Produced by Al Haines.
LONDON SOUVENIRS
BY
CHARLES WILLIAM HECKETHORN
AUTHOR OF
'THE SECRET SOCIETIES OP ALL AGES,'
'LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS,' ETC.
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1899
*CONTENTS*
I. GAMBLING-CLUBS AND HIGH PLAY
II. WITTY WOMEN AND PRETTY WOMEN
III. OLD LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES
IV. OLD M.P.S AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS
V. FAMOUS OLD ACTORS
VI. OLD JUDGES AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS
VII. SOME FAMOUS LONDON ACTRESSES
VIII. QUEER CLUBS OF FORMER DAYS
IX. CURIOUS STORIES OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE
X. WITS AND BEAUX OF OLD LONDON SOCIETY
XI. LONDON SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES
XII. OLD LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS
I. THE GALLERIED TAVERNS OF OLD LONDON
II. OLD LONDON TEA-GARDENS
XIII. WILLIAM PATERSON AND THE BANK OF ENGLAND
XIV. THE OLD DOCTORS
XV. THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
XVI. ROGUES ASSORTED
XVII. BARS AND BARRISTERS
XVIII. THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKERS AND THE KIT-KAT AND ROTA CLUBS
XIX. HAMPTON COURT PALACE AND ITS MASTERS
*LONDON SOUVENIRS*
*I.*
*GAMBLING-CLUBS AND HIGH PLAY.*
Philosophers may argue, and moralists preach, the former against the
folly, and the latter against the wickedness of gambling, but, as may be
expected, their remonstrances pass but as a gentle breeze over the
outwardly placid ocean of play, causing the fishes--the familiars of the
gambling world--languidly to raise their heads, and mildly to inquire:
'What's all that row about?' Gambling is one of the strongest passions
in the human breast, and no warning, no exhibition of fatal examples,
will ever stop the indulgence in the excitement it procures. It assumes
many phases; in all men have undergone disastrous experiences, and yet
they repeat the dangerous and usually calamitous experiments. In no
undertaking has so much money been lost as in mining; prizes have
occasionally been drawn, but at such rare intervals as to be cautions
rather than encouragements; and yet, even at the present day, with all
the experience of past failures, sanguine speculators fill empty shafts
with their gold, which is quickly fished up by the greedy promoters.
Some of the now most respectable West End clubs originally were only
gambling-hells. They are not so now; but the improvement this would
seem to imply is apparent only. Our manners have improved, but not our
morals; the table-legs wear frilled trousers now, but the legs are there
all the same, even the blacklegs. But it is the past more than the
present we wish to speak of.
Early in the last century gaming was so prevalent that in one night's
search the Leet's Jury of Westminster discovered, and afterwards
presented to the justices, no fewer than thirty-five gambling-houses.
The Society for the Reformation of Manners published a statement of
their proceedings, by which it appeared that in the year beginning with
December 1, 1724, to the same date in 1725, they had prosecuted 2,506
persons for keeping disorderly and gaming houses; and for thirty-four
years the total number of their prosecutions amounted to the astounding
figure of 91,899. In 1728 the following note was issued by the King's
order: 'It having been represented to his Majesty that such felons and
their accomplices are greatly encouraged and harboured by persons
keeping night-houses ... and that the gaming-houses ... much contribute
to the corruption of the morals of those of an inferior rank ... his
Majesty has commanded me to recommend it, in his name, in the strongest
manner to the Justices of the Peace to employ their utmost care and
vigilance in the preventing and suppressing of these disorders, etc.'
This warning was then necessary, though as early as 1719 an order for
putting in execution an old statute of Henry VIII. had been issued to
all victuallers, and others whom it might concern. The order ran: 'That
none shall keep or maintain any house or place of unlawful games, on
pain of 40s. for every day, of forfeiting their recognisance, and of
being suppressed; that none shall use or haunt such places, on pain of
6s. 8d. for every offence; and that no artificer, or his journeyman,
husbandman, apprentice, labourer, mariner, fisherman, waterman, or
serving-man shall play at tables, tennis, dice, cards, bowls, clash,
coiting, loggating, or any other unlawful game, out of Christmas, or
then out of their master's house or presence, on pain of 20s.'
There were thus many attempts at controlling the conduct of the lower
orders, but the gentry set them a bad example. The Cocoa-Tree Club, the
Tory chocolate-house of Queen Anne's reign, at No. 64, St. James's
Street, was a regular gambling-hell. In the evening of a Court
Drawing-room in 1719, a number of gentlemen had a dispute over hazard at
that house; the quarrel became general, and, as they fought with their
swords, three gentlemen were mortally wounded, and the affray was only
ended by the interposition of the Royal Guards, who were compelled to
knock the parties down with the butt-ends of their muskets
indiscriminately, as entreaties and commands were disregarded. Walpole,
in his correspondence, relates: 'Within this week there has been a cast
at hazard at the Cocoa-Tree, the difference of which amounted to
L180,000. Mr. O'Birne, an Irish gamester, had won L100,000 of a young
Mr. Harvey, of Chigwell, just started from a midshipman into an estate
by his elder brother's death. O'Birne said: "You can never pay me." "I
can," said the youth; "my estate will sell for the debt." "No," said
O'Birne, "I will win L10,000; you shall throw for the odd L90,000."
