and benevolent spirit. In 1802, they voted 2000_l._ to the Life-boat
subscription. On July 20, 1803, at the invasion panic, they commenced
the Patriotic Fund with 20,000_l._ 3-per-cent. Consols; besides
70,312_l._ 7_s._ individual subscriptions, and 15,000_l._ additional
donations. After the battle of the Nile, in 1798, they collected for
the widows and wounded seamen 32,423_l._; and after Lord Howe's
victory, June 1, 1794, for similar purposes, 21,281_l._ They have also
contributed 5000_l._ to the London Hospital; 1000_.l_ for the
suffering inhabitants of Russia in 1813; 1000_l._ for the relief of
the militia in our North American colonies, 1813; and 10,000_l._ for
the Waterloo subscription, in 1815. The Committee vote medals and
rewards to those who distinguish themselves in saving life from
shipwreck.
Some years since, a member of Lloyd's drew from the books the
following lines of names contained therein:--
"A Black and a White, with a Brown and a Green,
And also a Gray at Lloyd's room may be seen;
With Parson and Clark, then a Bishop and Pryor,
And Water, how Strange adding fuel to fire;
While, at the same time, 'twill sure pass belief,
There's a Winter, a Garland, Furze, Bud, and a Leaf;
With Freshfield, and Greenhill, Lovegrove, and a Dale;
Though there's never a Breeze, there's always a Gale.
No music is there, though a Whistler and Harper;
There's a Blunt and a Sharp, many flats, but no sharper.
There's a Danniell, a Samuel, a Sampson, an Abell;
The first and the last write at the same table.
Then there's Virtue and Faith there, with Wylie and Rasch,
Disagreeing elsewhere, yet at Lloyd's never clash,
There's a Long and a Short, Small, Little, and Fatt,
With one Robert Dewar, who ne'er wears his hat:
No drinking goes on, though there's Porter and Sack,
Lots of Scotchmen there are, beginning with Mac;
Macdonald, to wit, Macintosh and McGhie,
McFarquhar, McKenzie, McAndrew, Mackie.
An evangelized Jew, and an infidel Quaker;
There's a Bunn and a Pye, with a Cook and a Baker,
Though no Tradesmen or Shopmen are found, yet herewith
Is a Taylor, a Saddler, a Paynter, a Smyth;
Also Butler and Chapman, with Butter and Glover,
Come up to Lloyd's room their bad risks to cover.
Fox, Shepherd, Hart, Buck, likewise come every day;
And though many an ass, there is only one Bray.
There is a Mill and Miller, A-dam and a Poole,
A Constable, Sheriff, a Law, and a Rule.
There's a Newman, a Niemann, a Redman, a Pitman,
Now to rhyme with the last, there is no other fit man.
These, with Young, Cheap, and Lent, Luckie, Hastie, and Slow,
With dear Mr. Allnutt, Allfrey, and Auldjo,
Are all the queer names that at Lloyd's I can show."
Many of these individuals are now deceased; but a frequenter of
Lloyd's in former years will recognize the persons mentioned.
THE JERUSALEM COFFEE-HOUSE,
Cornhill, is one of the oldest of the City news-rooms, and is
frequented by merchants and captains connected with the commerce of
China, India, and Australia.
"The subscription-room is well-furnished with files of the principal
Canton, Hongkong, Macao, Penang, Singapore, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras,
Sydney, Hobart Town, Launceston, Adelaide, and Port Phillip papers,
and Prices Current: besides shipping lists and papers from the various
intermediate stations or ports touched at, as St. Helena, the Cape of
Good Hope, etc. The books of East India shipping include arrivals,
departures, casualties, etc. The full business is between two and
three o'clock, p.m. In 1845, John Tawell, the Slough murderer, was
captured at [traced to] the Jerusalem, which he was in the habit of
visiting, to ascertain information of the state of his property in
Sydney."--_The City_, 2nd edit., 1848.
BAKER'S COFFEE-HOUSE,
Change-alley, is remembered as a tavern some forty years since. The
landlord, after whom it is named, may possibly have been a descendant
from "Baker," the master of Lloyd's Rooms. It has been, for many
years, a chop-house, with direct service from the gridiron, and upon
pewter; though on the first-floor, joint dinners are served: its
post-prandial punch was formerly much drunk. In the lower room is a
portrait of James, thirty-five years waiter here.
