THE STRAND (SOUTH SIDE).
Essex Street was formerly part of the Outer Temple, the western wing of
the Knight Templars’ quarter. The outer district of these proud and
wealthy Crusaders stretched as far as the present Devereux Court; those
gentler spoilers, the mediæval lawyers, having extended their frontiers
quite as far as their rooted-out predecessors. From the Prior and Canons
of the Holy Sepulchre[35] it was transferred, in the reign of Edward II.
to the Bishops of Exeter, who built a palace here and occupied it till the
reign of Henry VII. or Henry VIII.
The first tenant of Exeter House was the ill-fated Walter Stapleton, Lord
Treasurer of England, a firm adherent to the luckless Edward II., against
his queen and the turbulent barons. In 1326, when Isabella landed from
France to chase the Spensers from her husband’s side, and advanced on
London, the weak king and his evil counsellors fled to the Welsh frontier;
but the bishop held out stoutly for his king, and, as custos of the City
of London, demanded the keys from the Lord Mayor, Hammond Chickwell, to
prevent the treachery of the disaffected city. The watchful populace,
roused by Isabella’s proclamation that had been hung on the new cross in
Cheapside, rose in arms, seized the vacillating mayor, and took the keys.
They next ran to Exeter House, then newly erected, fired the gates, and
burnt all the plate, jewels, money, and goods. The bishop, at that time in
the fields, being almost too proud to show fear, rode straight to the
northern door of St. Paul’s to take sanctuary. There the mob tore him from
his horse, stripped him of his armour, and dragging him to Cheapside,
proclaimed him a traitor, a seducer of the king, and an enemy of their
liberties, and lopping off his head, set it on a pole. The corpse was
buried without funeral service in an old churchyard of the Pied
Friars.[36] His brother and some servants were also beheaded, and their
bleeding and naked bodies thrown on a heap of rubbish by the river side.
Exeter Place was shortly afterwards rebuilt, but the new house seemed a
doomed place, and brought no better fortune to its new owners. Lord Paget,
who changed its name to Paget House, fought at Boulogne under the poet
Earl of Surrey, was ambassador at the court of Charles V., and on his
return obtained a peerage and the garter. He fell with the Protector
Somerset, being accused of having planned the assassination of the Duke of
Northumberland at Paget House. Released from the Tower, he was deprived of
the garter upon the malicious pretence that he was not a gentleman by
blood. Queen Mary, however, restored the fallen man to honour, made him
Lord Privy Seal, and sent him on an embassy.
The next occupier of the unlucky house, Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of
Norfolk, and son of the poet Earl of Surrey, maintained in its chambers an
almost royal magnificence. It was here he was arrested for conspiring,
with the aid of Mary Queen of Scots, the Pope, and the King of Spain, to
marry Mary and restore the Popish religion.
The duke’s ambition and treason were fully proved by his own intercepted
letters; indeed, he himself confessed his guilt, though he had denounced
Mary to Elizabeth as a “notorious adulteress and murderer.” To crown his
rashness, meanness, and treason, he wrote from the Tower the most abject
letters to Elizabeth, imploring her clemency. He was privately beheaded in
1572, but his estates were restored to his children.[37] It was under the
mat, hard by a window in the entry towards the duke’s bedchamber, that the
celebrated alphabet in cipher[38] was hidden, which the duke afterwards
concealed under a roof tile, where it was found, unmasking all his plans.
In the Tower the unhappy plotter had written affecting letters to his son
Philip, bidding him worship God, avoid courts, and beware of ambition.[39]
The warning of the man whose eyes had been opened too late is touching.
The writer, speaking of court life, remarks, “It hath no certainty. Either
a man, by following thereof, hath too much worldly pomp, which in the end
throws him down headlong, or else he liveth there unsatisfied, either that
he cannot obtain to himself that he would, or else that he cannot do for
his friends as his heart desireth.”
Poor Philip did not benefit much by these lessons, but remained simple
Earl of Arundel, was repeatedly committed to the Tower, as by necessity an
ill-wisher to Elizabeth, and eventually died there after ten weary years
of imprisonment. His initials are still to be found on the walls of one of
the chambers in the Beauchamp Tower.
Fools never learn the lessons which Time tries so hard to beat into them.
Plotter succeeds plotter, and the rough lesson of the headsman seldom
teaches the conspirator’s successor to cease from conspiring.
To the Norfolks succeeded Dudley, the false Earl of Leicester, the black
or gipsy earl, as he was called from his swarthy Italian complexion.
Leicester, like the duke before him, plotted with Mary’s Jesuits and
assassins, and at the same time contrived to keep in favour with his own
jealous queen, in spite of all his failures and schemings in Holland, and
his suspected assassinations of his enemies in England. Leicester died of
fever the year of the Armada (1588), on his return from the camp at
Tilbury, leaving Leicester Place to Robert Devereux, his step-son, the
Earl of Essex,[40] who succeeded to his favour at court, but was doomed to
an untimely death.
