WHAT THE KING CAME TO.
[Sidenote: 1714--Estimate of population]
The population of these islands at the close of the reign of Queen Anne
was probably not more than one-fifth of its present amount. It is not
easy to arrive at a precise knowledge with regard to the number of the
inhabitants of England at that time, because there was no census taken
until 1801. We have, therefore, to be content with calculations
founded on the number of houses that paid certain taxes, and on the
register of deaths. This is of course not a very exact way of getting
at the result, but it enables us to form a tolerably fair general
estimate. According to these calculations, then, the population of
England and Wales together was something like five millions and a half;
the population of Ireland at the same time appears to have been about
two millions; that of Scotland little more than one. But the
distribution of the population of these countries was very different
then from that of the present day. Now the great cities and towns form
the numerical strength of England and Scotland at least, but at that
time the agricultural districts had a much larger proportion of the
population than the towns could boast of. London was then considered a
vast and enormous city, but it was only a hamlet when compared with the
London which we know. Even then it absorbed more than one-tenth of the
whole population of England and Wales. At the beginning of the reign
of King George the First, London had a population of about seven
hundred thousand, and it is a fact worthy of notice, that rapidly as
the {64} population of England has grown between that time and this,
the growth of the metropolis has been even greater in proportion. The
City and Westminster were, at the beginning of George's reign, and for
long after, two distinct and separate towns; between them still lay
many wide spaces on which men were only beginning to build houses.
Fashion was already moving westward in the metropolis, obeying that
curious impulse which seems to prevail in all modern cities, and which
makes the West End as eagerly sought after in Paris, in Edinburgh, and
in New York, as in London. The life of London centred in St. Paul's
and the Exchange; that of Westminster in the Court and the Houses of
Parliament. All around the old Houses of Parliament were lanes,
squares, streets, and gate-ways covering the wide spaces and broad
thoroughfares with which we are familiar. Between Parliament Buildings
and the two churches of St. Peter and St. Margaret ran a narrow,
densely crowded street, known as St. Margaret's Lane. The spot where
Parliament Street now opens into Bridge Street was part of an
uninterrupted row of houses running down to the water-gate by the
river. The market-house of the old Woollen Market stood just where
Westminster Bridge begins. The Parliament Houses themselves are as
much changed as their surroundings. St. Stephen's Gallery now occupies
the site of St. Stephen's Chapel, where the Commons used to sit.
Westminster Hall had rows of little shops or booths ranged all along
each wall inside; they had been there for generations, and they
certainly did not add either to the beauty or the safety of the ancient
hall. In the early part of the seventeenth century some of them took
fire and came near to laying in ashes one of the oldest occupied
buildings in the world. Luckily, however, the fire was put out with
slight damage, but the dangerous little shops were suffered to remain
then and for long after.
[Sidenote: 1714--Old London]
The Lesser London of that day lives for us in contemporary engravings,
in the pages of the _Spectator_ and the {65} _Tatler_, in the poems of
Swift and Pope, in the pictures of Hogarth. Hogarth's men and women
belong indeed to a later generation than the generation which
Bolingbroke dazzled, and Marlborough deceived, and Arbuthnot satirized,
and Steele made merry over. But it is only the men and women who are
different; the background remains the same. New actors have taken the
parts; the costumes are somewhat altered, but the scenes are scarcely
changed. There may be a steeple more or a sign-board less in the
streets that Hogarth drew than there were when Addison walked them, but
practically they are the same, and remained the same for a still later
generation. Maps of the time show us how curiously small London was.
There is open country to the north, just beyond Bloomsbury Square;
Sadler's Wells is out in the country, so is St. Pancras, so is
Tottenham Court, so is Marylebone. At the east Stepney lies far away,
a distant hamlet. Beyond Hanover Square to the west stretch fields
again, where Tyburn Road became the road to Oxford. There is very
little of London south of the river.
The best part of the political and social life of this small London was
practically lived in the still smaller area of St. James's, a term
which generally includes rather more than is contained within the
strict limits of St. James's parish. If some Jacobite gentleman or
loyal Hanoverian courtier of the year 1714 could revisit to-day the
scenes in which he schemed and quarrelled, he would find himself among
the familiar names of strangely unfamiliar places. St. James's Park
indeed has not altered out of all recognition since the days when Duke
Belair and my Lady Betty and my Lady Rattle walked the Mall between the
hours of twelve and two, and quoted from Congreve about laughing at the
great world and the small. There were avenues of trees then as now.
Instead of the ornamental water ran a long canal, populous with ducks,
which joined a pond called--no one knows why--Rosamund's Pond. This
pond was a favorite trysting-place for happy lovers--"the sylvan
deities and rural {66} powers of the place, sacred and inviolable to
love, often heard lovers' vows repeated by its streams and echoes"--and
a convenient water for unhappy lovers to drown themselves in, if we may
credit the _Tatler_. St. James's Palace and Marlborough House on its
right are scarcely changed; but to the left only Lord Godolphin's house
lay between it and the pleasant park where the deer wandered. Farther
off, where Buckingham Palace now is, was Buckingham House. It was then
a stately country mansion on the road to Chelsea, with semicircular
wings and a sweep of iron railings enclosing a spacious court, where a
fountain played round a Triton driving his sea-horses. On the roof
stood statues of Mercury, Liberty, Secrecy, and Equity, and across the
front ran an inscription in great gold letters, "_Sic Siti Laetantur
Lares_." The household gods might well delight in so fair a spot and in
the music of that "little wilderness full of blackbirds and
nightingales," which the bowl-playing Duke who built the house lovingly
describes to his friend Shrewsbury.
[Sidenote: 1714--Old London]
Most of the streets in the St. James's region bear the names they bore
when King George first came to London. But it is only in name that
they are unchanged. The street of streets, St. James's Street, is
metamorphosed indeed since the days when grotesque signs swung
overhead, and great gilt carriages lumbered up and down from the park,
and the chairs of modish ladies crowded up the narrow thoroughfares.