COFFEE-HOUSES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
Of Ward's _Secret History_ of the Clubs of his time we have already
given several specimens. Little is known of him personally. He was,
probably, born in 1660, and early in life he visited the West Indies.
Sometime before 1669, he kept a tavern and punch-house, next door to
Gray's Inn, of which we shall speak hereafter. His works are now
rarely to be met with. His doggrel secured him a place in the
_Dunciad_, where not only his elevation to the pillory is mentioned,
but the fact is also alluded to that his productions were extensively
shipped to the Plantations or Colonies of those days,--
"Nor sail with Ward to ape-and-monkey climes,
Where vile mundungus trucks for viler rhymes,"
the only places, probably, where they were extensively read. In return
for the doubtful celebrity thus conferred upon his rhymes, he attacked
the satirist in a wretched production, intituled _Apollo's Maggot in
his Cups_; his expiring effort, probably, for he died, as recorded in
the pages of our first volume, on the 22nd of June, 1731. His remains
were buried in the churchyard of Old St. Pancras, his body being
followed to the grave solely by his wife and daughter, as directed by
him in his poetical will, written some six years before. We learn
from Noble that there are no less than four engraved portraits of Ned
Ward. The structure of the _London Spy_, the only work of his that at
present comes under our notice, is simple enough. The author is
self-personified as a countryman, who, tired with his "tedious
confinement to a country hutt," comes up to London; where he
fortunately meets with a quondam school-fellow,--a "man about town,"
in modern phrase,--who undertakes to introduce him to the various
scenes, sights, and mysteries of the, even then, "great metropolis:"
much like the visit, in fact, from Jerry Hawthorn to Corinthian Tom,
only anticipated by some hundred and twenty years. "We should not be
at all surprised (says the _Gentleman's Magazine_,) to find that the
stirring scenes of Pierce Egan's _Life in London_ were first suggested
by more homely pages of the _London Spy_."
At the outset of the work we have a description--not a very flattering
one, certainly--of a common coffee-house of the day, one of the many
hundreds with which London then teemed. Although coffee had been only
known in England some fifty years, coffee-houses were already among
the most favourite institutions of the land; though they had not as
yet attained the political importance which they acquired in the days
of the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_, some ten or twelve years later:--
"'Come,' says my friend, 'let us step into this coffee-house here; as
you are a stranger in the town, it will afford you some diversion.'
Accordingly in we went, where a parcel of muddling muckworms were as
busy as so many rats in an old cheese-loft; some going, some coming,
some scribbling, some talking, some drinking, some smoking, others
jangling; and the whole room stinking of tobacco, like a Dutch scoot
[schuyt], or a boatswain's cabin. The walls were hung round with gilt
frames, as a farrier's shop with horse-shoes; which contained
abundance of rarities, viz., Nectar and Ambrosia, May-dew, Golden
Elixirs, Popular Pills, Liquid Snuff, Beautifying Waters, Dentifrices,
Drops, and Lozenges; all as infallible as the Pope, 'Where every one
(as the famous Saffolde has it) above the rest, Deservedly has gain'd
the name of best:' every medicine being so catholic, it pretends to
nothing less than universality. So that, had not my friend told me
'twas a coffee-house, I should have taken it for Quacks' Hall, or the
parlour of some eminent mountebank. We each of us stuck in our mouths
a pipe of sotweed, and now began to look about us."
