Not moved by envy, malice, or by spite,
Or pleased with the empty names of wit and sense,
But merely to supply thy want of pence:
This did inspire my muse, when out at heel,
She saw her needy secretary reel;
Grieved that a man, so useful to the age,
Should foot it in so mean an equipage;
A crying scandal that the fees of sense
Should not be able to support the expense
Of a poor scribe, who never thought of wants,
When able to procure a cup of Nantz.'
"Another, called a 'Consoling Epistle to Julian,' is said to have been
written by the Duke of Buckingham.
"From a passage in one of the _Letters from the Dead to the Living_,
we learn, that after Julian's death, and the madness of his successor,
called Summerton, lampoon felt a sensible decay; and there was no more
that brisk spirit of verse, that used to watch the follies and vices
of the men and women of figure, that they could not start new ones
faster than lampoons exposed them."
How these lampoons were concocted we gather from Bays, in the _Hind
and the Panther transversed_:--"'Tis a trifle hardly worth owning; I
was 'tother day at Will's, throwing out something of that nature; and,
i' gad, the hint was taken, and out came that picture; indeed, the
poor fellow was so civil as to present me with a dozen of 'em for my
friends; I think I have here one in my pocket.... Ay, ay, I can do it
if I list, tho' you must not think I have been so dull as to mind
these things myself; but 'tis the advantage of our Coffee-house, that
from their talk, one may write a very good polemical discourse,
without ever troubling one's head with the books of controversy."
Tom Brown describes "a Wit and a Beau set up with little or no
expense. A pair of red stockings and a sword-knot set up one, and
peeping once a day in at Will's, and two or three second-hand sayings,
the other."
Pepys, one night, going to fetch home his wife, stopped in Covent
Garden, at the Great Coffee-house there, as he called Will's, where he
never was before: "Where," he adds, "Dryden, the poet (I knew at
Cambridge), and all the Wits of the town, and Harris the player, and
Mr. Hoole of our College. And had I had time then, or could at other
times, it will be good coming thither, for there, I perceive, is very
witty and pleasant discourse. But I could not tarry; and, as it was
late, they were all ready to go away."
Addison passed each day alike, and much in the manner that Dryden did.
Dryden employed his mornings in writing, dined _en famille_, and then
went to Will's, "only he came home earlier o' nights."
Pope, when very young, was impressed with such veneration for Dryden,
that he persuaded some friends to take him to Will's Coffee-house, and
was delighted that he could say that he had seen Dryden. Sir Charles
Wogan, too, brought up Pope from the Forest of Windsor, to dress _à la
mode_, and introduce at Will's Coffee-house. Pope afterwards described
Dryden as "a plump man with a down look, and not very conversible;"
and Cibber could tell no more "but that he remembered him a decent old
man, arbitor of critical disputes at Will's." Prior sings of--
"the younger Stiles,
Whom Dryden pedagogues at Will's!"
Most of the hostile criticisms on his Plays, which Dryden has noticed
in his various Prefaces, appear to have been made at his favourite
haunt, Will's Coffee-house.
Dryden is generally said to have been returning from Will's to his
house in Gerard-street, when he was cudgelled in Rose-street by three
persons hired for the purpose by Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, in the
winter of 1679. The assault, or "the Rose-alley Ambuscade," certainly
took place; but it is not so certain that Dryden was on his way from
Will's, and he then lived in Long Acre, not Gerard-street.
It is worthy of remark that Swift was accustomed to speak
disparagingly of Will's, as in his _Rhapsody on Poetry_:--
"Be sure at Will's the following day
Lie snug, and hear what critics say;
And if you find the general vogue
Pronounces you a stupid rogue,
Damns all your thoughts as low and little;
Sit still, and swallow down your spittle."
Swift thought little of the frequenters of Will's: he used to say,
"the worst conversation he ever heard in his life was at Will's
Coffee-house, where the wits (as they were called) used formerly to
assemble; that is to say, five or six men, who had writ plays or at
least prologues, or had a share in a miscellany, came thither, and
entertained one another with their trifling composures, in so
important an air as if they had been the noblest efforts of human
nature, or that the fate of kingdoms depended on them."