Splendid warriors, fresh from Flanders or the Rhine, clinked their
courtly swords against the posts; red-coated country gentlemen jostled
their wondering way through the crowd; and the Whig and Tory beaux,
with ruffles and rapiers, powder and perfume, haunted the coffee-houses
of their factions. Not a house of the old street remains as it was
then; not one of the panelled rooms in which minuets were danced by
candle-light to the jingle of harpsichord and tinkle of spinet, where
wits planned pamphlets and pointed epigrams, where statesmen schemed
the overthrow of {67} ministries and even of dynasties, where flushed
youth punted away its fortunes or drank away its senses, and staggered
out, perhaps, through the little crowd of chairmen and link-boys
clustered at the door, to extinguish its foolish flame in a duel at
Leicester Fields. All that world is gone; only the name of the street
remains, as full in its way of memories and associations as the S. P.
Q. R. at the head of a municipal proclamation in modern Rome.
The streets off St. James's Street, too, retain their ancient names,
and nothing more--King Street, Ryder Street, York Street, Jermyn
Street, the spelling of which seems to have puzzled last century
writers greatly, for they wrote it "Jermyn," "Germain," "Germaine," and
even "Germin." St. James's Church, Wren's handiwork, is all that
remains from the age of Anne, with "the steeple," says Strype, fondly,
"lately finished with a fine spire, which adds much splendor to this
end of the town, and also serves as a landmark." Perhaps it sometimes
served as a landmark to Richard Steele, reeling happily to the home in
"Berry" Street, where his beloved Prue awaited him. St. James's Square
has gone through many metamorphoses since it was first built in 1665,
and called the Piazza. In 1714 there was a rectangular enclosure in
the centre, with four passages at the sides, through which the public
could come and go as they pleased. In a later generation the
inhabitants railed the enclosure round, and set in the middle an oval
basin of water, large enough to have a boat upon it. In old engravings
we see people gravely punting about on the quaint little pond. The
fulness of time filled in the pond, and set up King William the Third
instead in the middle of a grassy circle. It would take too long to
enumerate all the changes that our Georgian gentleman would find in the
London of his day. Some few, however, are especially worth recording.
He would seek in vain for the "Pikadilly" he knew, with its stately
houses and fair gardens. It was almost a country road to the left of
St. James's Street, between the Green Park and Hyde Park, {68} with
meadows and the distant hills beyond. Going eastward he would find
that a Henrietta Street and a King Street still led into Covent Garden;
but the Covent Garden of his time was an open place, with a column and
a sun-dial in the middle. Handsome dwellings for persons of repute and
quality stood on the north side over those arcades which were fondly
supposed by Inigo Jones, who laid out the spot, to resemble the Piazza
in Venice. Inigo Jones built the church, too, which is to be seen in
the "Morning" plate of Hogarth's "Four Times of the Day." This church
was destroyed by fire in 1795, and was rebuilt in its present form by
Hardwick.
[Sidenote: 1714--Anne's London]
Charing Cross was still a narrow spot where three streets met; what is
now Trafalgar Square was covered with houses and the royal mews. St.
Martin's Church was not built by Gibbs for a dozen years later, in
1726. Soho and Seven Dials were fashionable neighborhoods; Mrs.
Theresa Cornelys's house of entertainment, of which we hear so much
from the writers of the time of Anne, was considered to be most
fashionably situated; ambassadors and peers dwelt in Gerrard Street;
Bolingbroke lived in Golden Square. Traces of former splendor still
linger about these decayed neighborhoods; paintings by Sir James
Thornhill, Hogarth's master and father-in-law, and elaborate marble
mantel-pieces, with Corinthian columns and entablatures, still adorn
the interiors of some of these houses; bits of quaint Queen Anne
architecture and finely wrought iron railings still lend an air of
faded gentility to some of the dingy exteriors. Parts of London that
are now fashionable had not then come into existence. Grosvenor Square
was only begun in 1716, and it was not until 1725 that the new quarter
was sufficiently advanced for its creator, Sir Richard Grosvenor, to
summon his intending tenants to a "splendid entertainment," at which
the new streets and squares were solemnly named.
Though we of to-day have seen a good deal of what are called Anne and
Georgian houses, of red brick, {69} curiously gabled, springing up in
all directions, we must not suppose that the London of 1714 was chiefly
composed of such cheerful buildings. Wren and Vanbrugh would be indeed
surprised if they could see the strange works that are now done, if not
in their name, at least in the name of the age for which they built
their heavy, plain, solid houses. We can learn easily enough from
contemporary engravings what the principal London streets and squares
were like when George the Elector became George the King. There are
not many remains now of Anne's London, but Queen Anne's Gate, some few
houses in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, and here and there a house in the
City preserve the ordinary architecture of the age of Anne.
Marlborough House bears witness to what it did in the way of more
pretentious buildings.
The insides of these houses were scarcely less like the "Queen Anne
revival" of our time than the outsides. The rooms were, as a rule,
sparingly furnished. There would be a centre-table, some chairs, a
settee, a few pictures, a mirror, possibly a spinet or musical
instrument of some kind, some shelves, perhaps, for displaying the
Chinese and Japanese porcelain which every one loved, and, of course,
heavy window-curtains. Smaller tables were used for the incessant
tea-drinking. Large screens kept off the too frequent draughts.
Handsomely wrought stoves and andirons stood in the wide fireplaces.
The rooms themselves were lofty; the walls of the better kind
wainscoted and carved, and the ceilings painted in allegorical designs.
Wall-papers had only begun to come into use within the last few years
of Anne's reign; windows were long and narrow, and small panes were a
necessity, as glass-makers had not yet attained the art of casting
large sheets of glass. The stairs were exceedingly straight; it was
mentioned as a recommendation to new houses that two persons could go
up-stairs abreast. The rents would seem curiously low to Londoners of
our time; houses could be got in Pall Mall for two hundred a year, and
in good parts of the town for thirty, forty, and {70} fifty pounds a
year. Lady Wentworth, in 1705, describes a house in Golden Square,
with gardens, stables, and coach-house, the rent of which was only
threescore pounds a year. Pretty riverside houses let at from five to
ten pounds a year. Lodgings would seem cheap now, though they were not
held so then, for Swift complains of paying eight shillings a week,
when he lodged in Bury Street, for a dining-room and bedroom on the
first floor.