A description of Man's Coffee-house, situate in Scotland-yard, near
the water-side, is an excellent picture of a fashionable coffee-house
of the day. It took its name from the proprietor, Alexander Man, and
was sometimes known as Old Man's, or the Royal Coffee-house, to
distinguish it from Young Man's and Little Man's minor establishments
in the neighbourhood:--
"We now ascended a pair of stairs, which brought us into an
old-fashioned room, where a gaudy crowd of odoriferous _Tom-Essences_
were walking backwards and forwards with their hats in their hands,
not daring to convert them to their intended use, lest it should put
the foretops of their wigs into some disorder. We squeezed through
till we got to the end of the room, where, at a small table, we sat
down, and observed that it was as great a rarity to hear anybody call
for a dish of _Politician's porridge_, or any other liquor, as it is
to hear a beau call for a pipe of tobacco; their whole exercise being
to charge and discharge their nostrils, and keep the curls of their
periwigs in their proper order. The clashing of their snush-box lids,
in opening and shutting, made more noise than their tongues. Bows and
cringes of the newest mode were here exchanged, 'twixt friend and
friend, with wonderful exactness. They made a humming like so many
hornets in a country chimney, not with their talking, but with their
whispering over their new _Minuets_ and _Bories_, with their hands in
their pockets, if only freed from their snush-box. We now began to be
thoughtful of a pipe of tobacco; whereupon we ventured to call for
some instruments of evaporation, which were accordingly brought us,
but with such a kind of unwillingness, as if they would much rather
have been rid of our company; for their tables were so very neat, and
shined with rubbing, like the upper-leathers of an alderman's shoes,
and as brown as the top of a country housewife's cupboard. The floor
was as clean swept as a Sir Courtly's dining-room, which made us look
round, to see if there were no orders hung up to impose the forfeiture
of so much Mop-money upon any person that should spit out of the
chimney-corner. Notwithstanding we wanted an example to encourage us
in our porterly rudeness, we ordered them to light the wax-candle, by
which we ignified our pipes and blew about our whiffs; at which
several Sir Foplins drew their faces into as many peevish wrinkles, as
the beaux at the Bow-street Coffee-house, near Covent-garden did, when
the gentleman in masquerade came in amongst them, with his
oyster-barrel muff and turnip-buttons, to ridicule their fopperies."
A cabinet picture of the Coffee-house life of a century and a half
since is thus given in the well-known _Journey through England_ in
1714: "I am lodged," says the tourist, "in the street called Pall
Mall, the ordinary residence of all strangers, because of its vicinity
to the Queen's Palace, the Park, the Parliament House, the Theatres,
and the Chocolate and Coffee-houses, where the best company frequent.
If you would know our manner of living, 'tis thus: we rise by nine,
and those that frequent great men's levees, find entertainment at them
till eleven, or, as in Holland, go to tea-tables; about twelve the
_beau monde_ assemble in several Coffee or Chocolate houses: the best
of which are the Cocoa-tree and White's Chocolate-houses, St. James's,
the Smyrna, Mrs. Rochford's, and the British Coffee-houses; and all
these so near one another, that in less than an hour you see the
company of them all. We are carried to these places in chairs (or
sedans), which are here very cheap, a guinea a week, or a shilling per
hour, and your chairmen serve you for porters to run on errands, as
your gondoliers do at Venice.
"If it be fine weather, we take a turn into the Park till two, when we
go to dinner; and if it be dirty, you are entertained at piquet or
basset at White's, or you may talk politics at the Smyrna or St.
James's. I must not forget to tell you that the parties have their
different places, where, however, a stranger is always well received;
but a Whig will no more go to the Cocoa-tree or Ozinda's, than a Tory
will be seen at the Coffee-house, St. James's.
"The Scots go generally to the British, and a mixture of all sorts to
the Smyrna. There are other little Coffee-houses much frequented in
this neighbourhood,--Young Man's for officers, Old Man's for
stock-jobbers, pay-masters, and courtiers, and Little Man's for
sharpers. I never was so confounded in my life as when I entered into
this last: I saw two or three tables full at faro, heard the box and
dice rattling in the room above stairs, and was surrounded by a set of
sharp faces, that I was afraid would have devoured me with their eyes.
I was glad to drop two or three half crowns at faro to get off with a
clear skin, and was overjoyed I so got rid of them.
"At two, we generally go to dinner; ordinaries are not so common here
as abroad, yet the French have set up two or three good ones for the
convenience of foreigners in Suffolk-street, where one is tolerably
well served; but the general way here is to make a party at the
Coffee-house to go to dine at the tavern, where we sit till six, when
we go to the play; except you are invited to the table of some great
man, which strangers are always courted to, and nobly entertained."