They did, and Harvey won.' It is not on record whether he took the
lesson to heart. The house was, in 1746, turned into a club, but its
reputation was not improved; bribery, high play, and foul play continued
to be common in it.
Another chocolate-house was White's, now White's Club, St. James's
Street. As a chocolate-house it was established about 1698, near the
bottom of the west side of St. James's Street; it was burnt down in
1773. Plate VI. of Hogarth's 'Rake's Progress' shows a room full of
players at White's, so intent upon play as neither to see the flames nor
hear the watchmen bursting into the room. It was indeed a famous
gambling and betting club, a book for entering wagers always lying on
the table; the play was frightful. Once a man dropped down dead at the
door, and was carried in; the club immediately made bets whether he was
dead or only in a fit; and when they were going to bleed him the
wagerers for his death interposed, saying it would affect the fairness
of the bet. Walpole, who tells the story, hints that it is invented.
Many a highwayman--one is shown in Hogarth's picture above referred
to--there took his chocolate or threw his main before starting for
business. There Lord Chesterfield gamed; Steele dated all his love news
in the _Tatler_ from White's, which was known as the rendezvous of
infamous sharpers and noble cullies, and bets were laid to the effect
that Sir William Burdett, one of its members, would be the first baronet
who would be hanged. The gambling went on till dawn of day; and Pelham,
when Prime Minister, was not ashamed to divide his time between his
official table and the piquet table at White's. General Scott was a
very cautious player, avoiding all indulgence in excesses at table, and
thus managed to win at White's no less than L200,000, so that when his
daughter, Joanna, married George Canning he was able to give her a
fortune of L100,000.
Another club founded specially for gambling was Almack's, the original
Brooks's, which was opened in Pall Mall in 1764. Some of its members
were Macaronis, the fops of the day, famous for their long curls and
eye-glasses. 'At Almack's,' says Walpole, 'which has taken the _pas_ of
White's ... the young men of the age lose L10,000, L15,000, L20,000 in
an evening.' The play at this club was only for rouleaux of L50 each,
and generally there was L10,000 in gold on the table. The gamesters
began by pulling off their embroidered clothes, and put on frieze
garments, or turned their coats inside out for luck. They put on pieces
of leather to save their lace ruffles; and to guard their eyes from the
light, and to prevent tumbling their hair, wore high-crowned straw hats
with broad brims, and sometimes masks to conceal their emotions.
Almack's afterwards was known as the 'Goose-Tree' Club--a rather
significant name--and Pitt was one of its most constant frequenters, and
there met his adherents. Gibbon also was a member, when the club was
still Almack's--which, indeed, was the name of the founder and original
proprietor of the club.
Another gaming-club was Brooks's, which at first was formed by Almack
and afterwards by Brooks, a wine-merchant and money-lender. The club
was opened in 1778, and some of the original rules are curious: '21. No
gaming in the eating-room, except tossing up for reckonings, on penalty
of paying the whole bill of the members present. 30. Any member of this
society that shall become a candidate for any other club (old White's
excepted) shall be _ipso facto_ excluded. 40. Every person playing at
the new quinze-table shall keep fifty guineas before him. 41. Every
person playing at the twenty-guinea table shall keep no less than twenty
guineas before him.' According to Captain Gronow, play at Brooks's was
even higher than at White's. Faro and macao were indulged in to an
extent which enabled a man to win or to lose a considerable fortune in
one night. George Harley Drummond, a partner in the bank of that name,
played only once in his life at White's, and lost L20,000 to Brummell.
This event caused him to retire from the banking-house. Lord Carlisle
and Charles Fox lost enormous sums at Brooks's.
At Tom's Coffee House, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, there was
playing at piquet, and the club consisting of seven hundred noblemen and
gentlemen, many of whom belonged to the gay society of that day (the
middle of the last century), we may be sure the play was high.
Arthur's Club, in St. James's Street, so named after its founder (who
died in 1761), was a famous gambling centre in its day. A nobleman of
the highest position and influence in society was detected in cheating
at cards, and after a trial, which did not terminate in his favour, he
died of a broken heart. This happened in 1836.
The Union, which was founded in this century, was a regular
gambling-club. It was first held at what is now the Ordnance Office,
Pall Mall, and subsequently in the house afterwards occupied by the
Bishop of Winchester.