It was to the great Lord of Kenilworth--that dark, mysterious man, who
perhaps deserved more praise than historians usually give him--that
Spenser dedicated his poem of “Virgil’s Gnat.” In his beautiful
“Prothalamion” on the marriage of Lady Elizabeth and Lady Catherine
Somerset, he speaks somewhat abjectly of Leicester, ingeniously contriving
to remind Essex of his father-in-law’s bounty. “Near to the Temple,” the
needy poet says,
“Stands a stately place,
_Where I gayned giftes_ and the goodly grace
Of that great lord who there was wont to dwell,
Whose want too well now feels my friendless case;
But, ah! here fits not well
Old woes.”
Then the poet goes on to eulogise Essex, who, however, it is supposed,
after all allowed him to die in want. But there is a mystery about
Spenser’s death. He returned from Ireland, beggared and almost
broken-hearted, in October or November 1599, and died in the January
following, just as Essex was preparing to start to Ireland. In that whirl
of ambition, the poor poet may perhaps have been rather overlooked than
wilfully slighted. This at least is certain, that he was buried in
Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer’s tomb, the Earl of Essex defraying the
expenses of his public funeral.
It was in his prison-house near the Temple that the hair-brained Earl of
Essex shut himself sulkily up, when Queen Elizabeth had given him a box on
the ears, after a dispute about the new deputy for Ireland, in which the
earl had shown a petulant violence unworthy of the pupil of Burleigh.
Far too much sympathy has been shown with this rash, imperious, and
unbearable young noble. He was sent to Ireland, and there concluded a
disgraceful, wilful, and traitorous treaty with one of England’s most
inveterate and dangerous enemies. He returned from that “cursedest of all
islands,” as he called it, against express command, and was with
difficulty dissuaded from landing in open rebellion. Generous and frank he
may have been, but his submission to the mild and well-deserved punishment
of confinement to his own house was as base and abject as it was false and
hypocritical.
Alarmed, mortified, and enraged at the duration of his banishment from
court, and at the refusal of a renewed grant for the monopoly of sweet
wines, Essex betook himself to open rebellion, urged on by ill-advisers
and his own reckless impatient spirit. He invited the Puritan preachers to
prayers and sermons; he plotted with the King of Scotland. It was arranged
at secret meetings at Drury House (then Sir Charles Daver’s) to seize
Whitehall and compel the queen to dismiss Cecil and other ministers
hostile to Essex.
Sir Christopher Blount was to seize the palace gates, Davies the hall,
Davers the guard-room and presence-chamber, while Essex, rushing in from
the Mews with some hundred and twenty adherents, was to compel the queen
to assemble a parliament to dismiss his enemies, and to fix the
succession. All these plans were proposed to Essex in writing--the
arch-conspirator was never himself present.
The delay of letters from Scotland led to the premature outbreak of the
plot. An order was at once sent summoning Essex to the council, and the
palace guards were doubled.
On Sunday, February 7, 1601, Essex, fearing instant arrest, assembled his
friends, and determined to arm and sally forth to St. Paul’s Cross, where
the Lord Mayor and aldermen were hearing the sermon, and urge them to
follow him to the palace. On the Lord Keeper and other noblemen coming to
the house to know the cause of the assembly, Essex locked them into a back
parlour, guarded by musketeers, and followed by two hundred gentlemen,
drew his sword and rushed into the street like a madman “running a-muck.”
Temple Bar was opened for him; but at St. Paul’s Cross he found no
meeting. The citizens crowded round him, but did not join his band. When
he reached the house of Sheriff Smith, the crafty Sheriff had stolen away.
In the meantime Lord Burleigh and the Earl of Cumberland, with a herald,
had entered the City and proclaimed Essex a traitor; a thousand pounds
being offered for his apprehension. Despairing of success, the mad earl
then turned towards his own house, and finding Ludgate barricaded by a
strong party of citizens under Sir John Levison, attempted to force his
way, killing two or three citizens, and losing Tracy, a young friend of
his own. Then striking down to Queenhithe, the earl and some fifty
followers who were left took boat for Essex Gardens.
On entering his house, he found that his treacherous confidant, Sir
Ferdinand Gorges, had made terms with the court and released the hostages.
Essex then, by the advice of Lord Sandys, resolved to fortify the place,
hold out to the last extremity, and die sword in hand. In a few minutes,
however, the Lord Admiral’s troops surrounded the building. A parley
ensued between Sir Robert Sidney in the garden, and Essex and his rash
ally, Shakspere’s patron, the Earl of Southampton, who were on the roof.
The earl’s demands were proudly refused, but a respite of two hours was
given him, that the ladies and female servants might retire. About six
the battering train arrived from the Tower, and Essex then wisely
surrendered at discretion.[41]
The night being very dark, and the tide not serving to pass the dangers of
London Bridge, Essex and Southampton were taken by boat to Lambeth Palace,
and the next morning to the Tower.
Essex had fully deserved death. He was executed privately, by his own
request, at the Tower, February 25, 1601. Meyrick, his steward, and Cuffe,
his secretary, were hanged and quartered at Tyburn. Sir Charles Davers and
Sir Christopher Blount perished on Tower Hill. Other prisoners were fined
and imprisoned, and the Earl of Southampton pined in durance till the
accession of James I. (1603).