We may here group the leading Coffee-houses,[8] the principal of which
will be more fully described hereafter:
"Before 1715, the number of Coffee-houses in London was reckoned at
two thousand. Every profession, trade, class, party, had its favourite
Coffee-house. The lawyers discussed law or literature, criticized the
last new play, or retailed the freshest Westminster Hall "bite" at
Nando's or the Grecian, both close on the purlieus of the Temple. Here
the young bloods of the Inns-of-Court paraded their Indian gowns and
lace caps of a morning, and swaggered in their lace coats and Mechlin
ruffles at night, after the theatre. The Cits met to discuss the rise
and fall of stocks, and to settle the rate of insurance, at Garraway's
or Jonathan's; the parsons exchanged university gossip, or commented
on Dr. Sacheverel's last sermon at Truby's or at Child's in St. Paul's
Churchyard; the soldiers mustered to grumble over their grievances at
Old or Young Man's, near Charing Cross; the St. James's and the Smyrna
were the head-quarters of the Whig politicians, while the Tories
frequented the Cocoa-tree or Ozinda's, all in St. James's-street;
Scotchmen had their house of call at Forrest's, Frenchmen at Giles's
or Old Slaughter's, in St. Martin's-lane; the gamesters shook their
elbows in White's and the Chocolate-houses round Covent Garden; the
_virtuosi_ honoured the neighbourhood of Gresham College; and the
leading wits gathered at Will's, Button's, or Tom's, in Great
Russell-street, where after the theatre was playing at piquet and the
best of conversation till midnight. At all these places, except a few
of the most aristocratic Coffee or Chocolate-houses of the West-End,
smoking was allowed. A penny was laid down at the bar on entering, and
the price of a dish of tea or coffee seems to have been two-pence:
this charge covered newspapers and lights. The established frequenters
of the house had their regular seats, and special attention from the
fair lady at the bar, and the tea or coffee boys.
"To these Coffee-houses men of all classes, who had either leisure or
money, resorted to spend both; and in them, politics, play, scandal,
criticism, and business, went on hand-in-hand. The transition from
Coffee-house to Club was easy. Thus Tom's, a Coffee-house till 1764,
in that year, by a guinea subscription, among nearly seven hundred of
the nobility, foreign ministers, gentry, and geniuses of the age,
became the place of meeting for the subscribers exclusively.[9] In the
same way, White's and the Cocoa-tree changed their character from
Chocolate-house to Club. When once a house had customers enough of
standing and good repute, and acquainted with each other, it was quite
worth while--considering the characters who, on the strength of
assurance, tolerable manners, and a laced coat, often got a footing in
these houses while they continued open to the public, to purchase
power of excluding all but subscribers."
Thus, the chief places of resort were at this period Coffee and
Chocolate-houses, in which some men almost lived, as they do at the
present day, at their Clubs. Whoever wished to find a gentleman
commonly asked, not where he resided, but which coffee-house he
frequented. No decently attired idler was excluded, provided he laid
down his penny at the bar; but this he could seldom do without
struggling through the crowd of beaux who fluttered round the lovely
bar-maid. Here the proud nobleman or country squire was not to be
distinguished from the genteel thief and daring highwayman. "Pray,
sir," says Aimwell to Gibbet, in Farquhar's _Beaux Stratagem_, "ha'n't
I seen your face at Will's Coffee-house?" The robber's reply is: "Yes,
Sir, and at White's too."
Three of Addison's papers in the _Spectator_, (Nos. 402, 481, and
568,) are humorously descriptive of the Coffee-houses of this period.
No. 403 opens with the remark that "the courts of two countries do not
so much differ from one another, as the Court and the City, in their
peculiar ways of life and conversation. In short, the inhabitants of
St. James's, notwithstanding they live under the same laws, and speak
the same language, are a distinct people from those of Cheapside, who
are likewise removed from those of the Temple on the one side, and
those of Smithfield on the other, by several climates and degrees in
their way of thinking and conversing together." For this reason, the
author takes a ramble through London and Westminster, to gather the
opinions of his ingenious countrymen upon a current report of the King
of France's death. "I know the faces of all the principal politicians
within the bills of mortality; and as every Coffee-house has some
particular statesman belonging to it, who is the mouth of the street
where he lives, I always take care to place myself near him, in order
to know his judgment on the present posture of affairs. And, as I
foresaw, the above report would produce a new face of things in
Europe, and many curious speculations in our British Coffee-houses, I
was very desirous to learn the thoughts of our most eminent
politicians on that occasion.
