterward, when the bold old Reiter looked down from St. Paul's, and
sighed out, "_Was für Plunder!_" The German women plundered; the
German secretaries plundered; the German cooks and intendants
plundered; even Mustapha and Mohammed, the German negroes, had a share
of the booty. Take what you can get, was the old monarch's maxim. He
was not a lofty monarch, certainly; he was not a patron of the fine
arts; but he was not a hypocrite, he was not revengeful, he was not
extravagant. Tho a despot in Hanover, he was a moderate ruler in
England. His aim was to leave it to itself as much as possible, and to
live out of it as much as he could. His heart was in Hanover. When
taken ill on his last journey, as he was passing through Holland, he
thrust his livid head out of the coach window, and gasped out
"Osnaburg, Osnaburg!"