In the first number of the _Tatler_, Poetry is promised under the
article of Will's Coffee-house. The place, however, changed after
Dryden's time: "you used to see songs, epigrams, and satires in the
hands of every man you met; you have now only a pack of cards; and
instead of the cavils about the turn of the expression, the elegance
of the style, and the like, the learned now dispute only about the
truth of the game." "In old times, we used to sit upon a play here,
after it was acted, but now the entertainment's turned another way."
The _Spectator_ is sometimes seen "thrusting his head into a round of
politicians at Will's, and listening with great attention to the
narratives that are made in these little circular audiences." Then, we
have as an instance of no one member of human society but that would
have some little pretension for some degree in it, "like him who came
to Will's Coffee-house upon the merit of having writ a posie of a
ring." And, "Robin, the porter who waits at Will's, is the best man in
town for carrying a billet: the fellow has a thin body, swift step,
demure looks, sufficient sense, and knows the town."[15]
After Dryden's death in 1701, Will's continued for about ten years to
be still the Wits' Coffee-house, as we see by Ned Ward's account, and
by that in the _Journey through England_ in 1722.
Pope entered with keen relish into society, and courted the
correspondence of the town wits and coffee-house critics. Among his
early friends was Mr. Henry Cromwell, one of the _cousinry_ of the
Protector's family: he was a bachelor, and spent most of his time in
London; he had some pretensions to scholarship and literature, having
translated several of Ovid's Elegies, for Tonson's Miscellany. With
Wycherley, Gay, Dennis, the popular actors and actresses of the day,
and with all the frequenters of Will's, Cromwell was familiar. He had
done more than take a pinch out of Dryden's snuff-box, which was a
point of high ambition and honour at Will's; he had quarrelled with
him about a frail poetess, Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, whom Dryden had
christened Corinna, and who was also known as Sappho. Gay
characterized this literary and eccentric beau as
"Honest, hatless Cromwell, with red breeches;"
it being his custom to carry his hat in his hand when walking with
ladies. What with ladies and literature, rehearsals and reviews, and
critical attention to the quality of his coffee and Brazil snuff,
Henry Cromwell's time was fully occupied in town. Cromwell was a
dangerous acquaintance for Pope at the age of sixteen or seventeen,
but he was a very agreeable one. Most of Pope's letters to his friend
are addressed to him at the Blue Ball, in Great Wild-street, near
Drury-lane; and others to "Widow Hambledon's Coffee-house at the end
of Princes-street, near Drury-lane, London." Cromwell made one visit
to Binfield; on his return to London, Pope wrote to him, "referring to
the ladies in particular," and to his favourite coffee:
"As long as Mocha's happy tree shall grow,
While berries crackle, or while mills shall go;
While smoking streams from silver spouts shall glide
Or China's earth receive the sable tide,
While Coffee shall to British nymphs be dear,
While fragrant steams the bended head shall cheer,
Or grateful bitters shall delight the taste,
So long her honours, name, and praise shall last."
Even at this early period Pope seems to have relied for relief from
headache to the steam of coffee, which he inhaled for this purpose
throughout the whole of his life.[16]
The Taverns and Coffee-houses supplied the place of the Clubs we have
since seen established. Although no exclusive subscription belonged to
any of these, we find by the account which Colley Cibber gives of his
first visit to Will's, in Covent Garden, that it required an
introduction to this Society not to be considered as an impertinent
intruder. There the veteran Dryden had long presided over all the
acknowledged wits and poets of the day, and those who had the
pretension to be reckoned among them. The politicians assembled at the
St. James's Coffee-house, from whence all the articles of political
news in the first _Tatlers_ are dated. The learned frequented the
Grecian Coffee-house in Devereux-court. Locket's, in Gerard-street,
Soho, and Pontac's, were the fashionable taverns where the young and
gay met to dine: and White's and other chocolate houses seem to have
been the resort of the same company in the morning. Three o'clock, or
at latest four, was the dining-hour of the most fashionable persons in
London, for in the country no such late hours had been adopted. In
London, therefore, soon after six, the men began to assemble at the
coffee-house they frequented if they were not setting in for hard
drinking, which seems to have been much less indulged in private
houses than in taverns. The ladies made visits to one another, which
it must be owned was a much less waste of time when considered as an
amusement for the evening, than now, as being a morning occupation.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] Will's Coffee-house first had the title of the Red Cow, then of
the Rose, and, we believe, is the same house alluded to in the
pleasant story in the second number of the _Tatler_:--
"Supper and friends expect we at the Rose."
