FLEET STREET.
Burning of the Pope -- St. Bride's Steeple -- Milton
-- Illuminated Clock -- Melancholy End of Lovelace the Cavalier
-- Chatterton -- Generosity of Hardham, of Snuff Celebrity
-- Theatre in Dorset Garden -- Richardson, his Habits and
Character -- Whitefriars, or Alsatia -- The Temple -- Its
Monuments, Garden, &c. -- Eminent names connected with it
-- Goldsmith dies there -- Boswell's first Visit there to Johnson
-- Johnson and Madame de Boufflers -- Bernard Lintot -- Ben
Jonson's Devil Tavern -- Other Coffee-houses and Shops
-- Goldsmith and Temple-bar -- Shire Lane, Bickerstaff, and the
Deputation from the Country -- The Kit-Kat Club -- Mrs. Salmon
-- Isaac Walton -- Cowley -- Chancery Lane, Lord Strafford, and
Ben Jonson -- Serjeant's Inn -- Clifford's Inn -- The Rolls -- Sir
Joseph Jekyll -- Church of St. Dunstan in the West -- Dryden's
House in Fetter Lane -- Johnson, the Genius Loci of Fleet Street
-- His Way of Life -- His Residence in Gough Square, Johnson's
Court, and Bolt Court -- Various Anecdotes of him connected with
Fleet Street, and with his favourite Tavern, the Mitre.
We are now in Fleet Street, and pleasant memories thicken upon us. To
the left is the renowned realm of Alsatia, the Temple, the Mitre, and
the abode of Richardson; to the right divers abodes of Johnson;
Chancery Lane, with Cowley's birth-place at the corner; Fetter Lane,
where Dryden once lived; and Shire or Sheer Lane, immortal for the
_Tatler_.
Fleet Street was, for a good period, perhaps for a longer one than can
now be ascertained, the great place for shows and spectacles. Wild
beasts, monsters, and other marvels, used to be exhibited there, as
the wax-work was lately; and here took place the famous ceremony of
burning the Pope, with its long procession, and bigoted
anti-bigotries. However, the lesser bigotry was useful, at that time,
in keeping out the greater. Roger North has left us a lively account
of one of these processions, in his _Examen_. It took place towards
the close of the reign of Charles the Second, when just fears were
entertained of his successor's design to bring in Popery. The day of
the ceremony was the birth-day of Queen Elizabeth, the 17th March.
"When we had posted ourselves," says North, "at windows
expecting the play to begin" (he had taken his stand in the
Green Dragon Tavern), "it was very dark; but we could perceive
the street to fill, and the hum of the crowd grew louder and
louder; and at length, with help of some lights below, we could
discern, not only upwards towards the bar, where the squib-war
was maintained, but downwards towards Fleet Bridge; the whole
street was crowded with people, which made that which followed
seem very strange; for about eight at night we heard a din from
below, which came up the street, continually increasing till we
could perceive a motion; and that was a row of stout fellows,
that came, shouldered together, cross the street, from wall to
wall on each side. How the people melted away, I cannot tell;
but it was plain those fellows made clear board, as if they had
swept the street for what was to come after. They went along
like a wave; and it was wonderful to see how the crowd made
way: I suppose the good people were willing to give obedience
to lawful authority. Behind this wave (which, as all the rest,
had many lights attending), there was a vacancy, but it filled
apace, till another like wave came up; and so four or five of
these waves passed, one after another; and then we discerned
more numerous lights, and throats were opened with hoarse and
tremendous noise; and with that advanced a pageant, borne along
above the heads of the crowd, and upon it sat an huge Pope, _in
pontificalibus_, in his chair, with a seasonable attendance for
state: but his premier minister, that shared most of his ear,
was Il Signior Diavolo, a nimble little fellow, in a proper
dress, that had a strange dexterity in climbing and winding
about the chair, from one of the Pope's ears to the other.
"The next pageant was a parcel of Jesuits; and after that (for
there was always a decent space between them) came another,
with some ordinary persons with halters, as I took it, about
their necks; and one with a stenterophonic tube, sounded
'Abhorrers! Abhorrers!' most infernally; and, lastly, came one,
with a single person upon it, which some said was the
phamphleteer, Sir Roger L'Estrange, some the King of France,
some the Duke of York; but, certainly, it was a very
complaisant, civil gentleman, like the former, that was doing
what everybody pleased to have him; and, taking all in good
part went on his way to the fire."
The description concludes with a brief mention of burning the
effigies, which, on these occasions, appear to have been of
pasteboard.[75]
One of the great figurers in this ceremony was the doleful image of
Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, a magistrate, supposed to have been killed by
the Papists during the question of the plot. Dryden has a fine
contemptuous couplet upon it, in one of his prologues;--
"Sir Edmondbury first in woful wise,
Leads up the show, _and milks their maudlin eyes_."
We will begin with the left side, as we are there already; and first
let us express our thanks for the neat opening by which St. Bride's
church has been rendered an ornament to this populous thoroughfare.
The steeple is one of the most beautiful of Wren's productions, though
diminished, in consequence of its having been found to be too severely
tried by the wind. But a ray now comes out of this opening as we pass
the street, better even than that of the illuminated clock at night
time; for there, in a lodging in the churchyard, lived Milton, at the
time that he undertook the education of his sister's children. He was
then young and unmarried. He is said to have rendered his young
scholars, in the course of a year, able to read Latin at sight, though
they were but nine or ten years of age. As to the clock, which serves
to remind the jovial that they ought to be at home, we are loth to
object to anything useful; and in fact we admit its pretensions; and
yet as there is a time for all things, there would seem to be a time
for time itself; and we doubt whether those who do not care to
ascertain the hour beforehand, will derive much benefit from this
glaring piece of advice.
"At the west end of St. Bride's Church," according to Wood, was buried
Richard Lovelace, Esq., one of the most elegant of the cavaliers of
Charles the First, and author of the exquisite ballad beginning--
"When Love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at my grates.
"When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fetter'd in her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air,
Know no such liberty.
* * * * *
"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage,
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage."
This accomplished man, who is said by Wood to have been in his youth
"the most amiable and beautiful person that eye ever beheld," and who
was lamented by Charles Cotton as an epitome of manly virtue, died at
a poor lodging in Gunpowder Alley, near Shoe Lane, an object of
charity.[76] He had been imprisoned by the Parliament and lived
during his imprisonment beyond his income. Wood thinks that he did so
in order to support the royal cause, and out of generosity to
deserving men, and to his brothers. He then went into the service of
the French King, returned to England after being wounded, and was
again committed to prison, where he remained till the King's death,
when he was set at liberty. "Having then," says his biographer,
"consumed all his estate, he grew very melancholy (which brought him
at length into a consumption), became very poor in body and purse, and
was the object of charity, went in ragged clothes, (whereas, when he
was in his glory, he wore cloth of gold and silver,) and mostly lodged
in obscure and dirty places, more befitting the worst of beggars than
poorest of servants," &c.[77] "Geo. Petty, haberdasher in Fleet
Street," says Aubrey, "carried 20 shillings to him every Monday
Morning from Sir ---- Manny, and Charles Cotton, Esq., for ----
months: but was never repaid." As if it was their intention he should
be! Poor Cotton, in the excess of his relish of life, lived himself to
be in want; perhaps wanted the ten shillings that he sent. The
mistress of Lovelace is reported to have married another man,
supposing him to have died of his wounds in France. Perhaps this
helped to make him careless of his fortune: but it is probable that
his habits were naturally showy and expensive. Aubrey says he was
proud. He was accounted a sort of minor Sir Philip Sydney. We speak
the more of him, not only on account of his poetry (which, for the
most part, displays much fancy, injured by want of selectness), but
because his connection with the neighbourhood probably suggested to
Richardson the name of his hero in Clarissa. Grandison is another
cavalier name in the history of those times. It was the title of the
Duchess of Cleveland's father. Richardson himself was buried in St.
Bride's. He was laid, according to his wish, with his first wife, in
the middle aisle, near the pulpit. Where he lived, we shall see
presently.
Not far from Gunpowder Alley, in the burying-ground of the workhouse
in Shoe Lane, lies a greater and more unfortunate name than
Lovelace--Chatterton. But we shall say more of him when we come to
Brook Street, Holborn. We have been perplexed to decide, whether to
say all we have got to say upon anybody, when we come to the first
place with which he is connected, or divide our memorials of him
according to the several places. Circumstances will guide us; but upon
the whole it seems best to let the places themselves decide. If the
spot is rendered particularly interesting by the division, we may act
accordingly, as in the present instance. If not, all the anecdotes may
be given at once.
On the same side of the way as Shoe Lane, but nearer Fleet Market, was
Hardham's, a celebrated snuff-shop, the founder of which deserves
mention for a very delicate generosity. He was numberer at Drury Lane
Theatre, that is to say, the person who counted the number of people
in the house, from a hole over the top of the stage; a practice now
discontinued. Whether this employment led him to number snuffs, as
well as men, we cannot say, but he was the first who gave them their
distinctions that way. Lovers of
"The pungent grains of titillating dust"
are indebted to him for the famous compound entitled "37." "Being
passionately fond of theatrical entertainments, he was seldom," says
his biographer, "without embryo Richards and Hotspurs strutting and
bellowing in his dining-room, or in the parlour behind his shop. The
latter of these apartments was adorned with heads of most of the
persons celebrated for dramatic excellence; and to these he frequently
referred in the course of his instructions."
"There is one circumstance, however, in his private character,"
continues our authority, "which deserves a more honourable
rescue from oblivion. His charity was extensive in an uncommon
degree, and was conveyed to many of its objects in the most
delicate manner. On account of his known integrity (for he once
failed in business, more creditably than he could have made a
fortune by it,) he was often entrusted with the care of paying
little annual stipends to unfortunate women, and others who
were in equal want of relief; and he has been known, with a
generosity almost unexampled, to continue these annuities, long
after the sources of them had been stopped by the deaths or
caprices of the persons who at first supplied them. At the same
time he persuaded the receivers that their money was remitted
to them as usual, through its former channel. Indeed his purse
was never shut even to those who were casually recommended by
his common acquaintance."[78]
This admirable man died in 1772; and by his will bequeathed the
interest of 20,000_l._ to a female acquaintance, and at her decease
the principal, &c., to the poor of his native city, Chichester.
Returning over the way we come to Dorset Street and Salisbury Court,
names originating in a palace of the Bishop of Salisbury, which he
parted with to the Sackvilles. Clarendon lived in it a short time
after the Restoration. At the bottom of Salisbury Court, facing the
river, was the celebrated play-house, one of the earliest in which
theatrical entertainments were resumed at that period. The first
mention we find of it is in the following curious memorandum in the
manuscript book of Sir Henry Herbert, master of the revels to King
Charles I. "I committed Cromes, a broker in Longe Lane, the 16th of
Febru., 1634, to the Marsalsey, for lending a church robe with the
name of _Jesus_ upon it to the players in Salisbury Court, to present
a Flamen, a priest of the heathens. Upon his petition of submission,
and acknowledgment of his fault, I released him, the 17 Febru.,
1634."[79]
It is not certain, however, whether the old theatre in Salisbury
Court, and that in Dorset Garden, were one and the same; though they
are conjectured to have been so. The names of both places seem to have
been indiscriminately applied. Be this as it may, the house became
famous under the Davenants for the introduction of operas and of a
more splendid exhibition of scenery; but in consequence of the growth
of theatres in the more western parts of the town, it was occasionally
quitted by the proprietors, and about the beginning of the last
century abandoned. This theatre was the last to which people went in
boats.
In a house, "in the centre of Salisbury Square or Salisbury Court, as
it was then called," Richardson spent the greater part of his town
life, and wrote his earliest work, Pamela. Probably a good part of all
his works were composed there, as well as at Fulham, for the pen was
never out of his hand. He removed from this house in 1755, after he
had written all his works; and taking eight old tenements in the same
quarter, pulled them down, and built a large and commodious range of
warehouses and printing offices. "The dwelling-house," says Mrs.