Among the even older tenants of Essex House, we must not forget that
unhappy woman, the earl’s mother, who, first as Lettice Knollys, then as
Countess of Essex, afterwards as Lady Leicester, and next as wife of Sir
Christopher Blount, was a barb in Elizabeth’s side for thirty years.
Married as a girl to a noble husband, she gave up her honour to a seducer,
and there is reason to think that she consented to the taking of his life.
While Devereux lived, she deceived the queen by a scandalous amour, and,
after his death, by a clandestine marriage with the Earl of Leicester.
While Dudley lived, she wallowed in licentious love with Christopher
Blount, his groom of the horse. When her second husband expired in agony
at Cornbury, not an hour’s gallop from the place in which Amy Robsart
died, she again mortified the queen by a secret union with her last
seducer, Blount. Her children rioted in the same vices. Essex himself,
with his ring of favourites, was not more profligate than his sister
Penelope, Lady Rich.[42]
This sister was the (Platonic?) mistress of Sydney, whose stolen love for
her is pictured in his most voluptuous verse. On his death at Zütphen, she
lived with Lord Montjoy, though her husband, Lord Rich, was still alive.
Nor was her sister Dorothy one whit better. After marrying one husband
secretly and against the canon, she wedded Percy, the wizard Earl of
Northumberland, whom she led the life of a dog, until he indignantly
turned her out of doors.[43] It is not easy, observes Mr. Dixon, except in
Italian story, to find a group of women so depraved and so detestable as
the mother and sisters of the Earl of Essex.
Essex, the rash noble, who died at the untimely age of thirty-three, had a
dangerous, ill-tempered face, if we may judge by More’s portrait of him.
He stooped in walking, danced badly, and was slovenly in his dress;[44]
yet being a generous, frank friend, an impetuous and chivalrous if not
wise soldier, and an enemy of Spain and the Cecils, he became a favourite
of the people. The legend of the ring sent by Essex to the queen,[45] and
maliciously detained by the Countess of Nottingham, we shall presently
discuss. No applications for mercy by Essex (and he made many during his
trial) affect the question of his deserving death. That the queen
consented with regret to the death of Essex, on the other hand, needs no
doubtful legend to serve as proof.
Elizabeth had forgiven the earl’s joining the Cadiz fleet against her
wish, she forgave his secret marriage, she forgave his shameful
abandonment of his Irish command and even his dishonourable treaty with
Tyrone, but she could not forgive an open and flagrant rebellion at a time
when she was so surrounded by enemies.
An historical writer, gifted with an eminently analytical mind, Mr.
Hepworth Dixon, has lately, with great ingenuity, endeavoured to refute
the charges of ingratitude brought against Bacon for his time serving and
(to say the least) undue eagerness in aggravating the crimes of his old
and generous friend. There can be, however, no doubt that Bacon too soon
abandoned the unfortunate Essex, and, moreover, threw the weight of much
misapplied learning into the scale against the prisoner. No minimising of
the favours received by him from Essex can in my mind remove this stain
from Bacon’s reputation.
In Essex House was born a less brilliant but a happier and a more prudent
man--Robert, Earl of Essex, afterwards the well-known Parliamentary
general. A child when his father died on the scaffold, he was placed under
the care of his grandmother, Lady Walsingham, and was afterwards at Eton
under the severe Saville. A good, worthy, heavy lad, brought up a
Presbyterian, he was betrothed when only fourteen to Lady Frances Howard,
daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, who was herself only thirteen.
The earl travelled on the Continent for four years, and on his return was
married at Essex House. It was for this inauspicious marriage that Ben
Jonson wrote one of his most beautiful and gorgeous masques, Inigo Jones
contributing the machinery, and Ferrabosco the music. The rough-grained
poet seems to have been delighted with the success of the entertainment,
for he says, “Nor was there wanting whatsoever might give to the furniture
a complement, either in riches or strangeness of the habits, delicacy of
dances, magnificence of the scene, or divine rapture of music.”[46]
The countess was already, even at this time, the mistress of Robert Carr,
the handsome minion of James I. She obtained a divorce from her husband in
1613, and espoused her infamous lover. The cruel poisoning of Sir Thomas
Overbury for opposing the new marriage followed; and the earl and
countess, found guilty, but spared by the weak king, lingered out their
lives in mutual reproaches and contempt, loathed and neglected by all.
Fate often runs in sequences--the earl was unhappy with his second wife,
from whom he also was divorced.
Essex emerged from a country retirement to turn general for the
Parliament. Just, affable, and prudent, he was a popular man till he
became marked as a moderatist desirous for peace, and was ousted by the
artful “Self-denying Ordinance.” If he had lived it is probable he would
either have lost his head or have fled to France and turned cavalier. His
death during the time that Charles I. remained a prisoner with the Scotch
army at Newcastle saved him from either fate. With him the Presbyterian
moderatists and the House of Peers finally lost even their little
remaining power.