In the early days of this century the most notorious gambling-club was
Crockford's, in St. James's Street. Crockford originally was a
fishmonger, and occupied the old bulk-shop west of Temple Bar. But,
having made money by betting, 'he gave up,' as a recent writer on 'The
Gambling World' says, 'selling soles and salmon, and went in for
catching fish, confining his operations to gudgeons and flat-fish'; or,
in other words, he established a gambling-house, first by taking over
Watier's old club-house, where he set up a hazard bank, and won a great
deal of money; he then separated from his partner, who had a bad year
and failed. Crockford removed to St. James's Street, where he built the
magnificent club-house which bore his name. It was erected at a cost of
upwards of L100,000, and, in its vast proportions and palatial
decorations, surpassed anything of the kind ever seen in London. To
support such an establishment required a large income; yet Crockford
made it, for the highest play was encouraged at his card-tables, but
especially at the hazard-tables, where Crockford nightly took his stand,
prepared for all comers. And he was successful, and became a
millionaire. When he died he left L700,000, and he had lost as much in
mining and other speculations. His death was hastened, it is said, by
excessive anxiety over his bets on the turf. He retired from the
management of the club in 1840, and died in 1844. The club was soon
after closed, and after a few years' interval was reopened as the Naval,
Military, and Civil Service Club. It was then converted into
dining-rooms, called the Wellington. Later on it was taken by a
joint-stock company as an auction-room, and now it is again a
club-house, known as the Devonshire Club.
We referred above to Watier's Club. It was established in 1807, at the
instigation of the Prince of Wales, and high play was the chief pursuit
of its members. 'Princes and nobles,' says Timbs in his 'Curiosities of
London,' 'lost or gained fortunes amongst themselves.' But the pace was
too fast. The club did not last under its original patronage, and it
was then, when it was moribund, taken over by Crockford. At this club,
also, macao was the favourite game, as at Brooks's.
One of the most objectionable results of promiscuous gambling is the
disreputable company into which it often throws a gentleman.
'That Marquis, who is now familiar grown
With every reprobate about the town....
Now, sad transition! all his lordship's nights
Are passed with blacklegs and with parasites..
The rage of gaming and the circling glass
Eradicate distinction in each class;
For he who scarce a dinner can afford
Is equal in importance with my lord.'
This is just what happened when gambling-hells were openly flourishing
in London, and what happens now when gambling-clubs abound, and are
almost daily raided by the police, when some actually respectable people
are found mixed up with the rascaldom which supports these clubs. A
perfect mania seems to have seized the lower orders of our day to
gamble; but formerly, for instance, in Walpole's time, in the latter
half of the last century, the upper classes were the worst offenders, of
which the just-mentioned statesman and epistolary chronicler of
small-beer, which, however, by long keeping has acquired a strong and
lasting flavour, gives us many proofs. 'Lord Sandwich,' he reports,
'goes once or twice a week to hunt with the Duke [of Cumberland], and,
as the latter has taken a turn of gaming, Sandwich, to make his
court--and fortune--carries a box and dice in his pocket; and so they
throw a main whenever the hounds are at fault, upon every green hill and
under every green tree.' Five years later, at a magnificent ball and
supper at Bedford House, 'the Duke was playing at hazard with a great
heap of gold before him. Somebody said he looked like the prodigal son
and the fatted calf both.' Under such circumstances it could not fail
that swindlers _par excellence_ sometimes found their way among the
royal and noble gamblers. There was a Sir William Burdett, whose name
had the honour of being inscribed in the betting-room at White's as the
subject of a wager that he would be the first baronet who would be
hanged. He and a lady, 'dressed foreign, as a Princess of the House of
Brandenburg,' cheated Lord Castledurrow (Baron Ashbrook) and Captain
Rodney out of a handsome sum at faro. The noble victim met the Baronet
at Ranelagh, and addressed him thus: 'Sir William, here is the sum I
think I lost last night. Since then I have heard that you are a
professed pickpocket, and therefore I desire to have no further
acquaintance with you.' The Baronet took the money with a respectful
bow, and then asked his Lordship the further favour to set him down at
Buckingham Gate, and without further ceremony jumped into the coach.
Walpole writes to Mann, in 1750, that 'Jemmy Lumley last week had a
party of whist at his own house: the combatants, Lucy Southwell, that
curtseys like a bear, Mrs. Bijean, and Mrs. Mackenzy. They played from
six in the evening till twelve next day, Jemmy never winning one rubber,
and rising a loser of L2,000.... He fancied himself cheated and would
not pay. However, the bear had no share in his evil surmises ... and he
promised a dinner at Hampstead to Lucy and her sister. As he went to
the rendezvous his chaise was stopped, and he was advised by someone not
to proceed. But proceed he did, and in the garden he found Mrs.
Mackenzy. She asked him whether he was going to pay, and, on his
declining to do so, the fair virago took a horsewhip from beneath her
hoop, and fell upon him with the utmost vehemence.'
Members of clubs were fully aware of the nefariousness of their devotion
to gambling. When a waiter at Arthur's Club was taken up for robbery,
George Selwyn said: 'What a horrid idea he will give of us to the people
in Newgate?' Certes, some of the highwaymen in that prison were not
such robbers and scoundrels as some of the aristocratic members of those
clubs. When, in 1750, the people got frightened about an earthquake in
London, predicted to happen in that year, 'Lady Catherine Pelham,'
Walpole tells us, 'Lady James Arundell, and Lord and Lady Galway ... go
this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are going to
play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back, I suppose, to
look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish.'