Barbauld, "was neither so large nor so airy as the one he quitted, and
therefore the reader will not be so ready, probably, as Mr. Richardson
seems to have been, in accusing his wife of perverseness in not
liking the new habitation as well as the old."[80] This was the second
Mrs. Richardson. He calls her in other places his "worthy-hearted
wife;" but complains that she used to get her way by seeming to
submit, and then returning to the point, when his heat of objection
was over. She was a formal woman. His own manners were strict and
formal with regard to his family, probably because he had formed his
notions of life from old books, and also because he did not well know
how to begin to do otherwise (for he was naturally bashful), and so
the habit continued through life. His daughters addressed him in their
letters by the title of "Honoured Sir," and are always designating
themselves as "ever dutiful." Sedentary living, eternal writing, and
perhaps that indulgence in the table, which, however moderate, affects
a sedentary man twenty times as much as an active one, conspired to
hurt his temper (for we may see by his picture that he grew fat, and
his philosophy was in no respect as profound as he thought it); but he
was a most kind-hearted generous man; kept his pocket full of plums
for children, like another Mr. Burchell; gave a great deal of money
away in charity, very handsomely too; and was so fond of inviting
friends to stay with him, that when they were ill, he and his family
must needs have them to be nursed. Several actually died at his house
at Fulham, as at an hospital for sick friends.
It is a fact not generally known (none of his biographers seem to have
known of it) that Richardson was the son of a joiner, received what
education he had (which was very little, and did not go beyond
English), at Christ's Hospital.[81] It may be wondered how he could
come no better taught from a school which had sent forth so many good
scholars; but in his time, and indeed till very lately, that
foundation was divided into several schools, none of which partook of
the lessons of the others; and Richardson, agreeably to his father's
intention of bringing him up to trade, was most probably confined to
the writing-school, where all that was taught was writing and
arithmetic. It was most likely here that he intimated his future
career, first by writing a letter, at eleven years of age, to a
censorious woman of fifty, who pretended a zeal for religion; and
afterwards, at thirteen, by composing love-letters to their
sweethearts for three young women in the neighbourhood, who made him
their confidant. To these and others he also used to read books, their
mothers being of the party; and they encouraged him to make remarks;
which is exactly the sort of life he led with Mrs. Chapone, Miss
Fielding, and others, when in the height of his celebrity. "One of the
young women," he informs us, "highly gratified with her lover's
fervour, and vows of everlasting love, has said, when I have asked her
direction, 'I cannot tell you what to write, but (her heart on her
lips) you cannot write too kindly;' all her fear was only that she
should incur a slight for her kindness." This passage, with its pretty
breathless parenthesis, is in the style of his books. If the writers
among his female coterie in after-life owed their inspiration to him,
he only returned to them what they had done for himself. Women seem to
have been always about him, both in town and country; which made Mrs.
Barbauld say, very agreeably, that he "lived in a kind of
flower-garden of ladies." This has been grudged him, and thought
effeminate; but we must make allowance for early circumstances, and
recollect what the garden produced for us. Richardson did not pretend
to be able to do without female society. Perhaps, however, they did
not quiet his sensibility so much as they charmed it. We think, in his
Correspondence, a tendency is observable to indulge in fancies, not
always so paternal as they agree to call them; though doubtless all
was said in honour, and the ladies never found reason to diminish
their reverence. A great deal has been said of his vanity and the
weakness of it. Vain he undoubtedly was, and vanity is no strength;
but it is worth bearing in mind, that a man is often saved from
vanity, not because he is stronger than another, but because he is
less amiable, and did not begin, as Richardson did, with being a
favourite so early. Few men are surrounded, as he was, from his very
childhood, with females; and few people think so well of their species
or with so much reason. In all probability too, he was handsome when
young, which is another excuse for him. His vanity is more easily
excused than his genius accounted for considering the way in which he
lived. The tone of Lovelace's manners and language, which has created
so much surprise in an author who was a city printer, and passed his
life among a few friends between Fleet Street and a suburb, was
caught, probably, not merely from Cibber, but from the famous
profligate Duke of Wharton, with whom he became acquainted in the
course of his business. But the unwearied vivacity with which he has
supported it is wonderful. His pathos is more easily accounted for by
his nerves, which for many years were in a constant state of
excitement, particularly towards the close of his life; which
terminated in 1761, at the age of seventy-two, with the death most
common to sedentary men of letters, a stroke of apoplexy.[82] He was
latterly unable to lift a glass of wine to his mouth without
assistance.
At Fulham and Parson's Green (at which latter place he lived for the
last five or six years), Richardson used to sit with his guests about
him, in a parlour or summer-house, reading, or communicating his
manuscripts as he wrote them. The ladies made their remarks; and
alterations or vindications ensued. His characters, agreeably to what
we feel when we read of them (for we know them all as intimately as if
we occupied a room in their house), interested his acquaintances so
far that they sympathised with them as if they were real; and it is
well known that one of his correspondents, Lady Bradshaigh, implored
him to reform Lovelace, in order "to save a soul." In Salisbury Court,
Richardson, of course, had the same visitors about him; but the
"flower-garden" is not talked of so much there as at Fulham. In the
evening the ladies read and worked by themselves, and Richardson
retired to his study; a most pernicious habit for a man of his bad
nerves. He should have written early in the morning, taken good
exercise in the day, and amused himself in the evening. When he walked
in town it was in the park, where he describes himself (to a fair
correspondent who wished to have an interview with him, and who
recognised him from the description) as "short, rather plump, about
five feet five inches, fair wig, one hand generally in his bosom, the
other a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat,
that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support when attacked by
sudden tremors or dizziness, of a light brown complexion, teeth not
yet failing." "What follows," observes Mrs. Barbauld, "is very
descriptive of the struggle in his character, between innate
bashfulness and a turn for observation:"--"Looking directly forwards,
as passengers would imagine, but observing all that stirs on either
hand of him, without moving his short neck; a regular even pace,
stealing away ground rather than seeming to rid it; a grey eye, too
often overclouded by mistiness from the head, by chance lively, very
lively if he sees any he loves; if he approaches a lady, his eye is
never fixed first on her face, but on her feet, and rears it up by
degrees, seeming to set her down as so and so."[83]
Latterly Richardson attended little to business. He used even to give
his orders to his workmen in writing; a practice which Sir John
Hawkins is inclined to attribute to stateliness and bad temper, but
for which Mrs. Barbauld finds a better reason in his bad nerves. His
principal foreman also was deaf, as the knight himself acknowledges.
Richardson encouraged his men to be industrious, sometimes by putting
half-a-crown among the types as a prize to him who came first in the
morning, at others by sending fruit for the same purpose from the
country. Agreeably to his natural bashfulness, he was apt to be
reserved with strangers. Sir John Hawkins tells us, that he once
happened to get into the Fulham stage when Richardson was in it (most
likely he got in on purpose); and he endeavoured to bring the novelist
into conversation, but could not succeed, and was vexed at it. But Sir
John was one of that numerous class of persons who, for reasons better
known to others than to themselves,
"Deemen gladly to the badder end,"
as the old poet says; and Richardson probably knew this pragmatical
person, and did not want his acquaintance.
Johnson was among the visitors of Richardson in Salisbury Court. He
confessed to Boswell, that although he had never much sought after
anybody, Richardson was an exception. He had so much respect for him,
that he took part with him in a preposterous undervaluing of Fielding,
whom he described in the comparison as a mere writer of manners, and
sometimes as hardly any writer at all. And yet he told Boswell that he
had read his _Amelia_ through "without stopping:" and according to
Mrs. Piozzi she was his favourite heroine. In the comparison of
Richardson with Fielding, he was in the habit of opposing the nature
of one to the manners of the other; but Fielding's manners are only
superadded to his nature, not opposed to it, which makes all the
difference. As to Richardson, he was so far gone upon this point, in a
mixture of pique and want of sympathy, that he said, if he had not
known who Fielding was, "he should have taken him for an ostler."
Fielding, it is true, must have vexed him greatly by detecting the
pettiness in the character of Pamela. Richardson, as a romancer, did
not like to have the truth forced upon him, and thus was inclined to
see nothing but vulgarity in the novelist. This must have been
unpleasant to the Misses Fielding, the sisters, who were among the
most intimate of Richardson's friends. Another of our author's
visitors was Hogarth. It must not be forgotten that Richardson was
kind to Johnson in money matters; and to use Mrs. Barbauld's phrase,
had once "the honour" to be bail for him.
We conclude our notice, which, on the subject of so original a man,
has naturally beguiled us into some length, with an interesting
account of his manners and way of life, communicated by one of his
female friends to Mrs. Barbauld. "My first recollection of him," says
she, "was in his house in the centre of Salisbury Square, or Salisbury
Court as it was then called; and of being admitted as a playful child
into his study, where I have often seen Dr. Young and others; and
where I was generally caressed and rewarded with biscuits or _bonbons_
of some kind or other; and sometimes with books, for which he, and
some more of my friends, kindly encouraged a taste, even at that early
age, which has adhered to me all my long life, and continues to be the
solace of many a painful hour. I recollect that he used to drop in at
my father's, for we lived nearly opposite, late in the evening to
supper; when, as he would say, he had worked as long as his eyes and
nerves would let him, and was come to relax with a little friendly and
domestic chat. I even then used to creep to his knee and hang upon his
words, for my whole family doated on him; and once, I recollect that
at one of these evening visits, probably about the year 1753, I was
standing by his knee when my mother's maid came to summon me to bed;
upon which, being unwilling to part from him and manifesting some
reluctance, he begged I might be permitted to stay a little longer;
and, on my mother's objecting that the servant would be wanted to wait
at supper (for, in those days of friendly intercourse and _real_
hospitality, a decent maid-servant was the only attendant at _his own_
and many creditable tables, where, nevertheless, much company was
received), Mr. Richardson said, 'I am sure Miss P. is now so much a
woman, that she does not want anyone to attend her to bed, but will
conduct herself with so much propriety, and put out her own candle so
carefully, that she may henceforward be indulged with remaining with
us till supper is served.' This hint and the confidence it implied,
had such a good effect upon me that I believe I never required the
attendance of a servant afterwards while my mother lived; and by such
sort of ingenious and gentle devices did he use to encourage and draw
in young people to do what was right. I also well remember the happy
days I passed at his house at North End; sometimes with my mother, but
often for weeks without her, domesticated as one of his own children.
He used to pass the greatest part of the week in town; but when he
came down, he used to like to have his family flock around him, when
we all first asked and received his blessing, together with some small
boon from his paternal kindness and attention, for he seldom met us
empty-handed, and was by nature most generous and liberal.
"The piety, order, decorum, and strict regularity that
prevailed in his family were of infinite use to train the mind
to good habits and to depend upon its own resources. It has
been one of the means which, under the blessing of God, has
enabled me to dispense with the enjoyment of what the world
calls pleasures, such as are found in crowds, and actually to
relish and prefer the calm delights of retirement and books. As
soon as Mrs. Richardson arose, the beautiful Psalms in Smith's
Devotions were read responsively in the nursery, by herself and
daughters standing in a circle: only the two eldest were
allowed to breakfast with her and whatever company happened to
be in the house, for they were seldom without. After breakfast,
we younger ones read to her in turns the Psalms and Lessons for
the day. We were then permitted to pursue our childish sports,
or to walk in the garden, which I was allowed to do at
pleasure; for, when my father hesitated upon granting that
privilege for fear I should help myself to the fruit, Mrs.
Richardson said, 'No, I have so much confidence in her, that,
if she is put upon honour, I am certain that she will not touch
so much as a gooseberry.' A confidence I dare safely aver that
I never forfeited, and which has given me the power of walking
in any garden ever since, without the smallest desire to touch
any fruit, and taught me a lesson upon the restraint of
appetite, which has been useful to me all my life. We all dined
at one table, and generally drank tea and spent the evening in
Mrs. Richardson's parlour, where the practice was for one of
the young ladies to read while the rest sat with mute attention
round a large table, and employed themselves in some kind of
needle-work. Mr. Richardson generally retired to his study,
unless there was particular company.