[Sidenote: 1714--"Not without danger walk these streets"]
There was no general numbering of houses in 1714; that movement of
civilization did not take place until 1764. Places were known by their
signs, or their vicinity to a sign. "Blue Boars," "Black Swans," and
"Red Lions" were in every street, and people lived at the "Red Bodice,"
or over against the "Pestle." The _Tatler_ tells a story of a young
man seeking a house in Barbican for a whole day through a mistake in a
sign, whose legend read, "This is the Beer," instead of "This is the
Bear." Another tried to get into a house at Stocks Market, under the
impression that he was at his own lodgings at Charing Cross, being
misled by the fact that there was a statue of the King on horseback in
each place. Signs were usually very large, and jutted so far out from
the houses that in narrow streets they frequently touched one another.
As it was the fashion to have them carefully painted, carved, gilded,
and supported by branches of wrought iron, they were often very costly,
some being estimated as worth more than a hundred guineas.
The ill-paved streets were too often littered with the refuse which
careless householders, reckless of fines, flung into the open way. In
wet weather the rain roared along the kennel, converting all the
accumulated filth of the thoroughfare into loathsome mud. The
gutter-spouts, which then projected from every house, did not always
cast their cataracts clear of the pavement, but sometimes soaked the
unlucky passer-by who had not kept close to the wall. Umbrellas were
the exclusive privilege of women; men never thought of carrying them.
Those whose business or pleasure called them abroad in rainy {71}
weather, and who did not own carriages, might hire one of the eight
hundred two-horsed hackney carriages; jolting, uncomfortable machines,
with perforated tin sashes instead of window-glasses, and grumbling,
ever-dissatisfied drivers. There were very few sedan chairs; these
were still a comparative novelty for general use, and their bearers
were much abused for their drunkenness, clumsiness, and incivility.
The streets were always crowded. Coaches, chairs, wheelbarrows, fops,
chimney-sweeps, porters bearing huge burdens, bullies swaggering with
great swords, bailiffs chasing some impecunious poet, cutpurses,
funerals, christenings, weddings, and street fights, would seem from
some contemporary accounts to be invariably mixed up together in
helpless and apparently inextricable confusion. The general
bewilderment was made more bewildering by the very babel of street
cries bawled from the sturdy lungs of orange-girls, chair-menders,
broom-sellers, ballad-singers, old-clothes men, and wretched
representatives of the various jails, raising their plaintive appeal to
"remember the poor prisoners." The thoroughfares, however, would have
been in still worse condition but for the fact that so much of the
passenger traffic of the metropolis was done by water and not by land.
The wherries on the Thames were as frequent as the gondolas on the
canals of Venice. Across the river, down the river, up the river,
passengers hurried incessantly in the swift little boats that plied for
hire, and were rowed by one man with a pair of sculls, or two men with
oars. Despite the numbers of the river steamers at present, and the
crowds who take advantage of them, it may well be doubted whether so
large a proportion of the passenger traffic of London is borne by the
river in the days of Queen Victoria as there was in the days of Queen
Anne.
Darkness and danger ruled the roads at night with all the horrors of
the Rome of Juvenal. Oil lamps flickered freely in some of the better
streets, but even these were not lit so long as any suggestion of
twilight served for {72} an excuse to delay the illumination. When the
moon shone they were not lit at all. Link-boys drove a busy trade in
lighting belated wanderers to their homes, and saving them from the
perils of places where the pavement was taken up or where open sewers
yawned. Precaution was needful, for pitfalls of the kind were not
always marked by warning lanterns. Footpads roamed about, and worse
than footpads. The fear of the Mohocks had not yet faded from civic
memories, and there were still wild young men enough to rush through
the streets, wrenching off knockers, insulting quiet people, and
defying the watch. Indeed the watch were, as a rule, as unwilling to
interfere with dangerous revellers as were the billmen of Messina, and
seem to have been little better than thieves or Mohocks themselves.
They are freely accused of being ever ready to levy black-mail upon
those who walked abroad at night by raising ingenious accusations of
insobriety and insisting upon being bought off, or conveying their
victim to the round-house.
[Sidenote: 1714--Clubs]
The Fleet Ditch, which is almost as much of a myth to our generation as
the stream of black Cocytus itself, was an unsavory reality still in
the London which George the First entered. It was a tributary of the
Thames, which, rising somewhere among the gentle hills of Hampstead,
sought out the river and found it at Blackfriars. At one time it was
used for the conveyance of coals into the city, and colliers of
moderate size used to ascend it for a short distance. But towards the
end of Anne's reign, and indeed for long before, it had become a mere
trickling puddle, discharging its filth and refuse and sewage into the
river, and poisoning the air around it.
May Fair was still, and for many years later, celebrated in the now
fashionable quarter which bears its name. The fair lasted for six
weeks, and left about six months' demoralization behind it. "Smock
races"--that is to say, races run by young women for a prize of a laced
chemise, the competitors sometimes being attired only in their
smocks--were still to be seen in Pall Mall and {73} various other
places. This popular amusement was kept up in London until 1733, and
lingered in country places to a much later time. Bartholomew Fair was
scarcely less popular, or less renowned for its specialty of roast
sucking-pig, than in the days when Ben Jonson's Master Little-Wit, and
his wife Win-the-Fight, made acquaintance with its wild humors. There
is a colored print of about this time which gives a sufficiently vivid
presentment of the fair. At Lee and Harper's booth the tragedy of
"Judith and Holofernes" is announced by a great glaring, painted cloth,
while the platform is occupied by a gentleman in Roman armor and a lady
in Eastern attire, who are no doubt the principal characters of the
play. A gaudy Harlequin and his brother Scaramouch invite the
attention of the passers-by. In another booth rope-dancing of men and
women is offered to the less tragically minded, and in yet another the
world-renowned Faux displays the announcement of his conjuring marvels.