When the rulers of the nation on such an occasion, or any other occasion
of public terror, possibly caused by their own mismanagement of public
affairs, hypocritically and most impertinently ordered a day of fasting
and humiliation, the gambling-houses used to be filled with officials
and members of Parliament, who thus had a day off.
There was one famous gambling-house we find we have not yet mentioned,
viz., Shaver's Hall, which occupied the whole of the southern side of
Coventry Street, from the Haymarket to Hedge Lane (now Oxenden Street),
and derived its name from the barber of Lord Pembroke, who built it out
of his earnings. Attached to it was a bowling-green, which sloped down
to the south. The place was built about the year 1650, and the
tennis-court belonging to it till recently might still be seen in St.
James's Street.
*II.*
*WITTY WOMEN AND PRETTY WOMEN.*
Certain waves of sentiment or action, or both combined, have at various
times passed over the face of European society. A thousand years ago
the Old Continent went madly crusading to snatch the Holy Sepulchre from
the grasp of the pagan Sultan, who, sick man as he is, still holds it.
The movement had certain advantages: it cleared Europe of a good deal of
ruffianism, which never came back, as it perished on the journey to
Jerusalem, or very properly was killed off by the justly incensed Turks,
who could not understand by what right these hordes of robbers invaded
their country. Then another phase of society madness arose. Some
maniac, clad in armour, on a horse similarly accoutred, would appear,
and challenge everyone to admit that the Lady Gwendolyne Mousetrap, whom
he kept company with, and took to the tea-gardens on Sundays, was the
most peerless damosel, and that whoso doubted it, would not get off by
paying a dollar, but would have to fight it out with him. Then another
mailed and belted chap would jump up, and maintain that the Countess of
Rabbit-Warren--who was the girl he was just then booming--was the finest
woman going, and that that slut Gwendolyne Mousetrap was no better than
she should be. Of course, as soon as the King and Court heard of the
shindy between the two knights a day was appointed when they should
fight it out, the combatants being enclosed in a kind of rat-pit,
officially called lists, whilst the King, his courtiers and their gentle
ladies looked at the sport; and if one of the knights was killed, or
perhaps both were killed, or at least maimed for life, the Lady
Gwendolyne and the Countess of Rabbit-Warren, who, of course, both
assisted at the spectacle, received the congratulations of the Court.
Sometimes one of the knights would funk, and not come up to the scratch;
then he was declared a lame duck, and the lady whom he had left in the
lurch and made a laughing-stock of would erase his name from her
tablets, and shy the trumpery proofs of devotion he had given her, a
worn-out scarf or Brummagem aigrette, out of an upper window. This was
called the age of chivalry. Then a totally different eruption of the
fighting mania--which is, after all, the universal principle in human
action--took place. A vagrant scholasticus would appear in a University
town, and announce that he was ready to hold a disputation with any
professor, Doctor of Divinity, or Master of Arts, on any mortal subject,
the more subtle, and the more incomprehensible, and the more mystical,
the better. Thus, one such scholasticus got into the rostrum at
Tuebingen, and addressed his audience thus: 'I am about to propound
three theses: the answer to the first is known to myself only, and not
to you; to the second, the answer is known neither to you nor to me; to
the third, the answer is known to you only.' This was a promising
programme, and, indeed, proved highly edifying. 'Now, the first
question,' resumed the scholasticus, 'is this: Have I got any breeches
on? You don't know, but I do; I have not. The second question, the
answer to which is known neither to you nor to me, is: Shall I find in
this town any draper willing to advance on credit stuff enough to make
me a pair? And the third question, the answer to which is known to you
only, is: Will any of you pay a tailor's wages to make me a pair? And
now that the argument is clearly before you, we may proceed to the
consideration of the parabolic triangulation of the binocular theorem;'
and then he would bewilder them with a lot of jaw-breaking words, which
then, as now, passed for learning. This was called the age of
scholasticism. It was succeeded by the Renaissance, which, after a good
boil-up of its intellectual ingredients, settled down into a literary
mud, an Acqui-la-Bollente, a Nile mud, pleasant to the soul, and
fertilizing to the mind, the protoplasm of diarists and letter-writers,
of whom--to mention but three--Evelyn, Pepys, and Horace Walpole were
prominent patterns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
It is with the latter, Horace Walpole, of Strawberry Hill, we are
chiefly concerned. Horace Walpole, after enlarging a cottage into a
Gothic castle, with lath and plaster, and rough-cast walls, and wooden
pinnacles, filled it with literary and artistic treasures. But he also
gathered around him a select social circle, which included Garrick, Paul
Whitehead, General Conway, George Selwyn, Richard Bentley, the poet
Gray, Sir Horace Mann, and Lords Edgcumbe and Strafford. And of ladies
there was no lack; there were Mrs. Pritchard, Kitty Clive, Lady Suffolk,
the Misses Berry, and--would you believe it?--Hannah More! It was the
age for chronicling small-beer and home-made wine, gossip, scandal, and
frivolity; and Horace Walpole enjoyed existence as a cynical Seladon or
platonic Bluebeard amidst this bevy of lively, gay-minded, frolicsome
beauties, young and old. Happily, or unhappily, for him, he did not
become acquainted with the Misses Berry before 1788, when he was
seventy-one years of age. He took the most extraordinary liking to
them, and was never content except when they were with him, or
corresponding with him. When they went to Italy, he wrote to them
regularly once a week, and on their return he installed them at Little
Strawberry Hill, a house close to his own, so that he might daily enjoy
their society. He appointed them his literary executors, with the
charge of collecting and publishing his writings, which was done under
the superintendence of Mr. Berry, their father, who was a Yorkshire
gentleman. When Walpole had succeeded to the Earldom of Orford he made
Mary, the elder of the two sisters, an offer of his hand. Both sisters
survived him upwards of sixty years. Little Strawberry Hill, which we
just mentioned as the residence of the Misses Berry, had, before their
coming to live in it, been occupied by Kitty Clive, the famous actress.