"These are trifling and childish anecdotes, and savour, perhaps
you may think too much of egotism. They certainly can be of no
further use to you than as they mark the extreme benevolence,
condescension, and kindness of this exalted genius, towards
young people; for, in general society, I know _he_ has been
accused as being of few words and of a particularly reserved
turn. He was, however, all his lifetime the patron and
protector of the female sex. Miss M. (afterwards Lady G.)
passed many years in his family. She was the bosom friend and
contemporary of my mother; and was so much considered as
_enfant de famille_ in Mr. Richardson's house, that her
portrait is introduced into a family piece.
"He had many _protégees_;--a Miss Rosine, from Portugal, was
consigned to his care; but of her, being then at school, I
never saw much. Most of the ladies that resided much at his
house acquired a certain degree of fastidiousness and delicate
refinement, which, though amiable in itself, rather
disqualified them from appearing in general society to the
advantage that might have been expected, and rendered an
intercourse with the world uneasy to themselves, giving a
peculiar air of shyness and reserve to their whole address; of
which habits his own daughters partook, in a degree that has
been thought by some a little to obscure those really valuable
qualifications and talents they undoubtedly possessed. Yet this
was supposed to be owing more to Mrs. Richardson than to him;
who, though a truly good woman, had high and Harlowean notions
of parental authority, and kept the ladies in such order, and
at such a distance, that he often lamented, as I have been told
by my mother, that they were not more open and conversable with
him.
"Besides those I have already named, I well remember a Mrs.
Donellan, a venerable old lady, with sharp piercing eyes; Miss
Mulso, &c., &c.; Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury; Sir Thomas
Robinson (Lord Grantham), &c., &c., who were frequent visitors
at his house in town and country. The ladies I have named were
often staying at North End, at the period of his highest glory
and reputation; and in their company and conversation his
genius was matured. His benevolence was unbounded, as his
manner of diffusing it was delicate and refined."[84]
Richardson was buried in the nave of St. Bride's Church; and a stone
was placed over his remains, merely recording his name, the year of
his death, and his age. In this church were also interred Wynken de
Worde, the famous printer; the bowels of Sackville the poet, whom we
shall presently have occasion to mention again; and Sir Richard Baker,
the author of the well-known book of English Chronicles. De Worde
resided in Fleet Street.
Between Water Lane and the Temple, and leading out of Fleet Street by
a street formerly called Whitefriars, which has been rebuilt, and
christened Bouverie Street, is one of these precincts which long
retained the immunities derived from their being conventual
sanctuaries, and which naturally enough became as profane as they had
been religious. The one before us originated in a monastery of White
Friars, an order of Carmelites, which formerly stood in Water Lane,
and it acquired an infamous celebrity under the slang title of
Alsatia. The claims, however, which the inhabitants set up to protect
debtors from arrest, seem to have originated in a charter granted to
them by James I., in 1608. For some time after the Reformation and the
demolition of the old monastery, Whitefriars was not only a
sufficiently orderly district, but one of the most fashionable parts
of the city. Among others of the gentry, for instance, who had houses
here at this period, was Sir John Cheke, King Edward VI.'s tutor, and
afterwards Secretary of State. The reader of our great modern novelist
has been made almost as well acquainted with the place in its
subsequent state of degradation and lawlessness, as if he had walked
through it when its bullies were in full blow. The rags of their
Dulcineas hang out to dry, as if you saw them in a Dutch picture; and
the passages are redolent of beer and tobacco. The sanctuary of
Whitefriars is now extremely shrunk in its dimensions; and the
inhabitants retain but a shadow of their privileges. The nuisance,
however, existed as late as the time of William III., who put an end
to it; and the neighbourhood is still of more than doubtful virtue.
One alley, dignified by the title of Lombard Street, is of an infamy
of such long standing, that it is said to have begun its evil courses
long before the privilege of sanctuary existed, and to have maintained
them up to the present moment. The Carmelites complained of it, and
the neighbours complain still. In the Dramatis Personæ to Shadwell's
play called the _Squire of Alsatia_, we have a set of characters so
described as to bring us, one would think, sufficiently acquainted
with the leading gentry of the neighbourhood; such as--
"_Cheatley._ A rascal, who by reason of debts dares not stir
out of _White-fryers_, but there inveigles young heirs in tail,
and helps them to goods and money upon great disadvantages; is
bound for them, and shares for them till he undoes them. A
lewd, impudent, debauch'd fellow, very expert in the _cant_
about the town.
"_Shamwell._ Cousin to the Belfonds; an heir, who being ruined
by Cheatley, is made a decoy-duck for others: not daring to
stir out of Alsatia, where he lives: is bound with Cheatley
for heirs, and lives upon 'em a dissolute, debauched life.
"_Capt. Hackman._ A block-head bully of Alsatia; a cowardly,
impudent, blustering fellow; formerly a sergeant in Flanders,
run from his colours, retreated into White-fryers for a very
small debt, where by the Alsatians he is dubbed a Captain,
marries one that lets lodgings, sells cherry brandy, &c.
"_Scrapeall._ A hypocritical, repeating, praying,
psalm-singing, precise fellow, pretending to great piety, a
godly knave, who joins with Cheatley, and supplies young heirs
with goods and money."
But Sir Walter, besides painting the place itself as if he had lived
in it (vide _Fortunes of Nigel_, vol. ii.), puts these people in
action, with a spirit beyond anything that Shadwell could have done,
even though the dramatist had a bit of the Alsatian in himself--at
least as far as drinking could go, and a flood of gross conversation.
Infamous, however, as this precinct was, there were some good houses
in it, and some respectable inhabitants. The first Lord Sackville
lived there; another inhabitant was Ogilby, who was a decent man,
though a bad poet, and taught dancing; and Shirley another. It appears
also to have been a resort of fencing-masters, which probably helped
to bring worse company. They themselves, indeed, were in no good
repute. One of them, a man of the name of Turner, living in
Whitefriars, gave rise to a singular instance of revenge recorded in
the State Trials. Lord Sanquire, a Scotch nobleman, in the time of
James I., playing with Turner at foils, and making too great a show of
his wish to put down a master of the art (probably with the insolence
common to the nobility of that period), was pressed upon so hard by
the man, that he received a thrust which put out one of his eyes.
"This mischief," says Wilson, "was much regretted by Turner; and the
baron, being conscious to himself that he meant his adversary no good,
took the accident with as much patience as men that lose one eye by
their own default use to do for the preservation of the other." "Some
time after," continues this writer, "being in the court of the late
great Henry of France, and the King (courteous to strangers),
entertaining discourse with him, asked him, 'How he lost his eye:' he
(cloathing his answer in a better shrowd than a plain fencer's) told
him 'It was done with a sword.' The King replies, 'Doth the man live?'
and that question gave an end to the discourse, but was the beginner
of a strange confusion in his working fancy, which neither time nor
distance could compose, carrying it in his breast some years after,
till he came into England, where he hired two of his countrymen, Gray
and Carliel, men of low and mercenary spirits, to murther him, which
they did with a case of pistols in his house in Whitefriars many years
after."[85] For many years--read five--enough, however, to make such a
piece of revenge extraordinary. Gray and Carliel were among his
followers. Gray, however, did not assist in the murder. His mind
misgave him; and Carliel got another accomplice, named Irweng. "These
two, about seven o'clock in the evening (to proceed in the words of
Coke's report), came to a house in the Friars, which Turner used to
frequent, as he came to his school, which was near that place, and
finding Turner there, they saluted one another; and Turner, with one
of his friends, sat at the door asking them to drink; but Carliel and
Irweng, turning about to cock the pistol, came back immediately, and
Carliel, drawing it from under his coat, discharged it upon Turner,
and gave him a mortal wound near the left pap; so that Turner, after
having said these words, 'Lord, have mercy upon me! I am killed,'
immediately fell down. Whereupon Carliel and Irweng fled, Carliel to
the town, Irweng towards the river; but mistaking his way, and
entering into a court where they sold wood, which was no thoroughfare,
he was taken. Carliel likewise fled, and so did also the Baron of
Sanchar. The ordinary officers of justice did their utmost, but could
not take them; for, in fact, as appeared afterwards, Carliel fled into
Scotland, and Gray towards the sea, thinking to go to Sweden, and
Sanchar hid himself in England."[86]
James, who had shown such favour to the Scotch as to make the English
jealous, and who also hated an ill-natured action, when it was not to
do good to any of his favourites, thought himself bound to issue a
promise of reward for the arrest of Sanquire and the others. It was
successful; and all three were hung, Carliel and Irweng in Fleet
Street, opposite the great gate of Whitefriars (the entrance of the
present Bouverie Street), and Sanquire in Palace Yard, before
Westminster Hall. He made a singular defence, very good and penitent,
and yet remarkably illustrative of the cheap rate at which plebeian
blood was held in those times; and no doubt his death was a great
surprise to him. The people, not yet enlightened on these points,
took his demeanour in such good part, that they expressed great pity
for him, till they perceived that he died a Catholic!
This and other pretended sanctuaries were at length put down by an Act
of Parliament passed about the beginning of the last century. It is
curious that the once lawless domain of Alsatia should have had the
law itself for its neighbour; but Sir Walter has shown us, that they
had more sympathies than might be expected. It was a local realisation
of the old proverb of extremes meeting. We now step out of this old
chaos into its quieter vicinity, which, however, was not always as
quiet as it is now. The Temple, as its name imports, was once the seat
of the Knights Templars, an order at once priestly and military,
originating in the crusades, and whose business it was to defend the
Temple at Jerusalem. How they degenerated, and what sort of vows they
were in the habit of making, instead of those of chastity and
humility, the modern reader need not be told, after the masterly
pictures of them in the writer from whom we have just taken another
set of ruffians. The Templars were dissolved in the reign of Edward
II., and their house occupied by successive nobles, till it came into
the possession of the law, in whose hands it was confirmed "for ever"
by James I. We need not enter into the origin of its division into two
parts, the Inner and Middle Temple. Suffice to say, that the word
Middle, which implies a third Temple, refers to an outer one, or third
portion of the old buildings, which does not appear to have been ever
occupied by lawyers, but came into possession of the celebrated Essex
family, whose name is retained in the street where it was situated, on
the other side of Temple Bar. There is nothing remaining of the
ancient buildings but the church built in 1185, which is a curiosity
justly admired, particularly for its effigies of knights, some of
whose cross legs indicate that they had either been to the Holy Land,
or have been supposed to or vowed to go thither. One of the band is
ascertained to have been Geoffrey de Magnavile, Earl of Essex, who was
killed at Benwell in Cambridgeshire, in 1148. Among the others are
supposed to be the Marshals, first, second, and third Earls of
Pembroke, who all died in the early part of the thirteenth century.
But even these have not been identified upon any satisfactory grounds;
and with regard to some of the rest, not so much as a probable
conjecture has been offered.
[Illustration: TOMBS OF KNIGHTS IN TEMPLE CHURCH.]
As it is an opinion still prevailing, that these cross-legged knights
are Knights Templars, we have copied below the most complete
information respecting them which we have hitherto met with. And the
passage is otherwise curious.[87]
The two Temples, or law colleges, occupy a large space of ground
between Whitefriars and Essex Street; Fleet Street bounding them on
the north, and the river on the south. They compose an irregular mass
of good substantial houses, in lanes and open places, the houses being
divided into chambers, or floors for separate occupants, some of which
are let to persons not in the profession. The garden about forty years
ago was enlarged, and a muddy tract under it, on the side of the
Thames, converted into a pleasant walk. This garden is still not very
large, but it deserves its name both for trees and flowers. There is a
descent into it after the Italian fashion, from a court with a
fountain in it, surrounded with trees, through which the view of the
old walls and buttresses of the Middle Temple Hall is much admired.
But a poet's hand has touched the garden, and made it bloom with roses
above the real. It is the scene in Shakspeare, of the origin of the
factions of York and Lancaster.
PLANTAGENET.
"Since you are tongue-ty'd, and so loth to speak,
In dumb significence proclaim your thoughts;
Let him that is a true born gentleman,
And stands upon the honour of his birth,
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,
From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.
SOMERSET.
Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.
WARWICK.
I love no colours; and, without all colour
Of base insinuating flattery,
I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.
SUFFOLK.
I pluck this red rose with young Somerset;
And say withal I think he held the right."