A peep-show of the siege of Gibraltar allures the patriotic.
Toy-shops, presided over by attractive damsels, lure the light-hearted,
and the light-fingered too, for many an intelligent pickpocket seizes
the opportunity to rifle the pocket of some too occupied customer.
There is a revolving swing, and go-carts are drawn by dogs for the
delight of children. Hucksters go about selling gin, aniseed, and
fruits, and large booths offer meat, cider, punch, and skittles. The
place is thronged with visitors and beggars. A portly figure in a
scarlet coat and wearing an order is said to be no less a person than
Sir Robert Walpole, who is rumored to have occasionally honored the
fair with his presence.
Few of the clubs that play so important a part in the history of
last-century London had come into existence in 1714. The most famous
of them either were not yet founded, or lived only as coffee or
chocolate houses. There had been literary associations like the
"Scriblerus" Club, which was started by Swift, and was finally
dissolved by the quarrels of Oxford and Bolingbroke. The {74}
"Saturday" and "Brothers" Clubs had been political societies, at both
of which Swift was all powerful, but they, too, were no more. The
"Kit-Kat" Club, of mystic origin and enigmatic name, with all its
loyalty to Hanover and all its memories of bright toasts, of Steele,
Addison, and Godfrey Kneller, had passed away in 1709, and met no more
in Shire Lane, off Fleet Street, or at the "Upper Flask" Inn at
Hampstead. It had not lived in vain, according to Walpole, who
declared that its patriots had saved the country. Within its rooms the
evil-omened Lord Mohun had broken the gilded emblem of the crown off
his chair. Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, who was secretary to the
club, querulously insisted that the man who would do that would cut a
man's throat, and Lord Mohun's fatal career fully justified Tonson's
judgment. If the Kit-Kat patriots had saved the country, the Tory
patriots of the October Club were no less prepared to do the same. The
October Club came first into importance in the latest years of Anne,
although it had existed since the last decade of the seventeenth
century. The stout Tory squires met together in the "Bell" Tavern, in
narrow, dirty King Street, Westminster, to drink October ale, under
Dahl's portrait of Queen Anne, and to trouble with their fierce,
uncompromising Jacobitism the fluctuating purposes of Harley and the
crafty counsels of St. John. The genius of Swift tempered their hot
zeal with the cool air of his "advice." Then the wilder spirits
seceded, and formed the March Club, which retained all the angry
Jacobinism of the parent body, but lost all its importance. There were
wilder associations, like the Hell-fire Club, which, under the
presidency of the Duke of Wharton, was distinguished for the desperate
attempts it made to justify its name. But it was, like its president,
short lived and soon forgotten. There are fantastic rumors of a
Calves' Head Club, organized in mockery of all kings, and especially of
the royal martyrs. It was said by obscure pamphleteers to be founded
by John Milton; but whether the body ever had any real existence seems
now to be uncertain.
{75}
[Sidenote: 1714--Coffee-houses]
Next to the clubs came the "mug-houses." The mug-houses were political
associations of a humbler order, where men met together to drink beer
and denounce the Whigs or Tories, according to their convictions. But
at this time the coffee-houses occupied the most important position in
social life. There were a great many of them, each with some special
association which still keeps it in men's memories. At Garraway's, in
Change Alley, tea was first retailed at the high prices which then made
tea a luxury. The "Rainbow," in Fleet Street, the second coffee-house
opened in London, is mentioned in the _Spectator_; the first was
Bowman's, in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill. Lloyd's, in Lombard
Street, was dear to Steele and Addison. At Don Saltero's, by the river
at Chelsea, Mr. Salter exhibited his collection of curiosities and
delighted himself, and no one else, by playing the fiddle. At the
"Smyrna" Prior and Swift were wont to receive their acquaintances.
From the "St. James's," the last house but one on the south-west corner
of St. James's Street, the _Tatler_ dated its foreign and domestic
news, and conferred fame on its waiter, Mr. Kidney, "who has long
conversed with and filled tea for the most consummate politicians." It
was the head-quarters of Whigs and officers of the Guards; letters from
Stella were left here for Swift, and here in later years originated
Goldsmith's "Retaliation." Will's, at the north corner of Russell
Street and Bow Street, famous for its memories of Dryden and for the
_Tatler's_ dramatic criticisms, had ceased to exist in 1714. Its place
was taken by Button's, at the other side of Russell Street, started by
Addison in 1712. Here, later, was the lion-head letter-box for the
_Guardian_, designed by Hogarth. At Child's, in St. Paul's
Church-yard, the _Spectator_ often smoked a pipe. Sir Roger de
Coverley was beloved at Squire's, near Gray's Inn Gate. Slaughter's,
in St. Martin's Lane, was often honored by the presence first of
Dryden, and then of Pope. Serle's, near Lincoln's Inn, was cherished
by the law. At the "Grecian," in Devereux Court, Strand, learned men
met and {76} quarrelled; a fatal duel was once fought in consequence of
an argument there over the accent on a Greek word. At the "Grecian,"
too, Steele amused himself by putting the action of Homer's "Iliad"
into an exact journal and planning his "Temple of Fame." From White's
chocolate-house, which afterwards became the famous club, came Mr.
Isaac Bickerstaff's "Accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure, and
Entertainment." The "Cocoa Tree" was the Tory coffee-house, in St.
James's Street. Ozinda's chocolate-house, next to St. James's Palace,
was also a Tory resort, and its owner was arrested in 1715 for supposed
complicity in Jacobite conspiracy.