Born in 1711, she made her first appearance on the stage of Drury Lane,
and in 1732 she married a brother of Lord Clive, but the union proved
unhappy, and was soon dissolved. She quitted the stage in 1769, leaving
a splendid reputation as an actress and as a woman behind her, and
retired to Little Strawberry Hill, where she lived in ease, surrounded
by friends and respected by the world. Horace Walpole was a constant
visitor at her house, as were many other persons of rank and eminence.
It was said of her that no man could be grave when Kitty chose to be
merry. But she must have been a woman of some spirit, too, for when it
was proposed to stop up a footpath in her neighbourhood she placed
herself at the head of the opponents, and defeated the project. She
died suddenly in 1785, and Walpole placed an urn in the grounds to her
memory, with the inscription:
'Here lived the laughter-loving dame;
A matchless actress, Clive her name.
The comic Muse with her retired,
And shed a tear when she expired.'
The Mrs. Pritchard mentioned above was also an actress, of great and
well-deserved fame. She lived at an originally small house, called
"Ragman's Castle," which she much improved and enlarged. It had, after
her, various occupants, and was finally taken down by Lord Kilmorey
during his occupancy of Orleans House, near which it stood.
Another of the constant visitors at Strawberry Hill was Lady Suffolk,
Pope's 'Chloe.' She was married to the Hon. Charles Howard, from whom
she separated when she became the mistress of the Prince, afterwards
George II., who, as Prince, allowed her L2,000 a year, and as King
L3,200 a year, besides several sums at various times. He gave her
L12,000 towards Marble Hill, the mansion still facing the Thames, which
became her residence. Her husband lived long enough to become Earl of
Suffolk, and dying, left her free to marry, when she was forty-five, the
Hon. George Berkeley, who died eleven years after. She survived him
twenty-one years, and supplied her neighbour, Horace Walpole, with Court
anecdotes and scandal during all that period. Walpole calls her
remarkably 'genteel'--a favourite expression of his, though now so
vulgar!--and, in spite of her antecedents, she was courted by the
highest in the land. Such were the morals of those days. According to
Horace Walpole, her mental qualifications were not of a high order, but
she was gentle and engaging in her manners, and she was a gossip with a
good memory--and that answered her host's purpose admirably. Pope also
made great use of her reminiscences.
Like Dr. Johnson, Horace Walpole liked to fill his house with a lot of
female devotees; but whilst Johnson seemed to prefer a parcel of
disagreeable, ugly, and cantankerous women, always quarrelling among
themselves and with everybody else, Walpole liked his women to be young
and fair, full of life and mirth. By what strange circumstance was the
cynical and sarcastic Walpole led into a sort of friendship with the
mild and pietistic Mrs. Hannah More? It was in 1784 that this queer
friendship began. It appears that about that date Hannah More had
discovered at Bristol a milk woman who wrote verses, just such verses as
Hannah More and Walpole--neither of whom had an idea of poetry--would
consider wonderful. A subscription must be started for the benefit of
the milkwoman, and Hannah More applied to Horace Walpole, who set up for
a Maecenas, though he always expressed the utmost contempt for authors,
for a contribution. Of course, Hannah More did not make this
application without a dose of fulsome compliment to Horace Walpole's
genius, and he went into the trap, subscribed, and expressed his
admiration of the milkwoman's poetry. The woman's name was Yearsley;
she was quite ready to receive the money, but, having evidently a very
high opinion of her own doggerel, she refused to listen to the literary
advice given to her by Horace Walpole and her patroness, with whom she
very soon quarrelled. Walpole condoled with Hannah thus: 'You are not
only benevolence itself, but, with fifty times the genius of Dame
Yearsley, you are void of vanity. How strange that vanity should expel
gratitude! Does not the wretched woman owe her fame to you? ... Dame
Yearsley reminds me of the troubadours, those vagrants whom I used to
admire till I knew their history, and who used to pour out trumpery
verses, and flatter or abuse, accordingly as they were housed and
clothed, or dismissed to the next parish. Yet you did not set this
person in the stocks, after procuring an annuity for her.' By this
letter we see what were Horace Walpole's ideas of patronage: flattery
and a pittance, independence and the stocks. Walpole was open to
flattery. Dr. Johnson was not--at least, not from a woman; he despised
the sex too much to care for their praise. When Hannah More laid it on
very thick in his case, he fiercely turned round on her and said:
'Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should
consider whether or not your flattery is worth his having.' And, with
all his admiration for her character, Walpole could not help sneering at
what he called her saintliness, and venting his sarcasm on her silly
'Coelebs in Search of a Wife,' the absurdity of which has, indeed, been
surpassed by a few modern novels of the same tendency. The last we hear
of their friendship is that he made her a present of a Bible--fancy the
satyr's leer with which he must have presented it to her! She paid him
out for the implied irony by wishing that he would read it.