When the earl resigned his commission, the House of Commons went to Essex
House to return their ex-general thanks for his great services. A year
later they followed him to the grave (1646), little perhaps thinking how
bitterly the earl had reproached them for ingratitude, and what plans he
had devised to reform the army and to check Cromwell and Fairfax.[47]
On the earl’s death, his Royalist brother-in-law, the Marquis of Hertford,
attempted to seize his ready money and papers, but was frustrated by the
Parliament.[48]
Whether the next earl, who on being arrested for sharing in the Rye-House
plot destroyed himself at the Tower, lived in his father’s house, I do not
know, but the mansion, so unlucky to its owners, was occupied by families
of rank for some time after the Restoration, and then falling into neglect
and ruin, as fashion began to flow westward, was subdivided, and a street,
called Essex Street, was built on part of its site.
Samuel Patterson, the bookseller and auctioneer, lived in Essex Street, in
1775, in rooms formerly the residence of Sir Orlando Bridgeman. He was
originally a bag-maker. Afterwards Charles Dibdin commenced his
entertainments in these rooms, and here his fine song of “Poor Jack”
became famous.[49] Patterson’s youngest child was Dr. Johnson’s godson,
and became a pupil of Ozias Humphrey.[50] Patterson wrote a book of
travels in Sterne’s manner, but claimed a priority to that strange writer.
George Fordyce, a celebrated epicurean doctor of the eighteenth century,
lived in the same street. For twenty years he dined daily at Dolly’s
Chop-house, and at his solitary meal he always took a tankard of strong
ale, a quarter of a pint of brandy, and a bottle of port. After these
potations, he walked to his house and gave a lecture to his pupils.[51]
Dr. Johnson, the year before he died, formed a club in Essex Street, at
the Essex Head, a tavern kept by an old servant of his friend, Thrale, the
brewer. It was less select than the Literary Club, but cheaper. Johnson,
writing to Sir Joshua Reynolds to join it, says, “the terms are lax and
the expences light--we meet thrice a week, and he who misses forfeits
twopence.”[52] Sir John Hawkins spitefully calls it “a low ale-house
association;” but Windham, Daines Barrington, Horsley, Boswell, and
Brocklesby were members of it; for rich men were less luxurious than they
are now, and enjoyed the sociable freedom of a tavern. Sir Joshua refused
to join, probably because Barry, who had insulted him, and was very
pugnacious, had become a member.[53] It went on happily for many years,
says Boswell, whom Johnson, when he proposed him for election, called “a
clubable man.” Towards the end of his life the great lexicographer grew
more and more afraid of solitude, and a club so near his home was probably
a great convenience to him.
Near Devereux Court are the premises of the well-known tea-dealers,
Messrs. Twining. The graceful recumbent stone figures of Chinamen over the
Strand front have much elegance, and must have come from some good hand.
One of this family was a Colchester rector, and a translator of
Aristotle’s _Poetics_. He was an excellent man, a good linguist and
musician, and a witty companion. He was contemporary with Gray and Mason,
the poets, at Cambridge. In the back parlour is a portrait of the founder
of the house. A century and a half ago ladies used to drive to the door of
Twining’s and drink tiny cups of the new and fashionable beverage as they
sat in their coaches. There is an epigram extant, written either by
Theodore Hook or one of the Smiths; the point of it is, that if you took
away his T, Twining would be Wining.
In 1652 Constantine, the Greek servant of a Levant merchant, opened in
Devereux Court a coffee-house, which became known as “The Grecian.” In
1664-5 advertised his Turkey “coffee bery,” chocolate, “sherbet,” and tea,
as good and cheap, and announced his readiness to give gratuitous
instructions in the art of preparing the said liquors.[54]
In the same year, a Greek named Pasqua Rosee had also established a house
in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, for the sale of “the coffee drink.”[55]
John Evelyn describes a Greek fellow-student, afterwards Bishop of Smyrna,
drinking coffee when he was at college in about 1637.[56]
In April 1709 Steele, in No. 1 of the _Tatler_, announces that he shall
date all learned articles from the “Grecian,” all gallantry from
“White’s,” all poetry from “Wills’s,” all foreign and domestic news from
“St. James’s.”
In 1710-11 Addison, starting the “_Spectator_ along with Steele,” tells us
his own grave face was well known at the Grecian; and in No. 49 (April
1711), the _Spectator_ describes the spleen and inward laughter with which
he views at the Grecian the young Templars come in, about 8 A.M., either
dressed for Westminster, and with the preoccupied air of assumed business,
or in gay cap, slippers, and particoloured dressing-gowns, rising early to
publish their laziness, and being displaced by busier men towards noon.
Dr. King relates a story of two hot-blooded young gentlemen quarrelling
one evening at this coffee-house about the accent of a Greek word.
Stepping out into Devereux Court, they fought, and one of them being run
through the body, died on the spot.[57] This Dr. King was principal of St.