There were formerly rooks in the Temple trees, a colony brought by Sir
Edward Northey, a well-known lawyer in Queen Anne's time, from his
grounds at Epsom. It was a pleasant thought, supposing that the
colonists had no objection. The rook is a grave legal bird, both in
his coat and habits; living in communities, yet to himself; and
strongly addicted to discussions of _meum_ and _tuum_. The
neighbourhood, however, appears to have been too much for him; for,
upon inquiring on the spot, we were told that there had been no rooks
for many years.
The oldest mention of the Temple as a place for lawyers has been
commonly said to be found in a passage of Chaucer, who is reported to
have been of the Temple himself. It is in his character of the
Manciple, or Steward, whom he pleasantly pits against his learned
employers, as outwitting even themselves:
"A gentle manciple was there of a temple,
Of which achatours (purchasers) mighten take ensample,
For to ben wise in buying of vitáille.
For whether that be paid, or took by taille,
Algate he waited so in his achate,
That he was ay before in good estate;
Now is not that of God a full fair grace,
That such a lewèd (ignorant) mannès wit shall pass
The wisdom of a heap of learned men?"[88]
Spenser, in his epic way, not disdaining to bring the homeliest images
into his verse, for the sake of the truth in them, speaks of--
---- "those _bricky_ towers
The which on Thames' broad aged back do ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers;
There whilom wont the Templar Knights to bide,
Till they decayed through pride."[89]
The "studious lawyers," in their towers by the water side, present a
quiet picture. Yet in those times, it seems, they were apt to break
into overt actions of vivacity, a little excessive, and such as the
habit of restraint inclines people to, before they have arrived at
years of discretion. In Henry VIII.'s time the gentlemen of the Temple
were addicted to "shove and slip-groats,"[90] which became forbidden
them under a penalty; and in the age in which Spenser wrote, so many
encounters had taken place, of a dangerous description, that Templars
were prohibited from carrying any other weapon into the hall (the
dining room), "than a dagger or knife,"--"as if," says Mr. Malcolm,
"those were not more than sufficient to accomplish unpremeditated
deaths."[91] We are to suppose, however, that gentlemen would not kill
each other, except with swords. The dagger, or carving knife, which it
was customary to carry about the person in those days, was for the
mutton.[92]
A better mode of recreating and giving vent to their animal spirits,
was the custom prevalent among the lawyers at that period of
presenting masques and pageants. They were great players, with a
scholarly taste for classical subjects; and the gravest of them did
not disdain to cater in this way for the amusement of their fellows,
sometimes for that of crowned heads. The name of Bacon is to be found
among the "getters up" of a show at Gray's Inn, for the entertainment
of the sovereign; and that of Hyde, on a similar occasion, in the
reign of Charles I.
A masque has come down to us written by William Browne, a disciple of
Spenser, expressly for the society of which he was a member, and
entitled the _Inner Temple Masque_. It is upon the story of Circe and
Ulysses, and is worthy of the school of poetry out of which he came.
Beaumont wrote another, called the _Masque of the Inner Temple and
Gray's Inn_. A strong union has always existed between the law and the
belles-lettres, highly creditable to the former, or rather naturally
to be expected from the mode in which lawyers begin their education,
and the diversity of knowledge which no men are more in the way of
acquiring afterwards. Blackstone need not have written his farewell to
the Muses. If he had been destined to be a poet, he could not have
taken his leave; and, as an accomplished lawyer, he was always within
the pale of the _literæ humaniores_. The greatest practical lawyers,
such as Coke and Plowden, may not have been the most literary, but
those who have understood the law in the greatest and best spirit
have; and the former, great as they may be, are yet but as servants
and secretaries to the rest. They know where to find, but the others
know best how to apply. Bacon, Clarendon, Selden, Somers, Cowper,
Mansfield, were all men of letters. So are the Broughams and Campbells
of the present day. Pope says, that Mansfield would have been another
Ovid. This may be doubted; but nobody should doubt that the better he
understood a poet, the fitter he was for universality of judgment. The
greatest lawyer is the greatest legislator.
The "pert Templar," of whom we hear so much between the reigns of the
Stuarts and the late King, came up with the growth of literature and
the coffee-houses. Every body then began to write or to criticise; and
young men, brought up in the mooting of points, and in the confidence
of public speaking, naturally pressed among the foremost. Besides, a
variety of wits had issued from the Temple in the reign of Charles
and his brother, and their successors in lodging took themselves for
their heirs in genius. The coffee-houses by this time had become cheap
places to talk in. They were the regular morning lounge and evening
resource; and every lad who had dipped his finger and thumb into
Dryden's snuff-box, thought himself qualified to dictate for life. In
Pope's time these pretensions came to be angrily rejected, partly,
perhaps, because none of the reigning wits, with the exception of
Congreve, had had a Temple education.
"Three college sophs, and three pert Templars came,
The same their talents, and their tastes the same;
Each prompt to query, answer, and debate,
And smit with love of poetry and prate."[93]
We could quote many other passages to the same purpose, but we shall
come to one presently which will suffice for all, and exhibit the
young Templar of those days in all the glory of his impertinence. At
present the Templars make no more pretensions than other well-educated
men. Many of them are still connected with the literature of the day,
but in the best manner and with the soundest views; and if there is no
pretension to wit, there is the thing itself. It would be endless to
name all the celebrated lawyers who have had to do with the Temple.
Besides, we shall have to notice the most eminent of them in other
places, where they passed a greater portion of their lives. We shall
therefore confine ourselves to the mention of such as have lived in it
without being lawyers, or thrown a grace over it in connection with
wit and literature.
Chaucer, as we have just observed, is thought, upon slight evidence,
to have been of the Temple. We know not who the Mr. Buckley was, that
says he saw his name in the record; and the name, if there, might have
been that of some other Chaucer. The name is said to be not unfrequent
in records under the Norman dynasty. We are told by Thynne, in his
_Animadversions_ on Speght's edition of the poet's works (published a
few years ago from the manuscript by Mr. Todd, in his _Illustrations
of Chaucer and Gower_), that "it is most certain to be gathered by
circumstances of records that the lawyers were not in the Temple until
towards the latter part of the reign of King Edward III., at which
time Chaucer was a grave man, holden in great credit, and employed in
embassy." "So that methinketh," adds the writer, "he should not be of
that house; and yet, if he then were, I should judge it strange that
he should violate the rules of peace and gravity in those years."
The first English tragedy of any merit, _Gorbuduc_, was written in the
Temple by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, afterwards the
celebrated statesman, and founder of the title of Dorset. He was
author of a noble performance, the _Induction for the Mirrour of
Magistrates_, in which there is a foretaste of the allegorical _gusto_
of Spenser. Raleigh was of the Temple; Selden, who died in
Whitefriars; Lord Clarendon; Beaumont; two other of our old
dramatists, Ford and Marston (the latter of whom was lecturer of the
Middle Temple); Wycherly, whom it is said the Duchess of Cleveland
used to visit, in the habit of a milliner; Congreve, Rowe, Fielding,
Burke, and Cowper. Goldsmith was not of the Temple, but he had
chambers in it, died there, and was buried in the Temple Church. He
resided, first on the Library Staircase, afterwards in King's Bench
Walk, and finally at No. 2, Brick Court, where he had a first floor
elegantly furnished. It was in one of the former lodgings that, being
visited by Dr. Johnson, and expressing something like a shame-faced
hope that he should soon be in lodgings better furnished, "Johnson,"
says Boswell, "at the same time checked him, and paid him a handsome
compliment, implying that a man of talent should be above attention to
such distinctions. 'Nay, sir, never mind that: _Nil te quæsiveris
extra_.'[94] (It is only yourself that need be looked for). He died in
Brick Court. It is said that when he was on his deathbed, the
landing-place was filled with inquirers, not of the most mentionable
description, who lamented him heartily, for he was lavish of his money
as he went along Fleet Street. We are told by one of the writers of
the life prefixed to his works (probably Bishop Percy, who contributed
the greater part of it), that "he was generous in the extreme, and so
strongly affected by compassion, that he has been known at midnight to
abandon his rest in order to procure relief and an asylum for a poor
dying object who was left destitute in the streets." This, surely,
ought to be praise to no man, however benevolent: but it is, in the
present state of society. However, the offices of the good Samaritan
are now reckoned among the things that may be practised as well as
preached, without diminution of a man's reputation for common-sense;
and this is a great step. We will here mention, that Goldsmith had
another residence in Fleet Street. He wrote his Vicar of Wakefield in
Wine Office Court. Of the curious circumstances under which this
delightful novel was sold, various inaccurate accounts have been
given. The following is Boswell's account, taken from Dr. Johnson's
own mouth:--
"I received one morning," said Johnson, "a message from poor
Goldsmith, that he was in great distress, and as it was not in
his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as
soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to
him directly. I accordingly went to him as soon as I was
dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his
rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he
had already changed my guinea, and had a bottle of Madeira and
a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he
would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which
he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel
ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it,
and saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return, and
having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I
brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not
without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him
so ill."[95]
Johnson himself lived for some time in the Temple. It was there that
he was first visited by his biographer, who took rooms in Farrar's
Buildings in order to be near him. His appearance and manners on this
occasion, especially as our readers are now of the party, are too
characteristic to be omitted. "His chambers," says Boswell, "were on
the first floor of No. 1, Middle Temple Lane--and I entered them with
an impression given me by the Rev. Dr. Blair, of Edinburgh, who had
been introduced to him not long before, and described his having
'found the giant in his den,' an expression which, when I came to be
pretty well acquainted with Johnson, I repeated to him, and he was
diverted at this picturesque account of himself....
"He received me very courteously; but it must be confessed that
his apartment, and furniture, and morning dress, were
sufficiently uncouth. His brown suit of clothes looked very
rusty; he had on a little shrivelled unpowdered wig, which was
too small for his head; his shirt-neck and knees of his
breeches were loose; his black worsted stockings ill-drawn up;
and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers. But
all these slovenly particularities were forgotten the moment he
began to talk. Some gentlemen, whom I do not recollect, were
sitting with him; and when they went away, I also rose; but he
said to me, 'Nay, don't go.'--'Sir,' said I, 'I am afraid that
I intrude upon you. It is benevolent to allow me to sit and
hear you.' He seemed pleased with this compliment which I
sincerely paid him, and answered, 'Sir, I am obliged to any man
who visits me.'"[96] (He meant that it relieved his
melancholy.)"
It was in a dress of this sort, and without his hat, that he was seen
rushing one day after two of the highest-bred visitors conceivable, in
order to hand one of them to her coach. These were his friend
Beauclerc, of the St. Albans family, and Madame de Boufflers, mother
(if we mistake not) of the Chevalier de Boufflers, the celebrated
French wit. Her report, when she got home, must have been
overwhelming; but she was clever and amiable, like her son, and is
said to have appreciated the talents of the great uncouth. Beauclerc,
however, must repeat the story:--
"When Madame de Boufflers," says he, "was first in England, she
was desirous to see Johnson. I accordingly went with her to his
chambers in the Temple, where she was entertained with his
conversation for some time. When our visit was over, she and I
left him, and were got into Inner Temple Lane, when all at once
I heard a noise like thunder. This was occasioned by Johnson,
who, it seems, on a little recollection, had taken it into his
head that he ought to have done the honours of his literary
residence to a foreign lady of quality; and eager to show
himself a man of gallantry, was hurrying down the stairs in
violent agitation. He overtook us before we reached the
Temple-gate, and brushing in between me and Madame de
Boufflers, seized her hand and conducted her to the coach. His
dress was a rusty-brown morning suit, a pair of old shoes by
way of slippers, a little shrivelled wig sticking on the top of
his head, and the sleeves of his shirt and the knees of his
breeches hanging loose. A considerable crowd of people gathered
round, and were not a little struck by his singular
appearance."[97]
It was in the Inner Temple Lane one night, being seized with a fit of
merriment at something that touched his fancy, not without the
astonishment of his companions, who could not see the joke, that
Johnson went roaring all the way to the Temple-gate; where, being
arrived, he burst into such a convulsive laugh, says Boswell, that in
order to support himself he "laid hold of one of the posts at the side
of the foot-pavement, and sent forth peals so loud, that in the
silence of the night, his voice seemed to resound from Temple-bar to
Fleet-ditch. This most ludicrous exhibition," continues his follower,
"of the awful, melancholy, and venerable Johnson, happened well to
counteract the feelings of sadness which I used to experience when
parting from him for a considerable time. I accompanied him to his
door, where he gave me his blessing."[98]
Between the Temple-gates, at one time, lived Bernard Lintot, who was
in no better esteem with authors than the other great bookseller of
those times, Jacob Tonson. There is a pleasant anecdote of Dr. Young's
addressing him a letter by mistake, which Bernard opened, and found it
begin thus:--"That Bernard Lintot is so great a scoundrel."--"It must
have been very amusing," said Young, "to have seen him in his rage: he
was a great sputtering fellow."[99]
Between the gates and Temple-bar, but nearer to the latter, was the
famous Devil Tavern, where Ben Jonson held his club. Messrs. Child,
the bankers, bought it in 1787, and the present houses were erected on
its site. We believe that the truly elegant house of Messrs. Hoare,
their successors, does not interfere with the place on which it stood.