[Sidenote: 1714--Humors of the time]
To these coffee and chocolate houses came all the wit and all the
fashion of London. Men of letters and statesmen, men of the robe and
men of the sword, lawyers, dandies, poets, and philosophers, met there
to discuss politics, literature, scandal, and the play. There were
often very strange figures among the motley crowd behind the
red-curtained windows of a St. James's coffee-house. The gentleman who
made himself so agreeable to the bar-maid or who chatted so affably
about the conduct of the allies or the latest news from Sweden, might
meet you again later on if your road lay at all outside town, and
imperiously request you to stand and deliver. But of all the varied
assembly the strangest figures must have been the beaux and exquisites,
in all their various degrees of "dappers," "fops," "smart fellows,"
"pretty fellows," and "very pretty fellows." They made a brave show in
many-colored splendor of attire, heavily scented with orange-flower
water, civet-violet, or musk, with large falbala periwigs, or long,
powdered duvilliers, with snuff-boxes and perspective glasses
perpetually in their hands, and dragon or right Jamree canes, curiously
clouded and amber headed, dangling by a blue ribbon from the wrist or
the coat-button. The staff was as essential to an early Georgian
gentleman as to an Athenian of the age of Pericles, and the
cane-carrying custom incurred the frequent attacks of the satirists.
Cane-bearers are made to declare {77} that the knocking of the cane
upon the shoe, leaning one leg upon it, or whistling with it in the
mouth, were such reliefs to them in conversation that they did not know
how to be good company without it. Some of these young men appear to
have affected effeminacy, like an Agathon or a Henri Trois. Steele has
put it on record that he heard some, who set up to be pretty fellows,
calling to one another at White's or the St. James's by the names of
"Betty," "Nelly," and so forth.
Servants play almost as important parts as their masters in the humors
of the time. Rich people were always surrounded by a throng of
servants. First came the valet de chambre, who was expected to know a
little of everything, from shaving and wig-making to skill in country
sports, and had as much experience in all town matters as a servant out
of Terence or Molière. Last came the negro slave, who waited on my
lord or my lady, with the silver collar of servitude about his neck.
Servants wore fine clothes and aped fine manners. The footmen of the
Lords and Commons held mimic parliament while waiting for their masters
at Westminster, parodying with elaborate care the proceedings of both
Houses. They imitated their masters in other ways, too, taking their
titles after the fashion made famous by Gil Blas and his fellow valets,
and familiar by the farce of "High Life Below Stairs." The writer of
the _Patriot_ of Thursday, August 19, 1714, satirizes misplaced
ambition by "A discourse which I overheard not many evenings ago as I
went with a friend of mine into Hyde Park. We found, as usual, a great
number of gentlemen's servants at the park gate, and my friend, being
unacquainted with the saucy custom of those fellows to usurp their
masters' titles, was very much surprised to hear a lusty rogue tell one
of his companions who inquired after his fellow-servant that his Grace
had his head broke by the cook-maid for making a sop in the pan."
Presently after another assured the company of the illness of my lord
bishop. "The information had doubtless continued had {78} not a fellow
in a blue livery alarmed the rest with the news that Sir Edward and the
marquis were at fisticuffs about a game at chuck, and that the
brigadier had challenged the major-general to a bout at cudgels."
[Sidenote: 1714--Principal towns]
It is only fair, after enumerating so many of the eccentricities and
discomforts of early Georgian London, to mention one proof of
civilization of which Londoners were able to boast. London had a
penny-post, of which it was not unreasonably proud. This penny-post is
thus described in Strype's edition of Stow's "Survey of London." "For
a further convenience to the inhabitants of this city and parts
adjacent, for about ten miles compass, another post, and that a
foot-post, commonly called the penny-post, was erected, and though at
first set up by a private hand, yet, bring of such considerable amount,
is since taken into the post-office and made a branch of it. And in
this all letters and parcels not exceeding a pound weight, and also any
sum of money not above 10 pounds or parcel of 10 pounds value is safely
conveyed, and at the charge of a penny, to all parts of the city and
suburbs, and but a penny more at the delivery to most towns within ten
miles of London, and to some towns at a farther distance. And for the
better management of this office there are in London and Westminster
six general post-offices . . . at all which there constantly
attend . . . officers to receive letters and parcels from the several
places appointed to take them in, there being a place or receiving
house for the receipt thereof in most streets, with a table hung at the
door or shop-window, in which is printed in great letters 'Penny-post
Letters and Parcels are taken in Here.' And at those houses they have
letter-carriers to call every hour. . . . All the day long they are
employed, some in going their walks to bring in, and others to carry
out."
The next town in population to London was Bristol, and Bristol had then
only one-seventeenth of London's population. The growth of the
manufacturing industry, which has created such a cluster of great towns
in the North of England, had hardly begun to show itself when {79}
George the First came to the throne. Bristol was not only the most
populous place after London at this time, but it was the great English
seaport. It had held this rank for centuries. Even at the time when
"Tom Jones" was written, many years after the accession of George the
First, the Bristol Alderman filled the same place in popular
imagination that is now assigned to the Alderman of London. Fielding
attributes to the Bristol Alderman that fine appreciation of the
qualities of turtle soup with which more modern humorists have endowed
his metropolitan fellow.
Liverpool was hardly thought of in the early Georgian days. It was
only made into a separate parish a few years before George came to the
throne, and its first dock was opened in 1709. Manchester was
comparatively obscure and unimportant, and had not yet made its first
export of cotton goods. At this time Norwich, famous for its worsted
and woollen works and its fuller's earth, surpassed it in business
importance. By the middle of the century the population of Bristol is
said to have exceeded ninety thousand; Norwich, to have had more than
fifty-six thousand; Manchester, about forty-five thousand; Newcastle,
forty thousand; and Birmingham, about thirty thousand; while Liverpool
had swelled to about thirty thousand, and ranked as the third port in
the country. York was the chief city of the Northern Counties; Exeter,
the capital of the West. Shrewsbury was of some account in the region
towards the Welsh frontier. Worcester, Derby, Nottingham, and
Canterbury were places of note. Bath had not come into its fashion and
its fame as yet. Its first pump-room had been built only a few years
before George entered England. The strength of England now, if we
leave London out of consideration, lies in the north, and goes no
farther southward than a line which would include Birmingham. In the
early days of the Georges this was just the part of England which was
of least importance, whether as regards manufacturing energy or
political power.