Among the ladies who were neighbours of Horace Walpole, we must not omit
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who lived for some years in a house on the
south side of the road leading to Twickenham Common. She may justly be
considered as one of the witty, if not of the pretty, women of Walpole's
time. He detested her. Probably he was somewhat jealous of her, for
her letters from Constantinople on Turkish life and society earned her
the sobriquet of the 'Female Horace Walpole.' He writes of her thus
whilst she was living at Florence: 'She is laughed at by the whole town.
Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze anyone.... She
wears a foul mob, that does not cover her greasy black locks, that hang
loose, never combed or curled; an old mazarine blue wrapper, that gapes
open and discovers a canvas petticoat. Her face swelled violently on
one side, and partly covered with white paint, which for cheapness she
has bought so coarse that you would not use it to wash a chimney.' In
another letter he describes her dress as consisting of 'a groundwork of
dirt, with an embroidery of filthiness.' When he wrote of her then, she
was about fifty years of age, and seems to have retained none of the
beauty which distinguished her in her earlier years. She was not only
coarse in looks, but in her speech and writings, which shock modern
fastidiousness. She was not the woman to please Horace Walpole, who,
even when in the seventies, liked nothing better than acting as squire
or cicerone to fine ladies. Lady Mary was not one of them. She was, in
fact, what we now should call a regular Bohemian; and was it to be
wondered at? She had been introduced into that sort of life when she
was a girl only eight years old by her own father, Evelyn, Earl of
Kingston. He was a member of the Kitcat Club, whose chief occupation
was the proposing and toasting the beauties of the day. One evening the
Earl took it into his head to nominate his daughter. She was sent for
in a chaise, and introduced to the company in dirty Shire Lane in a
grimy chamber, reeking with foul culinary smells and stale
tobacco-smoke, and elected by acclamation. The gentlemen drank the
little lady's health upstanding; and feasting her with sweets, and
passing her round with kisses, at once inscribed her name with a diamond
on a drinking-glass. 'Pleasure,' she says, 'was too poor a word to
express my sensations. They amounted to ecstasy. Never again
throughout my whole life did I pass so happy an evening.' Of course,
the child could not perceive the hideousness of the whole proceeding and
its surroundings: if the kisses were seasoned with droppings of snuff
from the noses above, which otherwise were not always very clean--even
at the beginning of this century Lord Kenyon, Chief Justice of the
King's Bench, was an utter stranger to the luxury of a
pocket-handkerchief, and had no delicacy about avowing it--it did not
detract from the sweetness of the bon-bons with which she was regaled.
The founder of the Blue-Stocking Club, Mrs. Montagu, _nee_ Elizabeth
Robinson, was another of Walpole's witty and handsome lady friends. As
a girl she was lively, full of fun, yet fond of study. In 1742 she was
married to Edward Montagu, M.P., a coal-owner of great wealth. As a girl
the Duchess of Portland had called her 'La Petite Fidget'; but after her
marriage she became more sedate, and a great power in the literary
world. She established the Blue-Stocking Club, of which herself, Mrs.
Vesey, Miss Boscawen, Mrs. Carter, Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Pulteney, Mr.
Stillingfleet, and Horace Walpole were the first members. The name
originally came from Venice, where, in 1400, the Academical Society
_delle calze_ had been established, whence the name was transferred to
similar associations in France, there called _Bas Bleus_, and from the
latter country it was introduced into England. Mrs. Montagu, having
been left a widow with L7,000 a year, built herself a mansion, standing
in a large garden at the north-west corner of Portman Square, and there
the Blue-Stocking Club continued to hold its meetings for a number of
years, including all the persons of her time who were celebrated in art,
science, or literature, among whom may be mentioned Boswell and Johnson,
the latter of whom, in the presence of ladies, somewhat modified his
bearish habits. Mrs. Montagu died in 1800, and the house she had built
eventually became the town residence of Viscount Portman.