We rather think it was very near to Temple-bar, perhaps within a house
or two. The club-room, which was afterwards frequently used for balls,
was called the Apollo, and was large and handsome, with a gallery for
music. Probably the house had originally been a private abode of some
consequence. The _Leges Conviviales_, which Jonson wrote for his club,
and which are to be found in his works, are composed in his usual
style of elaborate and compiled learning, not without a taste of that
dictatorial self-sufficiency, which, notwithstanding all that has been
said by his advocates, and the good qualities he undoubtedly
possessed, forms an indelible part of his character. "Insipida
poemata," says he, "nulla _recitantur_" (Let nobody repeat to us
insipid poetry); as if all that he should read of his own must
infallibly be otherwise. The club at the Devil does not appear to have
resembled the higher one at the Mermaid, where Shakspeare and Beaumont
used to meet him. He most probably had it all to himself. This is the
tavern mentioned by Pope:--
"And each true Briton is to Ben so civil,
He swears the Muses met him at the Devil."
It was in good repute at the beginning of the last century. "I dined
to-day," says Swift, in one of his letters to Stella, "with Dr. Garth
and Mr. Addison at the Devil Tavern, near Temple-bar, and Garth
treated: and it is well I dine every day, else I should be longer
making out my letters; for we are yet in a very dull state, only
inquiring every day after new elections, where the Tories carry it
among the new members six to one. Mr. Addison's election has passed
easy and undisputed; and I believe if he had a mind to be chosen king,
he would hardly be refused."[100] Yet Addison was a Whig. Addison had
not then had his disputes with Pope and others; and his intercourse,
till his sincerity became doubted, was very delightful. It is
impossible to read of those famous wits dining together and not
lingering upon the occasion a little, and wishing we could have heard
them talk. Yet wits have their uneasiness, because of their wit. Swift
was probably not very comfortable at this dinner. He was then
beginning to feel awkward with his Whig friends; and Garth, in the
previous month of September, had written a defence of Godolphin, the
ousted Minister, which was unhandsomely attacked in the _Examiner_ by
their common acquaintance Prior, himself formerly a Whig.
There was a multitude of famous shops and coffee-houses in this
quarter, all of which make a figure in the _Tatler_ and other works,
such as Nando's coffee-house; Dick's (still extant as Richard's); the
Rainbow (which is said to have been indicted in former times for the
_nuisance_ of selling coffee); Ben Tooke's (the bookseller); Lintot's;
and Charles Mather's, _alias_ Bubble-boy, the Toyman, who, when Sir
Timothy Shallow accuses him of selling him a cane "for ten pieces,
while Tom Empty had as good a one for five," exclaims, "Lord! Sir
Timothy, I am concerned that you, whom I took to understand canes
better than anybody in town, should be so overseen! Why, Sir Timothy,
yours is a true _jambee_, and esquire Empty's only a plain
dragon."[101]
The fire of London stopped at the Temple Exchange coffee-house; a
circumstance which is recorded in an inscription, stating the house to
have been the last of the houses burnt, and the first restored. The
old front of this house was taken down about a century ago; but on its
being rebuilt, the stone with the inscription was replaced.
But we must now cross over the way to Shire Lane, which is close to
Temple Bar on the opposite side.
Here, "in ancient times," says Maitland, writing in the middle of the
last century, "were only posts, rails, and a chain, such as are now at
Holborn, Smithfield, and Whitechapel bars. Afterwards there was a
house of timber erected across the street, with a narrow gateway, and
an entry on the south side of it under the house." The present gate
was built by Wren after the great fire, but although the work of so
great a master, is hardly worth notice as a piece of architecture. It
must be allowed that Wren could do poor things as well as good, even
when not compelled by a vestry. As the last of the city gates,
however, we confess we should be sorry to see it pulled down, though
we believe there is a general sense that it is in the way. If it were
handsome or venerable we should plead hard for it, because it would
then be a better thing than a mere convenience. The best thing we know
of it is a jest of Goldsmith's; and the worst, the point on which the
jest turned. Goldsmith was coming from Westminster Abbey, with Dr.
Johnson, where they had been looking at the tombs in Poets' Corner,
and Johnson had quoted a line from Ovid:--
"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis."
(Perhaps, some day, our names may mix with theirs.)
"When we got to Temple Bar," says Johnson, "Goldsmith stopped me,
pointed to the heads upon it, and slily whispered to me ('in
allusion,' says Boswell, 'to Dr. Johnson's supposed political
opinions, and perhaps to his own,')
"'Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur _istis_.'"
(Perhaps, some day, our names may mix with _theirs_.)
These heads belonged to the rebels who were executed for rising in
favour of the Pretender. The brutality of such spectacles, which
outrage the last feelings of mortality, and as often punish honest
mistakes as anything else, is not likely to be repeated. Yet such an
effect has habit in reconciling men's minds to the most revolting, and
sometimes the most dangerous customs, that here were two Jacobites,
one of whom made a jest of what we should now regard with horror.
However, Johnson must often have felt bitterly as he passed there; and
the jesting of such men is frequently nothing but salve for a wound.
Shire Lane still keeps its name, and we hope, however altered and
improved, it will never have any other; for here, the upper end, is
described as residing, old Isaac Bickerstaff, the Tatler, the more
venerable but not the more delightful double of Richard Steele, the
founder of English periodical literature. The public-house called the
Trumpet, now known as the Duke of York, at which the Tatler met his
club, is still remaining. At his house in the lane he dates a great
number of his papers, and receives many interesting visitors; and here
it was that he led down into Fleet Street that immortal deputation of
"twaddlers" from the country, who, as a celebrated writer has
observed, hardly seem to have settled their question of precedence to
this hour.[102]
In Shire Lane is said to have originated the famous Kit-Kat Club,
which consisted of "thirty-nine distinguished noblemen and gentlemen,
zealously attached to the Protestant succession of the house of
Hanover." "The club," continues a note in Spence by the editor, "is
supposed to have derived its name from Christopher Katt, a
pastry-cook, who kept the house where they dined, and excelled in
making mutton-pies, which always formed a part of their bill of fare;
these pies, on account of their excellence, were called Kit-Kats. The
summer meetings were sometimes held at the Upper Flask on Hampstead
Heath."[103]
"You have heard of the Kit-Kat Club," says Pope to Spence. "The
master of the house where the club met was Christopher Katt;
Tonson was secretary. The day Lord Mohun and the Earl of
Berwick were entered of it, Jacob said he saw they were just
going to be ruined. When Lord Mohun broke down the gilded
emblem on the top of his chair, Jacob complained to his
friends, and said a man who would do that, would cut a man's
throat. So that he had the good and the forms of the society
much at heart. The paper was all in Lord Halifax's handwriting
of a subscription of four hundred guineas for the encouragement
of good comedies, and was dated 1709, soon after they broke up.
Steele, Addison, Congreve, Garth, Vanbrugh, Manwaring, Stepney,
Walpole, and Pulteney, were of it; so was Lord Dorset and the
present Duke. Manwaring, whom we hear nothing of now, was the
ruling man in all conversations; indeed, what he wrote had very
little merit in it. Lord Stanhope and the Earl of Essex were
also members. Jacob has his own, and all their pictures, by Sir
Godfrey Kneller. Each member gave his, and he is going to build
a room for them at Barn Elms."[104]
It is from the size at which these portraits were taken (a
three-quarter length), that the word Kit-Kat came to be applied to
pictures. The society afterwards met in higher places; but humbleness
of locality is nothing in these matters. The refinement consists in
the company, and in whatever they choose to throw a grace over,
whether venison or beef. The great thing is, not the bill of fare,
but, as Swift called it, the "bill of company."
We cross to the south side of the street again, and come to Mrs.
Salmon's. It is a curious evidence of the fluctuation of the great
tide in commercial and growing cities, that, a century ago, this
immortal old gentlewoman, renowned for her wax-work, gives as a reason
for removing from St. Martin's-le-Grand to Fleet Street, that it was
"a more convenient place for the coaches of the quality to stand
unmolested."[105] Some of the houses in this quarter are of the
Elizabethan age, with floors projecting over the others, and looking
pressed together like burrows. The inmates of these humble tenements
(unlike those of great halls and mansions) seem as if they must have
had their heights taken, and the ceiling made to fit. Yet the builders
were liberal of their materials. Over the way, near the west corner of
Chancery Lane, stood an interesting specimen of this style of
building, in the house of the famous old angler, Isaac Walton.
Walton's was the second house from the lane, the corner house being an
inn, long distinguished by the sign of the Harrow. He appears to have
long lived here, carrying on the business of a linen-draper about the
year 1624. Another person, John Mason, a hosier, occupied one-half of
the tenement. Walton afterwards removed to another house in Chancery
Lane, a few doors up from Fleet Street, on the west side, where he
kept a sempster's, or milliner's shop.
A great deal has been said lately of the merits and demerits of
angling, and Isaac has suffered in the discussion, beyond what is
agreeable to the lovers of that gentle pleasure. Unfortunately the
brothers of the angle do not argue ingenuously. They always omit the
tortures suffered by the principal party, and affect to think you
affected if you urge them; whereas their only reason for avoiding the
point is, that it is not to be defended. If it is, we may defend, by
an equal abuse of reason, any amusement which is to be obtained at
another being's expense; and an evil genius might angle for ourselves,
and twitch us up, bleeding and roaring, into an atmosphere that would
stifle us. But fishes do not roar; they cannot express any sound of
suffering; and therefore the angler chooses to think they do not
suffer, more than it is convenient to him to fancy. Now it is a poor
sport that depends for its existence on the want of a voice in the
sufferer, and of imagination in the sportsman. Angling, in short, is
not to be defended on any ground of reflection; and this is the worst
thing to say of Isaac; for he was not unaware of the objections to his
amusement, and he piqued himself upon being contemplative.
Anglers have been defended upon the ground of their having had among
them so many pious men; but unfortunately men may be selfishly as well
as nobly pious; and even charity itself may be practised, as well as
cruelty deprecated, upon principles which have a much greater regard
to a man's own safety and future comfort, than anything which concerns
real Christian beneficence. Doubtless there have been many good and
humane men anglers, as well as many pleasant men. There have also been
some very unpleasant ones--Sir John Hawkins among them. They make a
well-founded pretension to a love of nature and her scenery; but it is
a pity they cannot relish it without this pepper to the poor fish.
Walton's book contains many passages in praise of rural enjoyment,
which affect us almost like the fields and fresh air themselves,
though his brethren have exalted it beyond its value; and his lives of
his angling friends, the Divines, have been preposterously over-rated.
If angling is to be defended upon good and manly grounds, let it; it
is no longer to be defended on any other. The best thing to be said
for it (and the instance is worthy of reflection) is, that anglers
have been brought up in the belief of its innocence, and that an
inhuman custom is too powerful for the most humane. The inconsistency
is to be accounted for on no other grounds; nor is it necessary or
desirable that it should be. It is a remarkable illustration of what
Plato said, when something was defended on the ground of its being a
trifle, because it was a custom. "But custom," said he, "is no
trifle." Here, among persons of a more equivocal description, are some
of the humanest men in the world, who will commit what other humane
men reckon among the most inhuman actions, and make an absolute
pastime of it. Let one of their grandchildren be brought up in the
reverse opinion, and see what he will think of it. This, to be sure,
might be said to be only another instance of the effect of education;
but nobody, the most unprejudiced, thinks it a bigotry in Shakspeare
and Steele to have brought us to feel for the brute creation in
general; and whatever we may incline to think for the accommodation of
our propensities, there will still remain the unanswered and always
avoided argument, of the dumb and torn fish themselves, who die
agonised, in the midst of our tranquil looking on, and for no
necessity.