{80}
Ireland just then was quiet. It had sunk into a quietude something
like that of the grave. Civil war had swept over the country; a
succession of civil wars indeed had plagued it. There was a time just
before the outbreak of the parliamentary struggle against Charles the
First when, according to Clarendon, Ireland was becoming a highly
prosperous country, growing vigorously in trade, manufacture, letters,
and arts, and beginning to be, as he puts it, "a jewel of great lustre
in the royal diadem." But civil war and religious persecution had
blighted this rising prosperity, and for the evils coming from
political proscription and religious persecution the statesmen of the
time could think of no remedy but new proscription and fresh
persecution. Roman Catholics were excluded from the legislature, from
municipal corporations, and from the liberal professions; they were not
allowed to teach or be taught by Catholics; they were not permitted to
keep arms; the trade and navigation of Ireland were put under ruinous
restrictions and disabilities. In the reign of Anne new acts had been
passed by the Irish Parliament, and sanctioned by the Crown "to prevent
the further growth of Popery." Some of these later measures introduced
not a few of the very harshest conditions of the penal code against
Catholics. The Irish Parliament at that time was merely in fact what
has since been called the British garrison; it consisted of the
conquerors and the settlers. The Irish people had no more to do with
it, except in the way of suffering under it, than the slaves in Georgia
thirty years ago had to do with the Congress at Washington.
[Sidenote: 1714--Old Dublin]
Dublin has perhaps changed less than London since 1714, but it has
changed greatly notwithstanding. The Irish Parliament was already
established in College Green, but not in the familiar building which it
afterwards occupied. It met in Chichester House, which had been built
as a hospital by Sir George Carew at the close of the sixteenth
century. From him it passed into the possession of Sir Arthur
Chichester, an English soldier of {81} fortune, who had distinguished
himself in France under Henry the Fourth, and who afterwards came to
Ireland and played an active part in the plantation of Ulster. It was
not until 1728 that Chichester House was pulled down and the new
building erected on its site. Trinity College, of course, stood on
College Green, so did two other stately dwellings, Charlemont House and
Clancarty House, both of which have long since passed away. There were
several book-shops on the Green as well, and a great many taverns and
coffee-shops. The statue of King William the Third had been set up in
1701. The collegians professed great indignation at the manner in
which the statue turned its back to the college gates, and the effigy
was the object of many indignities, for which the students sometimes
got into grave trouble with the authorities.
St. Patrick's Well was one of the great features of Dublin in the early
part of the last century. It stood in the narrow way by Trinity
College, the name of which had not long been altered from Patrick's
Well Lane to Nassau Street. The change had been made in compliment to
a bust of William the Third, which adorned the front of one of the
houses, but for long after the place was much more associated with the
well than with the House of Orange. The waters of the well were
popularly supposed to have wonderful curative and health-giving
properties, and it was much used. It dried up suddenly in 1729, and
gave Swift the opportunity of writing some fiercely indignant national
verses. But the water was restored to it in 1731, and it still exists
in peaceful, half-forgotten obscurity in the College grounds.
Dawson Street, off Nassau Street, had only newly come into existence.
It was called after Joshua Dawson, who had just built for himself a
handsome mansion with gardens round it. He sold the house in 1715 to
the Dublin Corporation, to be used as a Mansion House for their Lord
Mayors. Where Molesworth and Kildare Streets now stand there was at
this time a great piece of waste {82} land called Molesworth Fields.
Chapelizod, now a sufficiently populous suburb, was then the little
village of Chappell Isoud, said to be so called from that Belle Isoud,
daughter of King Anguish of Ireland, who was beloved by Tristram. The
General Post-office in Sycamore Alley had for Postmaster-general Isaac
Manley, who was a friend of Swift. Manley incurred the Dean's
resentment in 1718 by opening letters addressed to him. The postal
arrangements were, as may be imagined, miserably defective. Owing to
the carelessness of postmasters, the idleness of post-boys, bad horses,
and sometimes the want of horses, much time was lost and letters
constantly miscarried.
[Sidenote: 1714--Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Belfast]
The amusements of Dublin were those of London on a small scale. Dublin
was as fond of its coffee-houses as London itself. Lucas's, in Cork
Street, was the favorite resort of beaux, gamesters, and bullies. Here
Talbot Edgeworth, Miss Edgeworth's ancestor, whom Swift called the
"prince of puppies," displayed his follies, his fine dresses, and his
handsome face, and believed himself to be the terror of men and the
adoration of women, till he died mad in the Dublin Bridewell. The yard
behind Lucas's was the theatre of numerous duels, which were generally
witnessed from the windows by all the company who happened to be
present. These took care that the laws of honorable combat were
observed. Close at hand was the "Swan" Tavern, in Swan Alley, a
district devoted chiefly to gambling-houses. On Cork Hill was the
cock-pit royal, where gentlemen and ruffians mingled together to
witness and wager on the sport. Cork Hill was not a pleasant place at
night. Pedestrians were often insulted and roughly treated by the
chairmen hanging about Lucas's and the "Eagle" Tavern. Even the
waiters of these establishments sometimes amused themselves by pouring
pailfuls of foul water upon the aggrieved passer-by. It is not
surprising, therefore, to find that an Irish edition of the Hell-fire
Club was set up at the "Eagle" in 1735. The roughness of the time
found its way into {83} the theatre in Smock Lane, which was the scene
of frequent political riots. Dublin had its Pasquin or Marforio in an
oaken image, known as the "Wooden Man," which had stood on the southern
side of Essex Street, not far from Eustace Street, since the end of the
seventeenth century.
Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Belfast were the only considerable towns
in Ireland after the Irish capital. Not many years had passed since
Cork was besieged by Marlborough himself, and taken from King James.