Of course, Horace Walpole was acquainted with the Misses Gunning--'those
goddesses,' as Mary Montagu styled them. They were nieces of the first
Earl of Mayo, and so got a ready introduction into London society, which
literally went raving mad about them. Horace Walpole tells us that even
the 'great unwashed' followed them in crowds whenever they appeared in
public: there must have been an extraordinary appreciation of beauty in
the rabble--and what a rabble of ruffians it was!--of those days. But
London then was no bigger than a provincial town, compared with what it
is now. The two ladies speedily found husbands: the Duke of Hamilton
married Elizabeth, the younger, after an evening spent in the society of
the sisters and their mother at Bedford House, and was in such a hurry
about it that he would wait for neither licence nor ring, and, after
with some difficulty satisfying the scruples of the parson called upon
to celebrate the extempore ceremony, they were married with the ring of
a bed-curtain, at half an hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel.
Three weeks afterwards Lord Coventry married her sister, Maria. The
Duke of Hamilton dying in 1758, six years after the strange nuptials in
Mayfair Chapel, the widow in the following year married Jack Campbell,
afterwards Duke of Argyll. Lady Coventry did not wear her coronet long;
in 1760 she died, it is said, in consequence of her excessive use of
white paint. Her sister, 'twice duchessed,' survived her many years.
We have far from exhausted the list of the ladies distinguished for wit
and beauty who figure in Horace Walpole's 'Letters,' but our space is
exhausted. We cannot, however, conclude without a few words on the
'Letters' in question. Their chief value consists in the lively
descriptions of public events; not as dry and cold history records them,
but by letting us have peeps behind the scenes, so as to see the
wire-pullers, the secret machinery, which set in motion the actors on
the political and social stage. They show us lords and ladies in their
negliges, and how the conceit of a hairdresser, or the caprice of a
lady's-maid, may make or mar the destinies of a nation. This copious
letter-writing forms indeed an era in our literary history which will
never return or be renewed; the prying reporter and the irrepressible
interviewer now supply all the world with what the letter-writer
communicated to a few friends only. This present age may be called the
Age of Reminiscences: everybody is writing his; of making books there is
no end!
*III.*
*OLD LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES.*
A comparatively small room, considering it was one for public use, with
dingy walls, a grimy ceiling, a sanded floor, boxes with upright backs
and narrow seats, wooden chairs, liquor-stained tables, lighted up in
the evening with smoky lamps or guttering candles, the whole room
reeking with tobacco like a guard-room--such was the coffee-house of the
later Stuart and the whole Georgian periods. Its distinctive article of
furniture was spittoons. In such dens did the noblemen, in flowing wigs
and embroidered coats, parsons in cassocks and bands, physicians in
sable suits and tremendous perukes, together with broken-down gamesters,
swindlers, country yokels, and out-at-elbows literary and theatrical
adventurers, meet, not only for pleasure, but for business too. Dr.
Radcliffe, who in 1685 had the largest practice in London, was daily to
be seen at Garraway's, now demolished, its site being included in
Martin's bank; and another favourite resort of doctors hereby was
Batson's, where, as the 'Connoisseur' says, 'the dispensers of life and
death flock together, like birds of prey watching for carcases. I never
enter this place but it serves as a _memento mori_ to me.... Batson's
has been reckoned the seat of solemn stupidity.'
Coffee-houses, indeed, had their distinct sets of customers. St.
Paul's, for instance, was patronized by the clergy, both by those with
fat livings and by 'battered crapes,' who plied there for an occasional
burial or sermon. Dick's was frequented by members of the Temple, with
whom, in 1737, Mrs. Yarrow and her daughter, who kept the house, were
great favourites; wherefore, when the Rev. James Miller brought out a
comedy, called 'The Coffee-House,' in which the ladies were thought to
be indicated--the engraver having unfortunately fixed upon Dick's
Coffee-House as the frontispiece scene--the Templars attended the first
representation, and hissed the piece off the boards. Button's, in Covent
Garden, was the resort of Addison and Steele, of Pope and Swift, of
Savage and Davenant--in fact, of the wits of the time. At this house
was the lion's head through whose mouth letters were dropped for the
_Tatlers_ and _Spectators_. The head was afterwards transferred to the
Bedford Coffee-House, under the Piazza, and eventually, in 1827, was
purchased by the Duke of Bedford, and is now at Woburn Abbey; Bedford's
was the successor of Button's, and is described in the 'Memoirs' of it
as having been signalized for many years as 'the emporium of wit, the
seat of criticism, and the standard of taste.' In 1659 was founded the
Rota Club by James Charrington, a political writer, and its members met
at Miles's, in Old Palace Yard. Pepys attended one of its meetings on
January 10, 1659-60. It was a kind of debating-society for the
dissemination of Republican opinions. Coffee-houses, indeed, at that
period became important political institutions. Nothing resembling the
modern newspaper then existed; in consequence, these houses were the
chief organs through which the public opinion vented itself, and so
threatening to the Court did, in course of time, their influence appear,
that on December 29, 1675, the King and his Cabal Ministry issued a
proclamation for shutting up and suppressing all coffee-houses, 'because
in such houses, and by occasion of the meeting of disaffected persons in
them, diverse false, malicious, and scandalous reports were devised and
spread abroad, to the defamation of his Majesty's Government, and to the
disturbance of the quiet and peace of the realm.' The opinions of the
judges were taken on this ridiculous edict, and they sapiently reported
'that retailing coffee might be an innocent trade, but as it was used to
nourish sedition, spread lies, and scandalize great men, it might also
be a common nuisance.' On a petition of the merchants and retailers of
coffee and tea, permission was granted to keep open the coffee-houses
until June 24 next, under an admonition that 'the masters of them should
prevent all scandalous papers, books, and libels from being read in
them.' This, of course, was a huge joke on the part of the Cabal, who
thus constituted the concoctors and dispensers of 'dishes'--to use the
hideous word then employed--of coffee and tea censors and licensers of
books, and judges of the truth or falsehood of political opinions and
intelligence. After that no more was heard of the matter, and the
coffee-houses remained political debating clubs, as is proved by the
remarks on them in the _Spectator_ and similar publications. See, for
instance, Nos. 403, 476, 481, 521, etc.