John Whitney, author of the _Genteel Recreation, or the Pleasures of
Angling_, a poem printed in the year 1700, recommends the lovers of
the art to bait with the eyes of fish, in order to decoy others of the
same species. A writer in the _Censura Literaria_ exclaims, "What a
Nero of Anglers doth this proclaim John Whitney to have been! and how
unworthy to be ranked as a lover of the same pastime, which had been
so interestingly recommended by Isaac Walton, in his _Contemplative
Man's Recreation_."[106]
But Isaac's contemplative man can content himself with impaling live
worms, and jesting about the tenderness with which he treats
them--using the worm, quoth Isaac, "as if you loved him." Doubtless
John thought himself as good a man as Isaac. He poetizes, and is
innocent with the best of them, and probably would not have hurt a
dog. However, it must be allowed that he had less imagination than
Walton, and was more cruel, inasmuch as he could commit a cruelty that
was not the custom. Observe, nevertheless, that it was the customary
cruelty which led to the new one. Why must these contemplative men
commit any cruelty at all? The writer of the article in the _Censura_
was, if we mistake not, one of the kindest of human beings, and yet he
could see nothing erroneous in torturing a worm. "A good man," says
the Scripture, "is merciful to his beast." Therefore "holy Mr.
Herbert" very properly helps a horse out of a ditch, and is the better
for it all the rest of the day. Are we not to be merciful to fish as
well as beasts, merely because the Scripture does not expressly state
it? Such are the inconsistencies of mankind, during their very
acquirement of beneficence.
On the other side of the corner of Chancery Lane was born a man of
genius and benevolence, who would not have hurt a fly--Abraham Cowley.
His father was a grocer; himself, one of the kindest, wisest, and
truest gentlemen that ever graced humanity. He has been pronounced by
one, competent to judge, to have been "if not a great poet, a great
man." But his poetry is what every other man's poetry is, the flower
of what was in him; and it is at least so far good poetry, as it is
the quintessence of amiable and deep reflection, not without a more
festive strain, the result of his sociality. Pope says of him--
"Forgot his epic, nay pindaric art;
Yet still we love the language of his heart."[107]
His prose is admirable, and his character of Cromwell a masterpiece of
honest enmity, more creditable to both parties than the zealous
royalist was aware. Cowley, notwithstanding the active part he took in
politics, never ceased to be a child at heart. His mind lived in books
and bowers--in the sequestered "places of thought;" and he wondered
and lamented to the last, that he had not realised the people he found
there. His consolation should have been, that what he found in himself
was an evidence that the people exist.
Chancery Lane, "the most ancient of any to the west," having been
built in the time of Henry the Third, when it was called New Lane,
which was afterwards altered to Chancellor's Lane, is the greatest
legal thoroughfare in England. It leads from the Temple, passes by
Sergeants' Inn, Clifford's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, and the Rolls, and
conducts to Gray's Inn. Of the world of vice and virtue, of pain and
triumph, of learning and ignorance, truth and chicanery, of impudence,
violence, and tranquil wisdom, that must have passed through this
spot, the reader may judge accordingly. There all the great and
eloquent lawyers of the metropolis must have been, at some time or
other, from Fortescue and Littleton, to Coke, Ellesmere, and Erskine.
Sir Thomas More must have been seen going down with his weighty
aspect; Bacon with his eye of intuition; the coarse Thurlow; and the
reverend elegance of Mansfield. In Chancery Lane was born the
celebrated Lord Strafford, who was sent to the block by the party he
had deserted, the victim of his own false strength and his master's
weakness. It is a curious evidence of the secret manners of those
times, which are so often contrasted with the licence of the next
reign, that Clarendon, in speaking of some love-letters of this lord,
a married man, which transpired during his trial, calls them "things
of levity." What would he have said had he found any love letters
between Lady Carlisle and Pym? Of Southampton Buildings, on the site
of which lived Shakspeare's friend, Lord Southampton, we shall speak
immediately; and we shall notice Lincoln's Inn when we come to the
Western portion of Holborn. But we may here observe, that on the wall
of the Inn, which is in Chancery Lane, Ben Jonson is said to have
worked, at the time he was compelled to assist his father-in-law at
his trade of bricklaying. In the intervals of his trowel, he is said
to have handled his Horace and Virgil. It is only a tradition, which
Fuller has handed down to us in his _Worthies_; but tradition is
valuable when it helps to make such a flower grow upon an old wall.
Sergeants' Inn, the first leading out of Chancery Lane, near Fleet
Street, has been what its name implies for many generations. It was
occasionally occupied by the Sergeants as early as the time of Henry
the Fourth, when it was called Farringdon's Inn, though they have
never, we believe, held possession of the place but under tenure to
the bishops of Ely, or their lessees. Pennant confounds this inn with
another of the same name, now no longer devoted to the same purpose,
in Fleet Street.[108] Sergeants' Inn in Fleet Street was reduced to
ruins in the great fire, but was soon after rebuilt in a much more
uniform style than before. It continued after this to be occupied by
the lawyers in 1730, when the whole was taken down, and the present
court erected. The office of the Amicable Annuitant Society, on the
east side of the court, occupies the site of the ancient hall and
chapel. All the judges, as having been Sergeants-at-law before their
elevation to the bench, have still chambers in the inn in Chancery
Lane. The windows of this house are filled with the armorial bearings
of the members, who, when they are knighted, are emphatically _equites
aurati_ (knights made golden), at least as far as rings are concerned,
for they give rings on the occasion, with mottoes expressive of their
sentiments upon law and justice. As to the _equites_, learned
"knights" or horsemen (till "knight" be restored to its original
meaning--servant) will never be anything but an anomaly, especially
since the brethren no longer even ride to the Hall as they used. The
arms of the body of Sergeants are a golden shield with an ibis upon
it; or, to speak scientifically, "Or, an Ibis proper;" to which Mr.
Jekyll might have added, for motto, "_In medio tutissimus_." The same
learned punster made an epigram upon the oratory and scarlet robes of
his brethren, which may be here repeated without offence, as the
Sergeants have had among them some of the best as well as most
tiresome of speakers:
"The Sergeants are a grateful race;
Their dress and language show it;
Their purple robes from Tyre we trace,
Their arguments go to it."
One of the customs which used to be observed so late as the reign of
Charles I. in the creation of sergeants, was for the new dignitary to
go in procession to St. Paul's, and there to choose his pillar, as it
was expressed. This ceremony is supposed to have originated in the
ancient practice of the lawyers taking each his station at one of the
pillars in the cathedral, and there waiting for clients. The legal
sage stood, it is said, with pen in hand, and dexterously noted down
the particulars of every man's case on his knee.
Clifford's Inn, leading out of Sergeants' Inn into Fleet Street and
Fetter Lane, is so called from the noble family of De Clifford, who
granted it to the students-at-law in the reign of Edward III. The word
inn (Saxon, chamber), though now applied only to law places, and the
better sort of public-houses in which travellers are entertained,
formerly signified a great house, mansion, or family palace. So
Lincoln's Inn, the mansion of the Earls of Lincoln; Gray's Inn, of the
Lords Gray, &c. The French still use the word _hôtel_ in the same
sense. Inn once made as splendid a figure in our poetry, as the
palaces of Milton:
"Now whenas Phoebus, with his fiery waine,
Unto his inne began to draw apace;"[109]
says Spenser; and his disciple Browne after him:
"Now had the glorious sun tane up his inne."[110]
There are three things to notice in Clifford's Inn: its little bit of
turf and trees; its quiet; and its having been the residence of Robert
Pultock, author of the curious narrative _Peter Wilkins_, with its
Flying Women. Who he was, is not known; probably a barrister without
practice; but he wrote an amiable and interesting book. As to the
sudden and pleasant quiet in this little inn, it is curious to
consider what a small remove from the street produces it. But even in
the back room of a shop in the main street, the sound of the carts and
carriages becomes wonderfully deadened to the ear; and a remove, like
Clifford's Inn, makes it remote or nothing.
The garden of Clifford's Inn forms part of the area of the ROLLS, so
called from the records kept there, in rolls of parchment. It is said
to have been the house of an eminent Jew, forfeited to the crown; that
is to say, it was most probably taken from him, with all that it
contained, by Henry III., who made it a house for converts from the
owner's religion. These converted Jews, most likely none of the best
of their race (for board and lodging are not arguments to the
scrupulous), appear to have been so neglected, that the number of them
soon came to nothing, and Edward III. gave the place to the Court of
Chancery to keep its records in. There is a fine monument in the
chapel to a Dr. Young, one of the Masters, which, according to Vertue,
was executed by Torregiano, who built the splendid tomb in Henry
VII.'s Chapel. Sir John Trevor, infamous for bribery and corruption,
also lies here. "Wisely," says Pennant, "his epitaph is thus confined:
'Sir J. T. M.R. 1717.' "Some other Masters," he adds, "rest within the
walls; among them Sir John Strange, but without the quibbling line,
'Here lies an honest lawyer, that is Strange.'"
Another Master of the Rolls, who did honour to the profession, was Sir
Joseph Jekyll, recorded by Pope as an
... "odd old Whig,
Who never changed his principles or wig."
When Jekyll came into the office, many of the houses were rebuilt, and
to the expense of ten of them he added, out of his own purse, as much
as 350_l._ each house; observing, that "he would have them built as
strong and as well as if they were his own inheritance."[111] The
Master of the Rolls is a great law dignitary, a sort of under-judge in
Chancery, presiding in a court by himself, though his most ostensible
office is to take care of the records in question. He has a house and
garden on the spot, the latter secluded from public view. The house,
however, has not been used as a residence by the present holder of the
office or his predecessor.
Between Chancery and Fetter Lane is the new church of St. Dunstan's in
the West--a great improvement upon the old one, though a little too
plain below for the handsome fretwork of its steeple. The old building
was eminent for the two wooden figures of wild men, who, with a
gentleness not to be expected of them, struck the hour with a little
tap of their clubs. At the same time they moved their arms and heads,
with a like avoidance of superfluous action. These figures were put up
in the time of Charles II., and were thought not to confer much honour
on the passengers who stood "gaping" to see them strike. But the
passengers might surely be as alive to the puerility as any one else.
An absurdity is not the least attractive thing in this world. They who
objected to the gapers, probably admired more things than they laughed
at. It must be remembered also, that when the images were set up,
mechanical contrivances were much rarer than they are now. Two
centuries ago, St. Dunstan's Churchyard, as it was called, being the
portion of Fleet Street in front of the church, was famous for its
booksellers' shops. The church escaped the great fire, which stopped
within three houses of it, and consequently was one of the most
ancient sacred edifices in London. It was supposed to have been built
about the end of the fourteenth century, but had undergone extensive
repairs. Besides the clock with the figures, it was adorned by a
statue of Queen Elizabeth, which stood in a niche over the east end,
and had been transferred thither about the middle of last century from
the west side of old Ludgate, which was then removed.
The only repute of Fetter Lane in the present days is, or was, for
sausages. But at one time it is said to have had the honour of
Dryden's presence. The famous Praise God Barebones also, it seems,
lived here, in a house for which he paid forty pounds a year, as he
stated in his examination on a trial in the reign of Charles II.[112]
He paid the above rent, he says "except during the war:" that is, we
suppose, during the confusion of the contest between the King and the
Parliament, when probably this worthy contrived to live rent free. In
this neighbourhood also dwelt the infamous Elizabeth Brownrigg, who
was executed in 1767 for the murder of one of her apprentices. Her
house, with the cellar in which she used to confine her starved and
tortured victims, and from the grating of which their cries of
distress were heard, was one of those on the east side of the lane,
looking into the long and narrow alley behind, called Flower-de-Luce
Court. It was some years ago in the occupation of a fishing-tackle
maker.