The Rose, however, was a common sign for houses of public
entertainment.
[15] _The Spectator_, No. 398.
[16] Carruthers: Life of Pope.
BUTTON'S COFFEE-HOUSE.
Will's was the great resort for the wits of Dryden's time, after whose
death it was transferred to Button's. Pope describes the houses as
"opposite each other, in Russell-street, Covent Garden," where Addison
established Daniel Button, in a new house, about 1712; and his fame,
after the production of _Cato_, drew many of the Whigs thither. Button
had been servant to the Countess of Warwick. The house is more
correctly described as "over against Tom's, near the middle of the
south side of the street."
Addison was the great patron of Button's; but it is said that when he
suffered any vexation from his Countess, he withdrew the company from
Button's house. His chief companions, before he married Lady Warwick,
were Steele, Budgell, Philips, Carey, Davenant, and Colonel Brett. He
used to breakfast with one or other of them in St. James's-place, dine
at taverns with them, then to Button's, and then to some tavern again,
for supper in the evening; and this was the usual round of his life,
as Pope tells us, in Spence's _Anecdotes_; where Pope also says:
"Addison usually studied all the morning, then met his party at
Button's, dined there, and stayed five or six hours; and sometimes far
into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it
too much for me: it hurt my health, and so I quitted it." Again:
"There had been a coldness between me and Mr. Addison for some time,
and we had not been in company together for a good while anywhere but
at Button's Coffee-house, where I used to see him almost every day."
Here Pope is reported to have said of Patrick, the lexicographer, that
"a dictionary-maker might know the meaning of one word, but not of two
put together."
Button's was the receiving-house for contributions to _The Guardian_,
for which purpose was put up a lion's head letter-box, in imitation of
the celebrated lion at Venice, as humorously announced. Thus:--
"N.B.--Mr. Ironside has, within five weeks last past, muzzled three
lions, gorged five, and killed one. On Monday next the skin of the
dead one will be hung up, _in terrorem_, at Button's Coffee-house,
over against Tom's in Covent Garden."[17]
"Button's Coffee-house,--
"Mr. Ironside, I have observed that this day you make mention of
Will's Coffee-house, as a place where people are too polite to hold a
man in discourse by the button. Everybody knows your honour frequents
this house, therefore they will take an advantage against me, and say
if my company was as civil as that at Will's. You would say so.
Therefore pray your honour do not be afraid of doing me justice,
because people would think it may be a conceit below you on this
occasion to name the name of your humble servant, Daniel Button.--The
young poets are in the back room, and take their places as you
directed."[18]
"I intend to publish once every week the roarings of the Lion, and
hope to make him roar so loud as to be heard over all the British
nation.
"I have, I know not how, been drawn into tattle of myself, _more
majorum_, almost the length of a whole _Guardian_. I shall therefore
fill up the remaining part of it with what still relates to my own
person, and my correspondents. Now I would have them all know that on
the 20th instant it is my intention to erect a Lion's Head, in
imitation of those I have described in Venice, through which all the
private commonwealth is said to pass. This head is to open a most wide
and voracious mouth, which shall take in such letters and papers as
are conveyed to me by my correspondents, it being my resolution to
have a particular regard to all such matters as come to my hands
through the mouth of the Lion. There will be under it a box, of which
the key will be in my own custody, to receive such papers as are
dropped into it. Whatever the Lion swallows I shall digest for the use
of the publick. This head requires some time to finish, the workmen
being resolved to give it several masterly touches, and to represent
it as ravenous as possible. It will be set up in Button's
Coffee-house, in Covent Garden, who is directed to shew the way to the
Lion's Head, and to instruct any young author how to convey his works
into the mouth of it with safety and secrecy."[19]
"I think myself obliged to acquaint the publick, that the Lion's Head,
of which I advertised them about a fortnight ago, is now erected at
Button's Coffee-house, in Russell-street, Covent Garden, where it
opens its mouth at all hours for the reception of such intelligence as
shall be thrown into it. It is reckoned an excellent piece of
workmanship, and was designed by a great hand in imitation of the
antique Egyptian lion, the face of it being compounded out of that of
a lion and a wizard. The features are strong and well furrowed. The
whiskers are admired by all that have seen them. It is planted on the
western side of the Coffee-house, holding its paws under the chin,
upon a box, which contains everything that he swallows. He is, indeed,
a proper emblem of knowledge and action, being all head and paws."[20]
"Being obliged, at present, to attend a particular affair of my own, I
do empower my printer to look into the arcana of the lion, and select
out of them such as may be of publick utility; and Mr. Button is
hereby authorized and commanded to give my said printer free ingress
and egress to the lion, without any hindrance, lest, or molestation
whatsoever, until such time as he shall receive orders to the
contrary. And, for so doing, this shall be his warrant."[21]
"My Lion, whose jaws are at all times open to intelligence, informs
me that there are a few enormous weapons still in being; but that they
are to be met with only in gaming-houses and some of the obscure
retreats of lovers, in and about Drury-lane and Covent Garden."[22]
This memorable Lion's Head was tolerably well carved: through the
mouth the letters were dropped into a till at Button's; and beneath
were inscribed these two lines from Martial:--
"Cervantur magnis isti Cervicibus ungues:
Non nisi delictâ pascitur ille ferâ."