"That I might begin as near the fountain-head as possible, I first of
all called in at St. James's, where I found the whole outward room in
a buzz of politics; the speculations were but very indifferent towards
the door, but grew finer as you advanced to the upper end of the room,
and were so much improved by a knot of theorists, who sat in the inner
room, within the steams of the coffee-pot, that I there heard the
whole Spanish monarchy disposed of, and all the line of Bourbons
provided for in less than a quarter of an hour.
"I afterwards called in at Giles's, where I saw a board of French
gentlemen sitting upon the life and death of their grand monarque.
Those among them who had espoused the Whig interest very positively
affirmed that he had departed this life about a week since, and
therefore, proceeded without any further delay to the release of their
friends in the galleys, and to their own re-establishment; but,
finding they could not agree among themselves, I proceeded on my
intended progress.
"Upon my arrival at Jenny Man's I saw an alert young fellow that
cocked his hat upon a friend of his, who entered just at the same time
with myself, and accosted him after the following manner: 'Well, Jack,
the old prig is dead at last. Sharp's the word. Now or never, boy. Up
to the walls of Paris, directly;' with several other deep reflections
of the same nature.
"I met with very little variation in the politics between Charing
Cross and Covent Garden. And, upon my going into Will's, I found their
discourse was gone off, from the death of the French King, to that of
Monsieur Boileau, Racine, Corneille, and several other poets, whom
they regretted on this occasion as persons who would have obliged the
world with very noble elegies on the death of so great a prince, and
so eminent a patron of learning.
"At a Coffee-house near the Temple, I found a couple of young
gentlemen engaged very smartly in a dispute on the succession to the
Spanish monarchy. One of them seemed to have been retained as advocate
for the Duke of Anjou, the other for his Imperial Majesty. They were
both for regarding the title to that kingdom by the statute laws of
England: but finding them going out of my depth, I pressed forward to
Paul's Churchyard, where I listened with great attention to a learned
man, who gave the company an account of the deplorable state of France
during the minority of the deceased King.
"I then turned on my right hand into Fish-street, where the chief
politician of that quarter, upon hearing the news, (after having taken
a pipe of tobacco, and ruminated for some time,) 'If,' says he, 'the
King of France is certainly dead, we shall have plenty of mackerel
this season: our fishery will not be disturbed by privateers, as it
has been for these ten years past.' He afterwards considered how the
death of this great man would affect our pilchards, and by several
other remarks infused a general joy into his whole audience.
"I afterwards entered a by-coffee-house that stood at the upper end of
a narrow lane, where I met with a conjuror, engaged very warmly with a
laceman who was the great support of a neighbouring conventicle. The
matter in debate was whether the late French King was most like
Augustus Cæsar, or Nero. The controversy was carried on with great
heat on both sides, and as each of them looked upon me very frequently
during the course of their debate, I was under some apprehension that
they would appeal to me, and therefore laid down my penny at the bar,
and made the best of my way to Cheapside.
"I here gazed upon the signs for some time before I found one to my
purpose. The first object I met in the coffee-room was a person who
expressed a great grief for the death of the French King; but upon his
explaining himself, I found his sorrow did not arise from the loss of
the monarch, but for his having sold out of the Bank about three days
before he heard the news of it. Upon which a haberdasher, who was the
oracle of the Coffee-house, and had his circle of admirers about him,
called several to witness that he had declared his opinion, above a
week before, that the French King was certainly dead; to which he
added, that, considering the late advices we had received from France,
it was impossible that it could be otherwise. As he was laying these
together, and debating to his hearers with great authority, there came
a gentleman from Garraway's, who told us that there were several
letters from France just come in, with advice that the King was in
good health, and was gone out a hunting the very morning the post came
away; upon which the haberdasher stole off his hat that hung upon a
wooden peg by him, and retired to his shop with great confusion. This
intelligence put a stop to my travels, which I had prosecuted with so
much satisfaction; not being a little pleased to hear so many
different opinions upon so great an event, and to observe how
naturally, upon such a piece of news, every one is apt to consider it
to his particular interest and advantage."
FOOTNOTES:
[8] From the National Review, No. 8.
[9] We question whether the Coffee-house general business was entirely
given up immediately after the transition.
COFFEE-HOUSE SHARPERS IN 1776.
The following remarks by Sir John Fielding[10] upon the dangerous
classes to be found in our metropolitan Coffee-houses three-quarters
of a century since, are described as "necessary Cautions to all
Strangers resorting thereto."