The Duke of Grafton, one of the sons of Charles the Second, was killed
then in a little street or lane, which still commemorates the fact by
its name. The same year that saw Marlborough besieging Cork saw
Limerick invested by the forces of King William, under William's own
command. The Irish general, Sarsfield, held out so gallantly that
William had to give up the attempt, and it was not until the following
year, and after the cause of James had gone down everywhere else, that
Sarsfield consented to accept the terms, most honorable to him, of the
famous Treaty of Limerick. There was but little feeling in Ireland in
favor of the Chevalier at the time of Queen Anne's death. Any sympathy
with the Stuart cause that still lingered was sentimental merely, and
even as such hardly existed among the great mass of the people. To
these, indeed, the change of masters could matter but little; they had
had enough of the Stuarts, and the conduct of James the Second during
his Irish campaign had made his name and his memory despised. Rightly
or wrongly he was charged with cowardice--he who in his early days had
heard his bravery in action praised by the great Turenne--and the
charge was fatal to him in the minds of the Irish people. The penal
laws of Anne's days were not excused because of any strong Jacobite
sympathies or active Jacobite schemes in Ireland.
The Union between England and Scotland was only seven years old when
George came to the throne of these kingdoms, and already an attempt had
been made by a {84} powerful party in Scotland to obtain its repeal.
The union was unquestionably accomplished by Lord Somers and other
English statesmen, with the object of securing the succession much
rather than the national interests of the Scottish people. It was for
a long time detested in Scotland. The manner of its accomplishment,
mainly by bribery and threats, made it more odious. Yet it was based
on principles which secured the dearest interests of Scotland and
respected the religious opinions of the population. Scottish law,
Scottish systems, and the Scotch Church were left without interference,
and constitutional security was given for the maintenance of the
Presbyterian Establishment. In plain words, the Union admitted and
maintained the rights and the claims of the great majority of the
Scotch people, and therefore, when the first heat of dislike to it had
gone out, Scotland began to find that she could be old Scotland still,
even when combined in one constitutional system with England. She soon
accepted cordially the conditions which opened new ways to her
industrial and trading energy, and did not practically interfere with
her true national independence.
[Sidenote: 1714--Life in Edinburgh]
Edinburgh was then, and remained for generations to come, much the same
as it appeared when Mary Stuart first visited it. Historians like
Brantôme, and poets like Ronsard, lamented for their fair princess
exiled in a savage land. But the daughter of the House of Lorraine
might well have been content with the curious beauty of her new
capital. Even now, more than three centuries since Mary Stuart landed
in Scotland, and more than a century and a half since her descendant
raised the standard of rebellion against the Elector of Hanover,
Edinburgh Old Town retains more of its antique characteristics than
either of the capitals of the sister kingdoms. It is true that the
Northern Athens has followed the example of its Greek original in
shifting the scene of its social life. The Attic Athens of to-day
occupies a different site from that of the city of Pericles. New
Edinburgh {85} has reared itself on the other bank of that chasm where
once the North River flowed, and where now the trains run. Edinburgh,
however, more fortunate than the city of Cecrops, while founding a new
town has not lost the old. But at the time of the Hanoverian
accession, and for generations later, not a house of the new town had
been built. Edinburgh was still a walled city, with many gates or
"ports," occupying the same ground that she had covered in the reign of
James the Third, along the ridge between the gray Castle on the height
at the west and haunted Holyrood in the plain at the east. All along
this ridge rose the huge buildings, "lands," as they were called,
stretching from peak to peak like a mountain-range--five, six,
sometimes ten stories high--pierced with innumerable windows, crowned
with jagged, fantastic roofs and gables, and as crowded with life as
the "Insulae" of Imperial Rome. Over all rose the graceful pinnacle of
St. Giles's Church, around whose base the booths of goldsmiths and
other craftsmen clustered. The great main street of this old town was,
and is, the Canongate, with its hundred or so of narrow closes or wynds
running off from it at right angles. The houses in these closes were
as tall as the rest, though the space across the street was often not
more than four or five feet wide. The Canongate was Edinburgh in the
early days of the last century far more than St. James's Street was
London. Its high houses, with their wooden panellings, with the old
armorial devices on their doors, and their common stair climbing from
story to story outside, have seen the whole panorama of Scottish
history pass by.
Life cannot have been very comfortable in Edinburgh. There were no
open spaces or squares in the royalty, with the exception of the
Parliamentary close. The houses were so well and strongly built that
the city was seldom troubled by fire, but they were poor inside, with
low, dark rooms. We find, in consequence, that houses inhabited by the
gentry in the early part of the eighteenth century were considered
almost too bad for very humble {86} folk at its close, and the success
of the new town was assured from the day when its first
foundation-stone was laid. But if not very comfortable, life was quiet
and simple. People generally dined at one or two o'clock in Edinburgh
when George the First was king. Shopkeepers closed their shops when
they dined, and opened them again for business when the meal was over.
There was very little luxury; wine was seldom seen on the tables of the
middle classes, and few people kept carriages. There were not many
amusements; friends met at each other's houses to take tea at five
o'clock, and perhaps to listen to a little music; for the Edinburghers
were fond of music, and an annual concert which was established early
in the century lingered on till within three years of its close. But
this simplicity was not immortal, and we hear sad complaints as the
century grows old concerning the decadence of manners made manifest in
the luxurious practice of dining as late as four or five, the freer use
of wine, and other signs of over-civilization.
[Sidenote: 1714--Lowland agriculture]
Glasgow, in the Clyde valley, ranked next to Edinburgh in importance
among Scotch towns. More than twenty years later than the time of
which we treat, the author of a pamphlet called "Memoirs of the Times"
could write, "Glasgow is become the third trading city in the island."