The head was designed by Hogarth, and is etched in Ireland's
_Illustrations_. Lord Chesterfield is said to have once offered for
the Head fifty guineas. From Button's it was removed to the
Shakspeare's Head Tavern, under the Piazza, kept by a person named
Tomkyns; and in 1751, was, for a short time, placed in the Bedford
Coffee-house immediately adjoining the Shakspeare, and there employed
as a letter-box by Dr. John Hill, for his _Inspector_. In 1769,
Tomkyns was succeeded by his waiter, Campbell, as proprietor of the
tavern and lion's head, and by him the latter was retained until Nov.
8, 1804, when it was purchased by Mr. Charles Richardson, of
Richardson's Hotel, for £17. 10_s._, who also possessed the original
sign of the Shakspeare's Head. After Mr. Richardson's death in 1827,
the Lion's Head devolved to his son, of whom it was bought by the Duke
of Bedford, and deposited at Woburn Abbey, where it still remains.
Pope was subjected to much annoyance and insult at Button's. Sir
Samuel Garth wrote to Gay, that everybody was pleased with Pope's
Translation, "but a few at Button's;" to which Gay adds, to Pope, "I
am confirmed that at Button's your character is made very free with,
as to morals, etc."
Cibber, in a letter to Pope, says:--"When you used to pass your hours
at Button's, you were even there remarkable for your satirical itch of
provocation; scarce was there a gentleman of any pretension to wit,
whom your unguarded temper had not fallen upon in some biting epigram,
among which you once caught a pastoral Tartar, whose resentment, that
your punishment might be proportionate to the smart of your poetry,
had stuck up a birchen rod in the room, to be ready whenever you might
come within reach of it; and at this rate you writ and rallied and
writ on, till you rhymed yourself quite out of the coffee-house." The
"pastoral Tartar" was Ambrose Philips, who, says Johnson, "hung up a
rod at Button's, with which he threatened to chastise Pope."
Pope, in a letter to Craggs, thus explains the affair:--"Mr. Philips
did express himself with much indignation against me one evening at
Button's Coffee-house, (as I was told,) saying that I was entered into
a cabal with Dean Swift and others, to write against the Whig
interest, and in particular to undermine his own reputation and that
of his friends, Steele and Addison; but Mr. Philips never opened his
lips to my face, on this or any like occasion, though I was almost
every night in the same room with him, nor ever offered me any
indecorum. Mr. Addison came to me a night or two after Philips had
talked in this idle manner, and assured me of his disbelief of what
had been said, of the friendship we should always maintain, and
desired I would say nothing further of it. My Lord Halifax did me the
honour to stir in this matter, by speaking to several people to
obviate a false aspersion, which might have done me no small prejudice
with one party. However, Philips did all he could secretly to continue
the report with the Hanover Club, and kept in his hands the
subscriptions paid for me to him, as secretary to that Club. The heads
of it have since given him to understand, that they take it ill; but
(upon the terms I ought to be with such a man,) I would not ask him
for this money, but commissioned one of the players, his equals, to
receive it. This is the whole matter; but as to the secret grounds of
this malignity, they will make a very pleasant history when we meet."