Johnson once lived in Fetter Lane, but the circumstances of his abode
there have not transpired. We now, however, come to a cluster of his
residences in Fleet Street, of which place he is certainly the great
presiding spirit, the _Genius loci_. He was conversant for the greater
part of his life with this street, was fond of it, frequented its
Mitre Tavern above any other in London, and has identified its name
and places with the best things he ever said and did. It was in Fleet
Street, we believe, that he took the poor girl up in his arms, put her
to bed in his own house, and restored her to health and her friends;
an action sufficient to redeem a million of the asperities of temper
occasioned by disease, and to stamp him, in spite of his bigotry, a
good Christian. Here, at all events, he walked and talked, and
shouldered wondering porters out of the way, and mourned, and
philosophised, and was "a good-natured fellow" (as he called himself),
and roared with peals of laughter till midnight echoed to his roar.
"We walked in the evening," says Boswell, "in Greenwich Park.
He asked me, I suppose by way of trying my disposition, 'Is not
this very fine?' Having no exquisite relish of the beauties of
nature, and being more delighted with the busy hum of men, I
answered, 'Yes, sir; but not equal to Fleet Street.' _Johnson._
'You are right, sir.'"[113]
Boswell vindicates the tastes here expressed by the example of a "very
fashionable baronet," who, on his attention being called to the
fragrance of a May evening in the country, observed, "This may be very
well, but I prefer the smell of a flambeau at the playhouse." The
baronet here alluded to was Sir Michael le Fleming, who, by way of
comment on his indifference to fresh air, died of an apoplectic fit
while conversing with Lord Howick (the late Earl Grey), at the
Admiralty.[114] However, Johnson's _ipse dixit_ was enough. He wanted
neither Boswell's vindication, nor any other. He was melancholy, and
glad to be taken from his thoughts; and London furnished him with an
endless flow of society.
Johnson's abodes in Fleet Street were in the following order:--First,
in Fetter Lane, then in Boswell Court, then in Gough Square, in the
Inner Temple Lane, in Johnson's Court, and finally, and for the
longest period, in Bolt Court, where he died. His mode of life, during
a considerable portion of his residence in these places, is described
in a communication to Boswell by the Rev. Dr. Maxwell, assistant
preacher at the Temple, who was intimate with Johnson for many years,
and who spoke of his memory with affection.
"About twelve o'clock," says the doctor, "I commonly visited
him, and found him in bed, or declaiming over his tea, which he
drank very plentifully. He generally had a levee of morning
visitors, chiefly men of letters; Hawkesworth, Goldsmith,
Murphy, Langton, Steevens, Beauclerk, &c., &c., and sometimes
learned ladies; particularly, I remember, a French lady of wit
and fashion doing him the honour of a visit. He seemed to me to
be considered as a kind of public oracle, whom everybody
thought they had a right to visit and consult; and, doubtless,
they were well rewarded. I never could discover how he found
time for his compositions. He declaimed all the morning, then
went to dinner at a tavern, where he commonly staid late, and
then drank his tea at some friend's house, over which he
loitered a great while, but seldom took supper. I fancy he must
have read and wrote chiefly in the night; for I can scarcely
recollect that he ever refused going with me to a tavern, and
he often went to Ranelagh, which he deemed a place of innocent
recreation.
"He frequently gave all the silver in his pocket to the poor,
who watched him between his house and the tavern where he
dined. He walked the streets at all hours, and said he was
never robbed, for the rogues knew he had little money, nor had
the appearance of having much.
"Though the most accessible and communicative man alive, yet
when he suspected that he was invited to be exhibited, he
constantly spurned the invitation.
"Two young women from Staffordshire visited him when I was
present, to consult him on the subject of Methodism, to which
they were inclined. 'Come (said he), you pretty fools, dine
with Maxwell and me at the Mitre, and we will talk over that
subject'; which they did, and after dinner he took one of them
on his knees, and fondled them for half an hour together."[115]
This anecdote is exquisite. It shows, that however impatient he was of
having his own superstitions canvassed, he was loth to see them
inflicted on others. He is here a harmless Falstaff, with two innocent
damsels on his knees, in lieu of Mesdames Ford and Page.
In Gough Square, Johnson wrote part of his Dictionary. He had written
the Rambler and taken his high stand with the public before. "At this
time," says Barber, his servant, "he had little for himself, but
frequently sent money to Mr. Shiels when in distress." (Shiels was one
of his amanuenses in the dictionary.) His friends and visitors in
Gough Square are a good specimen of what they always were--a
miscellany creditable to the largeness of his humanity. There was
Cave, Dr. Hawkesworth, Miss Carter, Mrs. Macauley (two ladies who must
have looked strangely at one another), Mr. (afterwards Sir Joshua)
Reynolds, Langton, Mrs. Williams (a poor poetess whom he maintained in
his house), Mr. Levett (an apothecary on the same footing), Garrick,
Lord Orrery, Lord Southwell, and Mrs. Gardiner, wife of a tallow
chandler on Snow-hill--"not in the learned way," said Mr. Barber, "but
a worthy good woman." With all his respect for rank, which doubtless
he regarded as a special dispensation of Providence, his friend
Beauclerk's notwithstanding,[116] Johnson never lost sight of the
dignity of goodness. He did not, however, confine his attentions to
those who were noble or amiable; though we are to suppose, that
everybody with whom he chose to be conversant had some good quality or
other; unless, indeed, he patronised them as the Duke of Montague did
his ugly dogs, because nobody would if he did not. The great secret,
no doubt, was, that he was glad of the company of any of his
fellow-creatures who would bear and forbear with him, and for whose
tempers he did not care as much as he did for their welfare. And he
was giving alms; which was a catholic part of religion, in the proper
sense of the word.
"He nursed," says Mrs. Thrale, in her superfluous style,
"_whole nests_ of people in his house, where the lame, the
blind, the sick, and the sorrowful found a sure retreat from
all the evils whence his little income could secure them, and
commonly spending the middle of the week at our house, he kept
his numerous family in Fleet Street upon a settled allowance;
but returned to them every Saturday to give them three good
dinners and his company, before he came back to us on the
Monday night, treating them with the same, or perhaps more,
ceremonious civility, than he would have done by as many people
of fashion, making the Holy Scripture thus the rule of his
conduct, and only expecting salvation as he was able to obey
its precepts."[117]
Johnson's female inmates were not like the romantic ones of
Richardson.
"We surely cannot but admire," says Boswell, "the benevolent
exertions of this great and good man, especially when we
consider how grievously he was afflicted with bad health, and
how uncomfortable his home was made by the perpetual jarring of
those whom he charitably accommodated under his roof. He has
sometimes suffered me to talk jocularly of his group of
females, and call them his _seraglio_. He thus mentions them,
together with honest Levitt, in one of his letters to Mrs.
Thrale: 'Williams hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and
does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll loves
none of them.'"[118]
[Illustration: JOHNSON'S HOUSE IN BOLT COURT.]
Of his residence in Inner Temple Lane we have spoken before. He lived
there six or seven years, and then removed to Johnson's Court, No. 7,
where he resided for ten. Johnson's Court is in the neighbourhood of
Gough Square. It was during this period that he accompanied his friend
Boswell to Scotland, where he sometimes humorously styled himself
"Johnson of that _ilk_" (that same, or Johnson of Johnson), in
imitation of the local designations of the Scottish chiefs. In 1776,
in his sixty-seventh year, still adhering to the neighbourhood, he
removed into Bolt Court, No. 8, where he died eight years after, on
the 13th December, 1784. In Bolt Court he had a garden, and perhaps in
Johnson's Court and Gough Square: which we mention to show how
tranquil and removed these places were, and convenient for a student
who wished, nevertheless, to have the bustle of London at hand.
Maitland (one of the compilers upon Stow), who published his history
of London in 1739, describes Johnson and Bolt Courts as having "good
houses, well inhabited;" and Gough Square he calls fashionable.[119]
Johnson was probably in every tavern and coffee-house in Fleet Street.
There is one which has taken his name, being styled, _par excellence_,
"Doctor Johnson's Coffee-house." But the house he most frequented was
the Mitre tavern, on the other side of the street, in a passage
leading to the Temple. It was here, as we have seen, that he took his
two innocent theologians, and paternally dandled them out of their
misgivings on his knee. The same place was the first of the kind in
which Boswell met him. "We had a good supper," says the happy
biographer, "and port wine, of which he then sometimes drank a
bottle." (At intervals he abstained from all fermented liquors for a
long time.) "The orthodox, high-church sound of the Mitre, the figure
and manner of the celebrated Samuel Johnson, the extraordinary power
and precision of his conversation, and the pride arising from finding
myself admitted as his companion, produced a variety of sensations,
and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what I had before
experienced."[120] They sat till between one and two in the morning.
He told Boswell at that period that "he generally went abroad at about
four in the afternoon, and seldom came home till two in the morning. I
took the liberty to ask if he did not think it wrong to live thus, and
not to make more use of his great talents. He owned it was a bad
habit."
The next time, Goldsmith was with them, when Johnson made a remark
which comes home to everybody, namely, that granting knowledge in some
cases to produce unhappiness, "knowledge _per se_ was an object which
every one would _wish_ to attain, though, perhaps, he might not take
the trouble necessary for attaining it." One of his most curious
remarks followed, occasioned by the mention of Campbell, the author
of the _Hermippus Redivivus_, on which Boswell makes a no less curious
comment. "Campbell," said Johnson, "is a good man, a pious man. I am
afraid he has not been in the inside of a church for many years; but
he never passes a church without pulling off his hat. This shows that
he has good principles." On which, says Boswell in a note, "I am
inclined to think he was misinformed as to this circumstance. I own I
am jealous for my worthy friend Dr. John Campbell. For though _Milton_
could without remorse absent himself from public worship, _I_
cannot."[121]
It was at their next sitting in this house, at which the Rev. Dr.
Ogilvie, a Scotch writer, was present, that Johnson made his famous
joke, in answer to that gentleman's remark, that Scotland has a great
many "noble wild prospects." _Johnson._ "I believe, sir, you have a
great many. Norway, too, has noble, wild prospects; and Lapland is
remarkable for prodigious, noble, wild prospects. But, sir, let me
tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high
road that leads him to England!" "This unexpected and pointed sally,"
says Boswell, "produced a roar of applause. After all, however" (he
adds), "those who admire the rude grandeur of nature, cannot deny it
to Caledonia."[122]
Johnson had the highest opinion of a tavern, as a place in which a man
might be comfortable, if he could anywhere. Indeed, he said that the
man who could not enjoy himself in a tavern, could be comfortable
nowhere. This, however, is not to be taken to the letter. Extremes
meet; and Johnson's uneasiness of temper led him into the gayer
necessities of Falstaff. However, it is assuredly no honour to a man,
not to be able to "take his ease at his inn." "There is no private
house," said Johnson, talking on this subject, "in which people can
enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern. Let there be ever so
great a plenty of good things, ever so much grandeur, ever so much
elegance, ever so much desire that everybody should be easy, in the
nature of things it cannot be: there must always be some degree of
care and anxiety. The master of the house is anxious to entertain his
guests; the guests are anxious to be agreeable to him; and no man, but
a very impudent dog indeed, can as freely command what is in another
man's house as if it were his own. Whereas, at a tavern, there is a
general freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are welcome; and the
more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things
you call for, the welcomer you are. No servants will attend you with
the alacrity which waiters do, who are incited by the prospect of an
immediate reward in proportion as they please. No, sir, there is
nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much
happiness is produced, as by a good tavern or inn." He then repeated
with great emotion Shenstone's lines:--
"Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an inn."[123]
"Sir John Hawkins," says Boswell in a note on this passage, "has
preserved very few _memorabilia_ of Johnson." There is, however, to be
found in his bulky tome, a very excellent one upon this subject. "In
contradiction to those who, having a wife and children, prefer
domestic enjoyments to those which a tavern affords, I have heard him
assert, that _a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity_. 'As
soon' (said he), 'as I enter the door of a tavern, I experience an
oblivion of care, and a freedom from solicitude: when I am seated, I
find the master courteous, and the servants obsequious to my call,
anxious to know and ready to supply my wants: wine there exhilarates
my spirits, and prompts me to free conversation, and an interchange of
discourse with those whom I most love; I dogmatise, and am
contradicted; and in this conflict of opinion and sentiments I find
delight.'"