Mary’s Hall, Oxford, and a staunch Tory. It is he who relates the secret
visit of the Pretender to London. He died in 1763.
Ralph Thoresby, the Leeds topographer, met Dr. Sloane, the secretary of
the Royal Society, by appointment at the Grecian in May 1712; and again in
June he describes retiring to the Grecian after a meeting of the Royal
Society, of which he was a fellow, with the president, Sir Isaac
Newton,[58] Dr. Halley, who published the _Principia_ for Newton, and
Keill, who opposed Leibnitz about the invention of Fluxions, and defended
Newton’s doctrines against the Cartesians. (The Royal Society held its
meetings at this time in Crane Court, Fleet Street.) Roger North,
Attorney-General under James II., who died in 1733, describes in his
_Examen_ the Privy Council Board, as held at the Grecian coffee-house. The
Grecian was closed in 1843, and has been since turned into the Grecian
Chambers. On what was once the front of the coffee-house frequented by
Steele and Addison, there is a bust of Essex, with the date 1676.
In this court, at the house of one Kedder, in 1678, died Marchmont
Needham, a vigorous but unprincipled turncoat and newspaper writer, who
three times during the civil wars changed his principles to save his
worthless neck. He was alternately the author of the _Mercurius
Britannicus_ for the Presbyterians, _Mercurius Pragmaticus_ for the king,
and _Mercurius Politicus_ for the Independents. The great champion of the
late usurper, as the Cavaliers called him, “whose pen, compared with
others’, was as a weaver’s beam,” latterly practised as a physician, but
with small success.[59]
There is a letter of Pope addressed to Fortescue, his “counsel learned in
the law,” at Tom’s coffee-house, in Devereux Court. Fortescue, the poet’s
kind, unpaid lawyer, was afterwards (in 1738) Master of the Rolls. Pope’s
imitation of the first satire of Horace, suggested by Bolingbroke, was
addressed to Mr. Fortescue, and published in 1733. This lawyer was the
author of the droll report in _Scriblerus_ of “Stradling _versus_ Styles,”
wherein Sir John Swale leaves all his black and white horses to one
Stradling, but the question is whether this bequest includes Swale’s
piebald horses. It is finally proved that the horses are all mares.[60]
Dr. Birch, the antiquary, the dull writer but good talker, frequented
Tom’s; and there Akenside--short, thin, pale, strumous, and lame,
scrupulously neat, and somewhat petulant, vain, and irritable--spent his
winter evenings, entangled in disputes and altercations, chiefly on
subjects of literature and politics, that fixed on his character the stamp
of haughtiness and self-conceit, and drew him into disagreeable
situations.[61] Akenside was a contradictory man. By turns he was placid,
irritable; simple, affected; gracious, haughty; magnanimous, mean;
benevolent, yet harsh, and sometimes even brutal. At times he manifested a
childlike docility, and at other times his vanity and arrogance made him
seem almost a madman.[62]
Gay, in his _Trivia_, describes Milford Lane so faithfully that it might
pass for a yesterday’s sketch of the same place. He writes--
“Where the fair columns of St. Clement stand,
Whose straitened bounds incroach upon the Strand;
Where the low pent-house bows the walker’s head,
And the rough pavement wounds the yielding tread;
Where not a post protects the narrow space,
And strung in twines combs dangle in thy face.
Summon at once thy courage--rouse thy care;
Stand firm, look back, be resolute, beware!
Forth issuing from steep lanes, the collier’s steeds
Drag the black load; another cart succeeds;
Team follows team, crowds heap’d on crowds appear.”
Stow mentions Milford Lane, but gives no derivation for its name.[63] The
coarse poem by Henry Savill, commonly attributed to the witty Earl of
Dorset, beginning--
“In Milford Lane, near to St. Clement’s steeple.”[64]
gave the street for a time such a disagreeable notoriety as the pillory
gives to a rogue.
Arundel House, in the Strand, was the old inn or town-house of the Bishops
of Bath, stolen by force in the rough, greedy times of Edward VI., by the
bad Lord Thomas Seymour, the admiral, and the brother of the Protector;
from him it derived the name of Seymour Place, and must have been
conveniently near to the ambitious kinsman who afterwards beheaded him.
This Admiral had married Henry VIII.’s widow, Catherine Parr; and she
dying in childbed, he began to woo, in his coarse boisterous way, the
young Princess Elizabeth, who had been living under the protection of her
mother-in-law, who was indeed generally supposed to have been poisoned by
the admiral. His marriage with Elizabeth would have smoothed his way to
the throne in spite of her father’s cautious will. It was said that
Elizabeth always blushed when she heard his name. He died on the scaffold.
Old Bishop Latimer, in a sermon, declared “he was a wicked man, and the
realm is well rid of him.”[65] It is certain that, whatever were his
plots, he had projected a marriage between Lady Jane Grey and the young
king.