But in 1714 the future of its commercial prosperity, founded upon its
trade with the West Indies and the American colonies, had scarcely
dawned. The Scotch merchants had not yet been able, from want of
capital, and, it was said, the jealousy of the English merchants, to
make much use of the privileges conferred upon them by the union, and
Glasgow was on the wrong side of the island for sharing in Scotland's
slight Continental trade. Still, Glasgow was fairly thriving, thanks
to the inland navigation of the Clyde. Some of its streets were broad;
many of its houses substantial, and even stately. Its pride was the
great minster of St. Mungo's, "a solid, weel-jointed mason-wark, that
will stand as lang as the warld keep hands and gunpowther aff it," to
quote the {87} enthusiastic words of Andrew Fairservice. The streets
were often thronged with the wild Highlanders from the hills, who came
down as heavily and as variously armed as a modern Albanian chieftain,
to trade in small cattle and shaggy ponies.
At this time the average Englishman knew little about the Lowlands and
nothing about the Highlands of Scotland. The Londoner of the age of
Anne would have looked upon any traveller who had made his way through
the Highlands of Scotland with much the same curiosity as his
descendants, a generation or two later, regarded Bruce when he returned
from Abyssinia, and would probably have received most of his statements
with a politer but not less profound disbelief. It was cited, as a
proof of the immense popularity of the _Spectator_, that despite all
the difficulties of intercommunication it found its way into Scotland.
George the First had passed away, and George the Second was reigning in
his stead, before any Englishman was found foolhardy enough to explore
the Scottish Highlands, and lucky enough to escape unhurt, and publish
an account of his experiences, and put on record his disgust at the
monstrous deformity of the Highland scenery. But the Londoner in 1714
was scarcely better informed about the Scotch Lowlands. What he could
learn was not of a nature to impress him very profoundly. Scotland
then, and for some time to come, was very far behind England in many
things; most of all, in everything connected with agriculture. In the
villages the people dwelt in rude but fairly comfortable cottages, made
chiefly of straw-mixed clay, and straw-thatched. Wearing clothes that
were usually home-spun, home-woven, and home-tailored; living
principally, if not entirely, on the produce of his own farm, the
Lowland farmer passed a life of curious independence and isolation. To
plough his land, with its strange measurements of "ox-gate,"
"ploughgate," and "davoch," he had clumsy wooden ploughs, the very
shape of which is now almost a tradition, but which were certainly at
least as primitive in {88} construction as the plough Ulysses guided in
his farm at Ithaca. Wheeled vehicles of any kind, carts or
wheelbarrows, were rarities. A parish possessed of a couple of carts
was considered well provided for. Even where carts were known, they
were of little use, they were so wretchedly constructed, and the few
roads that did exist were totally unfit for wheeled traffic. Roads
were as rare in Scotland then as they are to-day in Peloponnesus. An
enterprising Aberdeenshire gentleman, Sir Archibald Grant, of Monymusk,
is deservedly distinguished for the interest he took in road-making
about the time of the Hanoverian accession. Some years later statute
labor did a little--a very little--towards improving the public roads,
but it was not until after the rebellion of 1745, when the Government
took the matter in hand, that anything really efficient was done. A
number of good roads were then made, chiefly by military labor, and
received in popular language the special title of the King's highways.
But in the early part of the century there was little use for carts,
even of the clumsiest kind. Such carriage as was necessary was
accomplished by strings of horses tethered in Indian file, like the
lines of camels in the East, and laden with sacks or baskets. The
cultivation of the soil was poor; "the surface was generally
unenclosed; oats and barley the chief grain products; wheat little
cultivated; little hay made for winter; the horses then feeding chiefly
on straw and oats." "The arable land ran in narrow slips," with "stony
wastes between, like the moraines of a glacier." The hay meadow was an
undrained marsh, where rank grasses, mingled with rushes and other
aquatic plants, yielded a coarse fodder. About the time when George
the First became King of England, Lord Haddington introduced the sowing
of clover and other grass seeds. Some ten years earlier an
Englishwoman, Elizabeth Mordaunt, daughter of the Earl of Peterborough,
and wife of the Duke of Gordon, introduced into her husband's estates
English ploughs, English ploughmen, the system of fallowing up to that
time {89} unknown in Scotland, planted moors, sowed foreign grasses,
and showed the Morayshire farmers how to make hay.
[Sidenote: 1714--Famines in Scotland]
As a natural result of the primitive and incomplete agriculture, dearth
of food was frequent, and even severe famine, in all its horrors of
starvation and death, not uncommon. When George the First came to the
throne the century was not old enough for the living generation of
Scotchmen to forget the ghastly seven years that had brought the
seventeenth century to its close--seven empty ears blasted with
east-wind. So many died of hunger that, in the grim words of one who
lived through that time, "the living were wearied with the burying of
the dead." The plague of hunger took away all natural and relative
affections, "so that husbands had not sympathy for their wives, nor
wives for their husbands; parents for their children, nor children for
their parents." The saddest proof of the extent of the suffering is
shown in the irreligious despair which seized upon the sufferers.
Scotland then, as now, was strongly marked for its piety, but want made
men defiant of heaven, prepared, like her who counselled the man of Uz,
to curse God and die by the roadside. Warned by no dream of thin and
ill-favored kine, the Pharaohs of Westminster had passed an Act,
enforced while the famine was well begun, against the importation of
meal into Scotland. At the sorest of the famine, the importation of
meal from Ireland was permitted, and exportation of grain from Scotland
prohibited. But, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the
famine had but just subsided, a Government commission ordered that all
loads of grain brought from Ireland into the West of Scotland should be
staved and sunk.
The empire over which King George came to rule was as yet in a growing,
almost a fluid condition. In North America, England had, by one form
of settlement or another, New York, but lately captured; New Jersey,
the New England States, such as they then were, Virginia--an old
possession--Maryland, South Carolina, Pennsylvania--settled {90} by
William Penn, whose death was now very near.
Louisiana had just been taken possession of by the French. The city of
New Orleans was not yet built. The French held the greater part of
what was then known of Canada; Jamaica, Barbadoes, and other West
Indian islands were in England's ownership. The great East Indian
Empire was only in its very earliest germ; its full development was not
yet foreseen by statesman, thinker, or dreamer. The English flag had
only begun to float from the Rock of Gibraltar.
{91}