The first London coffee-house was set up by one Bowman, coachman to Mr.
Hodges, a Turkey merchant. Others say that Mr. Edwards brought over
with him a Ragusa servant, Pasqua Rosee, who was associated with Bowman
in establishing the first coffee-house in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill.
But the partners soon quarrelled. They parted, and Bowman opened a
coffee-house in St. Michael's Churchyard, from which we may infer that
the public took to the new drink. Rosee issued handbills headed: 'The
vertue of the coffee-drink. First made and publicly sold in England by
Pasqua Rosee, at the sign of his own head.' The original of one of them
is preserved in the British Museum. It is generally said that the
second coffee-house in London was that established as the Rainbow (now a
tavern) in Fleet Street, by one Fair, a barber, in the year 1657. In
the _Mercurius Politicus_ of September 30, 1658, an advertisement
appeared, setting forth the virtues of the then equally new beverage,
namely, _tcha_, or _tay_, or _tee_, which was sold at the Sultaness Head
_Cophee-house_, in Sweeting's Rents, by the Royal Exchange. We thus see
that as early as 1658 there were already three coffee-houses in London.
But coffee met with opponents. The vintners called it 'sooty drink';
lampooners said it undermined virile power, and that to drink it was to
ape the Turks and insult one's canary-drinking ancestors. Fair, the
founder of the Rainbow, already mentioned, was indicted for 'making and
selling a sort of liquor, called coffee, whereby in making it he annoyed
his neighbours by evil smells, and for keeping of fire for the most part
night and day, to the great danger and affrightment of his neighbours.'
But Farr stood his ground, and in time became a person of importance in
the parish, and coffee-houses multiplied. Cornhill and its purlieus were
full of them. There were the Great Turk, Sword Blade, Rainbow,
Garraway, Jerusalem, Tom's, and Weston's Coffee-Houses in Exchange Alley
alone; in St. Michael's Alley, close by, there were, besides Rosee's,
Williams's, and other coffee-houses. They also, as we have seen, had
been established further west than the City, and they were also, as
already mentioned, places of rendezvous, where appointments were made,
where lawyers met clients, and doctors patients, merchants their
customers, clerks their masters, where farce-writers, journalists,
politicians, and literary hacks went to pick up ideas, and, as it was
then called, watch, and if they could, catch the humours of the town.
The _Spectator_, in his very first number, acknowledges his indebtedness
to coffee-houses. 'There is no place of general resort,' he says,
'wherein I do not often make my appearance. Sometimes I am seen
thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's (on the north
side of Russell Street, at the corner of Bow Street), and listening with
great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular
audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's (St. Paul's Churchyard),
and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the _Postman_, overhear the
conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights at
St. James's (the famous Whig coffee-house from the time of Queen Anne to
late in the reign of George III.), and sometimes join the little
committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes there to hear
and improve.'
There was another Will's in Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, which
was also a haunt of the _Spectator_, as were the other coffee-houses in
that neighbourhood. He says in his ninety-ninth number: 'I do not know
that I meet in any of my walks objects which move both my spleen and
laughter so effectually as these young fellows at the Grecian, Squire's,
Searle's, and all other coffee-houses adjacent to the law, who rise
early for no other purpose but to publish their laziness.' It appears
that it was usual to resort to the coffee-house as early as six o'clock
in the morning. In 'Moser's Vestiges,' Will's is thus referred to: 'All
the beaux that used to breakfast in the coffee-houses and taverns
appendant to the Inns of Court struck their morning strokes in an
elegant _deshabille_, which was carelessly confined by a sash of yellow,
red, blue, green, etc., according to the taste of the wearer. The idle
fashion was not quite worn out in 1765. We can remember having seen
some of these early loungers in their nightgowns, caps, etc., at Will's,
Lincoln's Inn Gate, about that period.'