The admiral’s house was bought, on its owner’s fall, by Henry Fitz-Alan,
Earl of Arundel, for the nominal sum of £41: 6: 8, with several other
messuages and lands adjoining.[66] The earl dying in 1579, was succeeded
by his grandson, Philip Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk, the owner of
Essex House adjoining, who was beheaded for his intrigues with Mary of
Scotland. He died in the Tower in 1598. The house then passed into the
keeping of Robert Cary, Earl of Monmouth,[67] during the minority of
Thomas Howard, Philip’s son.
In Arundel Palace, in 1603, died the Countess of Nottingham, sister of Sir
Robert Cary;[68] she was buried at Chelsea. It is of this countess that
Lady Spelman, a granddaughter of Sir Robert Cary, used to tell the
doubtful legend of the ring[69] given by Queen Elizabeth to Lord Essex,
which an acute writer of the present day believes to be a pure fabrication
of the times of James I.
[Illustration: ARUNDEL HOUSE, 1646.]
The story runs thus:--When the Countess Catherine was dying, she sent to
the Queen to tell her that she had a secret to reveal, without disclosing
which she could not die in peace. The Queen came, and the countess then
told her that when Essex was in the Tower, under sentence of death, he one
morning threw a ring from his window to a boy passing underneath, hiring
him to carry it to his friend Lady Scrope, the countess’s sister, and beg
of her to present it in his name to the queen, who had promised to protect
him whenever he sent her that keepsake, and who was then waiting for some
such sign of his submission. The boy not clearly understanding the
message, brought the ring to the countess, who showed it to her husband,
and he insisted on her keeping it. The countess, having made this
disclosure, begged her majesty’s forgiveness; but the queen answered,
“God may forgive you, but I never can!” and burst from the room in a
paroxysm of rage and grief. From that time Elizabeth became perturbed in
mind, refused to eat or sleep, and died a fortnight after the countess.
Now this is absurd. The queen never repented the death of that wrongheaded
traitor, and really died of a long-standing disease which had well-defined
symptoms.[70]
At Arundel House lodged that grave, wise minister of Henry IV. of France,
the Duc de Sully, then only the Marquis de Rosny. He describes the house
with complacency as fine and commodious, and having a great number of
apartments on the same floor. It was really a mean and low building, but
commanding a fine prospect of the river and Westminster, so fine, indeed,
that Hollar took a view of London from the roof. The first night of his
arrival Sully slept at the French ambassador’s house in Butcher Row
adjoining, a poor house with low rooms, a well staircase lit by a
skylight, and small casements.[71]
[Illustration: ARUNDEL HOUSE, 1646.]
In the time of James I., in whose reign the earldom was restored to Thomas
Howard, Arundel House became a treasury of art. The travelled earl’s
collection comprised thirty-seven statues, one hundred and twenty-eight
busts, and two-hundred and fifty inscribed marbles, exclusive of
sarcophagi, altars, medals, gems, and fragments. Some of his noblest
relics, however, he was not allowed to remove from Rome. Of this proud and
princely amateur of art Lord Clarendon speaks with too obvious prejudice.
He describes him as living in a world of his own, surrounded by strangers,
and though illiterate, willing to be thought a scholar because he was a
collector of works of art. Yet the historian admits that he had an air of
gravity and greatness in his face and bearing. He affected an ancient and
grave dress; but Clarendon asserts that this was all outside, and that his
real disposition was “one of levity,” as he was fond of childish and
despicable amusements. Vansomer’s portraits of the earl and countess
contain views of the statue and picture galleries.[72] This illustrious
nobleman, whom the excellent Evelyn calls “my noble friend,” died in 1646.
At the Restoration his house and marbles were restored to his grandson,
Mr. Henry Howard; the antiquities were then lying scattered about Arundel
Gardens, and were neglected and corroding, blanching with rain, and green
with damp, much to the horror of Evelyn and other antiquaries, who
regarded their fate with alarm and pity.
The old Earl of Arundel (whom Clarendon disliked) had been a collector of
art in a magnificent and princely way. He despatched artist-agents to
Italy, and even to Asia Minor, to buy pictures, drawings, statues, votive
slabs, and gems. William Petty collected sculpture for him at Paros and
Delos, but the collections were lost off Samos in a storm. He collected
Holbein’s and Albert Dürer’s drawings, discovered the genius of Inigo
Jones, and brought Hollar from Prague. He left England just before the
troubles, having received many affronts from Charles’s ministers, who had
neglected to restore his ancient titles, went to Padua, and there died.
The marbles Mr. Evelyn induced Mr. Howard, in 1667, to send to the
University of Oxford; the statues were also given to Oxford by a later
descendant; and the earl’s library (originally part of that of the King of
Hungary) Mr. Evelyn persuaded the Duke of Norfolk to bestow on the Royal
Society.[73]
The old earl was, I suspect, a proud, soured, and a rather arrogant,
formal person. In a certain dispute about a rectory, he once said to King
Charles I.: “Sir, this rectory was an appendant and a manour of mine until
my grandfather unfortunately lost both his life and seven lordships, for
the love he bore to your grandmother.”[74]
After the Great Fire of London, Mr. Howard lent the Royal Society rooms in
his house. In 1678 the palace was taken down, and the present Arundel,
Surrey, Howard, and Norfolk streets were erected in its stead. The few
marbles that remained were removed to Tart Hall, Westminster, and to
Cuper’s Gardens across the river.[75] Tart Hall was the residence of the
Countess of Arundel: Cuper’s Gardens belonged to a gardener of the Earl of
Arundel. The Duke of Norfolk originally intended to build a more
magnificent house on the old site, and even obtained an act of Parliament
for the purpose; but fashion was already setting westward, and the design
was abandoned.[76]
In Arundel Street lived Rymer, the historical antiquary, who died here in
1715; John Anstis, the Garter king-at-arms, resided here in 1715-16;[77]
also Mrs. Porter, the actress, “over against the Blue Ball.”