The following anecdote is highly to Johnson's credit, and equally
worthy of every one's attention. "Johnson was known to be so rigidly
attentive to the truth," says Boswell, "that even in his common
conversation the slightest circumstance was mentioned with exact
precision. The knowledge of his having such a principle and habit made
his friends have a perfect reliance on the truth of everything that he
told, however it might have been doubted if told by many others. As an
instance of this I may mention an odd incident, which he related as
having happened to him one night in Fleet Street. 'A gentlewoman'
(said he) 'begged I would give her my arm to assist her in crossing
the street, which I accordingly did; upon which she offered me a
shilling, supposing me to be the watchman. I perceived that she was
somewhat in liquor.' This, if told by most people, would have been
thought an invention; when told by Johnson, it was believed by his
friends, as much as if they had seen what passed."[124]
The gentlewoman, however, might have taken him for the watchman
without being in liquor, if she had no eye to discern a great man
through his uncouthness. Davies, the bookseller, said, that he
"laughed like a rhinoceros." It may be added he walked like a whale;
for it was rolling rather than walking. "I met him in Fleet Street,"
says Boswell, "walking, or rather, indeed, moving along; for his
peculiar march is thus described in a very just and picturesque
manner, in a short life of him published very soon after his
death:--'When he walked the streets, what with the constant roll of
his head, and the concomitant motion of his body, he appeared to make
his way by that motion independent of his feet.' That he was often
much stared at," continues Boswell, "while he advanced in this manner,
may be easily believed; but it was not safe to make sport of one so
robust as he was. Mr. Langton saw him one day, in a fit of absence, by
a sudden start, drive the load off a porter's back, and walk forwards
briskly, without being conscious of what he had done. The porter was
very angry, but stood still, and eyed the huge figure with much
earnestness, till he was satisfied that his wisest course was to be
satisfied and take up his burden again."[125]
There is another remark on Fleet Street and its superiority to the
country, which must not be passed over. Boswell, not having Johnson's
reasons for wanting society, was a little over-weening and gratuitous
on this subject; and on such occasions the doctor would give him a
knock. "It was a delightful day," says the biographer; "as we walked
to St. Clement's Church, I again remarked that Fleet Street was the
most cheerful scene in the world; 'Fleet Street,' said I, 'is in my
mind more delightful than Tempè.' _Johnson._--'Ay, sir, but let it be
compared with Mull.'"[126]
The progress of knowledge, even since Johnson's time, has enabled us
to say, without presumption, that we differ with this extraordinary
person on many important points, without ceasing to have the highest
regard for his character. His faults were the result of temperament;
perhaps his good qualities and his powers of reflection were, in some
measure, so too; but this must be the case with all men. Intellect
and beneficence, from whatever causes, will always command respect;
and we may gladly compound, for their sakes, with foibles which belong
to the common chances of humanity. If Johnson has added nothing very
new to the general stock, he has contributed (especially by the help
of his biographer) a great deal that is striking and entertaining. He
was an admirable critic, if not of the highest things, yet of such as
could be determined by the exercise of a masculine good sense; and one
thing he did, perhaps beyond any man in England, before or since--he
advanced, by the powers of his conversation, the strictness of his
veracity, and the respect he exacted towards his presence, what may be
called the personal dignity of literature. The consequence has been,
not exactly what he expected, but certainly what the great interests
of knowledge require; and Johnson has assisted men, with whom he
little thought of co-operating, in setting the claims of truth and
beneficence above all others.
East from Fetter Lane, on the same side of the street, is Crane
Court--the principal house in which, facing the entry, was that in
which the Royal Society used to meet, and where they kept their museum
and library before they removed to their late apartments in Somerset
House. The society met in Crane Court up to a period late enough to
allow us to present to our imaginations Boyle and his contemporaries
prosecuting their eager inquiries and curious experiments in the early
dawn of physical science, and afterwards Newton presiding in the
noontide glory of the light which he had shed over nature.
FOOTNOTES:
[75] See Walter Scott's edition of Dryden, vol. x., p. 372.
"Abhorrers" were addressers on the side of the court, who had avowed
"abhorrence" of the proceedings of the Whigs. The word was a capital
one to sound through a trumpet.
[76] Aubrey says that his death took place in a cellar in Long Acre;
and adds; "Mr. Edm. Wylde, &c., had made a collection for him, and
given him money." But Aubrey's authority is not valid against Wood's.
He is to be read like a proper gossip, whose accounts we may pretty
safely reject or believe, as it suits other testimony.
[77] Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, fol. vol. ii., p. 145.
[78] Baker's Biographia Dramatica. Reed's edition, 1782, vol. i., p.
207.
[79] Malone in the Prolegomena to Shakspeare, as above, vol, iii., p.
287.
[80] Correspondence of Samual Richardson, &c., by Anna Letitia
Barbauld, vol. i., p. 97.
[81] Our authority (one of the highest in this way) is Mr. Nichols, in
his Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. iv., p. 579.
[82]
"---- Apoplexy cramm'd intemperance knocks
Down to the ground at once, as butcher felleth ox;"--
says Thomson, in his Castle of Indolence. It was the death which the
good-natured, indolent poet probably expected for himself, and which
he would have had, if a cold and fever had not interfered; for there
is an apoplexy of the head alone, as well as of the whole body; and
men of letters who either exercise little, or work overmuch, seem
almost sure to die of it, or of palsy; which is a disease analogous.
It is the last stroke, given in the kind resentment of nature, to the
brains which should have known better than bring themselves to such a
pass. In the biography of Italian literati, "Mori' d' apoplessia"--(he
died of apoplexy)--is a common verdict.
[83] Correspondence, as above, vol. i., p. 177.
[84] Correspondence, &c., by Mrs. Barbauld, vol.i., p. 183.
[85] Life and Reign of King James I., quoted in Howell's State Trials,
vol. ii., p. 745.
[86] State Trials, _ut supra_, p. 762.
[87] "It is an opinion which universally prevails with regard to those
cross-legged monuments," says Dr. Nash, "that they were all erected to
the memory of Knights Templars. Now to me it is very evident that not
one of them belonged to that order; but, as Mr. Habingdon, in
describing this at Alve church, hath justly expressed it, to Knights
of the Holy Voyage. For the order of Knights Templars followed the
rule of the Canons regular of St. Austin, and, as such, were under a
vow of celibacy. Now there is scarcely one of these monuments which is
certainly known for whom it is erected; but it is as certain, that the
person it represented was a married man. The Knights Templars always
wore a white habit, with a red cross on the left shoulder. I believe,
not a single instance can be produced of either the mantle or cross
being carved on any of these monuments, which surely would not have
been omitted, as by it they were distinguished from all other orders,
had these been really designed to represent Knights Templars. Lastly,
this order was not confined to England only, but dispersed itself all
over Europe: yet it will be very difficult to find one cross-legged
monument anywhere out of England; whereas they would have abounded in
France, Italy, and elsewhere, had it been a fashion peculiar to that
famous order. But though, for these reasons, I cannot allow the
cross-legged monuments to have been for Knights Templars, yet they had
some relation to them, being the memorials of those zealous devotees,
who had either been in Palestine, personally engaged in what was
called the Holy War, or had laid themselves under a vow to go thither,
though perhaps they were prevented from it by death. Some few, indeed,
might possibly be erected to the memory of persons who had made
pilgrimages there merely out of private devotion. Among the latter,
probably, was that of the lady of the family of Mepham, of Mepham in
Yorkshire, to whose memory a cross-legged monument was placed in a
chapel adjoining to the one collegiate church of Howden, in Yorkshire,
and is at this day remaining, together with that of her husband on the
same tomb. As this religious madness lasted no longer than the reign
of Henry III. (the tenth and last crusade being published in the year
1268), and the whole order of Knights Templars was dissolved by Edward
II., military expeditions to the Holy Land, as well as devout
pilgrimages there, had their period by the year 1312; consequently
none of those cross-legged monuments are of a later date than the
reign of Edward II., or beginning of Edward III., nor of an earlier
than that of King Stephen, when these expeditions first took place in
this kingdom."--_History and Antiquities of Worcestershire_, fol. vol.
i., p. 31. Since Dr. Nash wrote, however, it has been denied that even
the cross legs had any thing to do with crusades.
[88] Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. We quote no edition, because
where we could we have modernised the spelling; which is a justice to
this fine old author in a quotation, in order that nobody may pass it
over. With regard to Chaucer being of the Temple, and to his beating
the Franciscan in Fleet Street, all which is reported, depends upon
the testimony of a Mr. Buckley, who, according to Speght, had seen a
Temple record to that effect.
[89] Prothalamion.
[90] "Shove-groat, named also Slyp-groat, and Slide-thrift, are sports
occasionally mentioned by the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, and probably were analogous to the modern pastime called
Justice Jervis, or Jarvis, which is confined to common pot-houses, and
only practised by such as frequent the tap-rooms."--_Strutt's Sports
and Pastimes of the People of England_, 1828, chap, i., sect. xix. It
is played with halfpence, which are jerked with the palm of the hand
from the edge of a table, towards certain numbers described upon it.
[91] Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii., p. 290.
[92] Sir John Davies, who was afterwards Lord Chief Justice of the
King's Bench, and wrote a poem on the Art of Dancing (so lively was
the gravity of those days!) "bastinadoed" a man at dinner in the
Temple Hall, for which he was expelled. The man probably deserved it,
for Davies had a fine nature; and he went back again by favour of the
excellent Lord Ellesmere.
[93] Dunciad, book ii.
[94] Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edit., 8vo. 1816, vol. iv., p.
27.
[95] Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edit. 1816, vol. i., p. 398.
[96] Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edit. 1816, vol. i., p. 378.
[97] Ibid., vol. ii., p. 421.
[98] Ibid., vol. ii., p. 271.
[99] Spence's Anecdotes, Singer's edit. p. 355.
[100] Swift's Works, _ut supra_, vol. iv., p. 41.
[101] _Tatler_, No. 142. According to the author of a lively rattling
book, conversant with the furniture of old times, Arbuthnot was a
great amateur in sticks. "My uncle," says he, "was universally allowed
to be as deeply skilled in caneology as any one, Dr. Arbuthnot not
excepted, whose science on important questions was quoted even after
his death; for his collection of the various headed sticks and canes,
from the time of the first Charles, taken together, was
unrivalled."--_Wine and Walnuts_, vol. i., p. 242.
[102] Tatler, No. 86.
[103] Spence's Anecdotes, by Singer, p. 337.
[104] Ibid.
[105] Tatler, as above, vol. iv., p. 600.
[106] Censura Literaria, vol. iv., p. 345.
[107] Imitations of Horace, Ep. i., book ii.
[108] Pennant, _ut supra_, p. 172.
[109] Faerie Queen, book vi., canto iii.
[110] Britannia's Pastorals, book i., song iii.
[111] Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii., p. 279.
[112] See Malcolm's Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii., 453.
[113] Boswell, _ut supra_, vol. i., p. 441.
[114] Malone, on the passage in Boswell, ibid.
[115] Boswell, vol. ii., p. 117.
[116] Beauclerk, of the St. Alban's family, was a descendant of
Charles II., whom he resembled in face and complexion, for which
Johnson by no means liked him the less.
[117] Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, &c. Allman, 1822, p. 69.
[118] Boswell, vol. iii., p. 398.
[119] Johnson's Court runs into Gough Square, "a place lately built
with very handsome houses, and well inhabited by persons of
fashion."--_Maitland's History and Survey of London_, by Entick,
folio, 1756 p. 961.
[120] Boswell, vol. i., p. 384.
[121] Boswell, vol. i., p. 400.
[122] Id., p. 408.
[123] Boswell, vol. ii., p. 469.
[124] Boswell, vol. ii., p. 455.
[125] Ibid., vol. iv., p. 77.
[126] Ibid., vol. iii., p. 327.