Another account says that the rod was hung up at the bar of Button's,
and that Pope avoided it by remaining at home--"his usual custom."
Philips was known for his courage and superior dexterity with the
sword: he afterwards became justice of the peace, and used to mention
Pope, whenever he could get a man in authority to listen to him, as an
enemy to the Government.
At Button's the leading company, particularly Addison and Steele, met
in large flowing flaxen wigs. Sir Godfrey Kneller, too, was a
frequenter.
The master died in 1731, when in the _Daily Advertiser_, Oct. 5,
appeared the following:--"On Sunday morning, died, after three days'
illness, Mr. Button, who formerly kept Button's Coffee-house, in
Russell-street, Covent Garden; a very noted house for wits, being the
place where the Lyon produced the famous _Tatlers_ and _Spectators_,
written by the late Mr. Secretary Addison and Sir Richard Steele,
Knt., which works will transmit their names with honour to posterity."
Mr. Cunningham found in the vestry-books of St. Paul's, Covent Garden:
"1719, April 16. Received of Mr. Daniel Button, for two places in the
pew No. 18, on the south side of the north Isle,--2_l._ 2_s._" J. T.
Smith states that a few years after Button, the Coffee-house declined,
and Button's name appeared in the books of St. Paul's, as receiving an
allowance from the parish.
Button's continued in vogue until Addison's death and Steele's
retirement into Wales, after which the house was deserted; the
coffee-drinkers went to the Bedford Coffee-house, the dinner-parties
to the Shakspeare.
Among other wits who frequented Button's were Swift, Arbuthnot,
Savage, Budgell, Martin Folkes, and Drs. Garth and Armstrong. In 1720,
Hogarth mentions "four drawings in Indian ink" of the characters at
Button's Coffee-house. In these were sketches of Arbuthnot, Addison,
Pope, (as it is conjectured,) and a certain Count Viviani, identified
years afterwards by Horace Walpole, when the drawings came under his
notice. They subsequently came into Ireland's possession.[23]
Jemmy Maclaine, or M'Clean, the fashionable highwayman, was a frequent
visitor at Button's. Mr. John Taylor, of the _Sun_ newspaper,
describes Maclaine as a tall, showy, good-looking man. A Mr. Donaldson
told Taylor that, observing Maclaine paid particular attention to the
bar-maid of the Coffee-house, the daughter of the landlord, he gave a
hint to the father of Maclaine's dubious character. The father
cautioned the daughter against the highwayman's addresses, and
imprudently told her by whose advice he put her on her guard; she as
imprudently told Maclaine. The next time Donaldson visited the
Coffee-room, and was sitting in one of the boxes, Maclaine entered,
and in a loud tone said, "Mr. Donaldson, I wish to _spake_ to you in a
private room." Mr. D. being unarmed, and naturally afraid of being
alone with such a man, said, in answer, that as nothing could pass
between them that he did not wish the whole world to know, he begged
leave to decline the invitation. "Very well," said Maclaine, as he
left the room, "we shall meet again." A day or two after, as Mr.
Donaldson was walking near Richmond, in the evening, he saw Maclaine
on horseback; but, fortunately, at that moment, a gentleman's carriage
appeared in view, when Maclaine immediately turned his horse towards
the carriage, and Donaldson hurried into the protection of Richmond as
fast as he could. But for the appearance of the carriage, which
presented better prey, it is probable that Maclaine would have shot
Mr. Donaldson immediately.
Maclaine's father was an Irish Dean; his brother was a Calvinist
minister in great esteem at the Hague. Maclaine himself has been a
grocer in Welbeck-street, but losing a wife that he loved extremely,
and by whom he had one little girl, he quitted his business with two
hundred pounds in his pocket, which he soon spent, and then took to
the road with only one companion, Plunket, a journeyman apothecary.
Maclaine was taken in the autumn of 1750, by selling a laced waistcoat
to a pawnbroker in Monmouth-street, who happened to carry it to the
very man who had just sold the lace. Maclaine impeached his companion,
Plunket, but he was not taken. The former got into verse: Gray, in his
_Long Story_, sings:
"A sudden fit of ague shook him;
He stood as mute as poor M'Lean."