Gay, in his delightful _Trivia_ sketches the “long Strand,” and pauses to
mourn over the glories of Arundel House. His walk is from “the Temple’s
silent walls,” and he stays to look down at the site of the earl’s
mansion--
----“That narrow street, which steep descends,
Whose building to the shining shore extends;
Here Arundel’s famed structure rear’d its frame--
The street alone retains an empty name;
Where Titian’s glowing paint the canvas warm’d,
And Raphael’s fair design with judgment charm’d,
Now hangs the bellman’s song, and pasted here
The coloured prints of Overton appear;
Where statues breathed, the work of Phidias’ hands,
A wooden pump or lonely watch-house stands;
There Essex’ stately pile adorned the shore;
There Cecil’s, Bedford’s, Villiers’--now no more.”
In the Strand, between Arundel and Norfolk Streets, in the year 1698,
lived Sir Thomas Lyttelton, Speaker of the House of Commons, and father of
Pope’s friend, and the author of the _History of Henry the Second_, a
ponderous and pompous work.
Next door to him lived the father of Bishop Burnet--a remarkable person,
for he was a poor but honest lawyer, born at Edinburgh in 1643. A
bookseller of the same name--a collateral descendant of the bishop whom
Swift hated so cordially--afterwards occupied the house.
At the south-west corner of Norfolk Street, near the river, in his wild
days lodged the Quaker Penn, son of Cromwell’s stout Bristol admiral. He
had been twice beaten and turned out of doors by his father for his
fondness for Nonconformist society and prayer-meetings, and for refusing
to stand uncovered in the presence of Charles II. or of the Duke of York,
of whom later he became the suspected favourite. We do not generally
associate the grave and fanatic Penn with a gay and licentious court, nor
do we portray him to ourselves as slinking away from hawk-eyed bailiffs;
and yet the venerated founder of repudiating Pennsylvania chose this house
when he was sued for debts, as being convenient for slipping unobserved
into a boat. In the eastern entrance he had a peep-hole, through which he
could reconnoitre any suspicious visitor. On one occasion a dun, having
sent in his name and waited an unconscionable time, knocked again. “Will
not thy master see me?” he said to the servant. The knave was at least
candid, for he replied: “Friend, he _has_ seen thee, and he does not like
thee.”[78]
In Norfolk Street, in Penn’s old house, afterwards resided for thirty
years that truly good man, Dr. Richard Brocklesby, who in early life,
during the Seven Years’ War, had practised as an army surgeon. He was a
friend of Burke and Dr. Johnson. To the former he left, or rather gave, a
thousand pounds, and to the latter he offered an annuity of a hundred
pounds a year, to enable him to travel for his health, and also apartments
in his own house for the sake of medical advice, which Johnson
affectionately and gratefully declined. The doctor was one of the most
generous and amiable of men; he attended the poor for nothing, and had
many pensioners. He died the day after returning from a visit to Burke at
Beaconsfield. He had been warned against the fatigue of this journey, but
had replied with true Christian philosophy, “My good friend, where’s the
difference whether I die at a friend’s house, at an inn, or in a
post-chaise? I hope I am prepared for such an event, and perhaps it would
be as well to elude the anticipation of it.”
Dr. Brocklesby was ridiculed by Foote, but Foote attacked virtue quite as
often as vice. He was the physician who had attended Lord Chatham when he
was struck down by illness in the House of Lords, a short time before his
death.
In January 1698 Peter the Great arrived from Holland, and went straight to
a house prepared for him in Norfolk Street, near the water side. On the
following day he was visited by King William and the principal nobility.
Incommoded here by visitors, the Czar removed to Admiral Benbow’s house at
Deptford, where he could live more retired. This Deptford house was Sayes
Place, afterwards the Victualling Office, and had once belonged to the
celebrated John Evelyn.
The “Honest Shippen” of Pope--William Shippen, M.P.--lived also in Norfolk
Street: a brave, honest man, in an age when nearly every politician had
his price. It was of him Sir Robert Walpole remarked “that he would not
say who was corrupted, but he would say who was not corruptible, and that
was Shippen.”
Mortimer, a rough, picturesque painter, who was called “the English
Salvator Rosa,” and imitated that unsatisfactory artist in a coarse,
sketchy kind of way, dwelt in this street.
At No. 21 lived Albany Wallis, a friend and executor of Garrick. In this
street also Addison makes that delightful old country gentleman, Sir Roger
de Coverley, put up before he goes to Soho Square.[79]
At No. 8, in 1795, lived Samuel Ireland, the father of the celebrated
literary impostor; and here were shown to George Chalmers, John Kemble,
and other Shaksperian scholars, the forged plays which the public
ultimately scented out as ridiculous.
In 1796 Mr. W. H. Ireland published a full confession of his forgeries,
fully exonerating his father from all connivance in his foolish fraud,
claiming forgiveness for a boyish deception begun without evil intention
and without any thought of danger. “I should never have gone so far,” he
says, “but that the world praised the papers too much, and thereby
flattered my vanity.”[80] After the failure of “Vortigern,” the father,
Mr. S. Ireland, still credulous, had written a pamphlet, accusing Malone,
his son’s chief assailant, of mean malice and unbearable arrogance.
The true story of the forgery is this. W. H. Ireland, then only eighteen,
was articled to a solicitor in New Inn, where he practised Elizabethan
handwriting for the sake of deceiving credulous antiquaries. A forged deed
exciting the admiration of his father, who was a collector of old tracts
and a worshipper of Shakspere, led him to continue his deceptions, and to
pretend to have discovered a hoard of Shaksperian MSS. A fellow clerk, one
Talbot, afterwards an actor, discovering the forgeries, Ireland made him
an accomplice. They then produced a “Profession of Faith,” signed by
Shakspere, which Dr. Parr and Dr. Warton (brother of the poet) declared
contained “finer things” than all the Church Service. This foolish praise
set the secretive lawyer’s clerk on writing original verse,--a poem to
Anne Hathaway, and the play of “Vortigern,” the most recklessly impudent
of all his impostures. Boswell was the first to propose a certificate to
be signed by all believers in the productions. Dr. Parr, thinking
Boswell’s writing too feeble, drew up another, which was signed by
twenty-one noblemen, authors, and “celebrated literary characters.”
Boswell, characteristically enough, previous to signing his name, fell on
his knees, and, “in a tone of enthusiasm and exultation, thanked God that
he had lived to witness this discovery, and exclaimed that he could now
die in peace.”[81] Lords Kinnaird, Somerset, and Lauderdale were the
noblemen. There were also present Bindley, Valpy, Pinkerton, Pye the poet
laureate, Matthew Wyatt, and the present author’s grandfather, the Rev.
Nathaniel Thornbury, an intimate friend of Jenner and of Dr. Johnson, who
had at this time been twelve years dead. The elder Ireland, in his
pamphlet, alludes to the solemn and awful manner in which, before crowds
of eminent characters, his son attested the genuineness of his forgeries.
“I could not,” says the honest fellow, “suffer myself to cherish the
slightest suspicion of his veracity.”[82]
Singularly enough Mr. Albany Wallis--(a solicitor, I believe), of Norfolk
Street,--who had given to Garrick a mortgage deed bearing Shakspere’s
signature, became the most ardent believer in the unprincipled young
clerk’s deceptions.
The terms agreed upon for Ireland’s forgery of “Vortigern” was £300 down,
and a division of the receipts, deducting charges, for sixty nights. The
play, however, lived only one night, for which the Irelands received their
half, £103. The commentators Malone and Steevens remained sceptical, and
Kemble was suspicious and cold in the cause, though he was to be the hero;
but the gulls and quidnuncs were numerous enough to cram the house, and
that most commonplace of poets, Sir James Bland Burges, wrote the
prologue. The final damnation of the play was secured by a rhapsody of
Vortigern’s, a patch-work thing from “Richard II.” and “Henry IV.” The
fatal line--
“And when the solemn mockery is o’er,”
convulsed the house.[83] Mr. W. H. Ireland in later life was editor of the
_York Herald_, and died in 1835.[84]
Another eminent historical antiquary, Dr. Birch, lived in Norfolk Street.
The son of a Quaker tradesman at Clerkenwell, he became a London clergyman
and an historian, famous for his Sunday evenings’ conversaziones, and was
killed by a fall from his horse in 1766. He seems to have been a most
pleasant, generous, and honest man. He edited Bacon’s _Letters and
Speeches_, and Thurloe’s _State Papers_, etc. His chief work was his
_Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth_. He left books, manuscripts, and
money to the British Museum, for which let all scholars bless the good
man’s memory. He appears to have been a student of boundless industry, as
from the Lambeth Library alone he transcribed with his own hand sixteen
quarto volumes. He was rector of St. Margaret Pattens in Fenchurch Street.
Dr. Birch must have been a kind husband, for his wife on her deathbed
wrote him the following tender letter:--
“This day I return you, my dearest life, my sincere, hearty thanks for
every favour bestowed on your most faithful and obedient wife,
HANNAH BIRCH.”
We leave it to the watchful cynic to remark that the doctor had been
married only one year. It was of this worthy book-worm that Johnson
said--“Yes, sir, he is brisk in conversation, but when he takes up the pen
it benumbs him like a torpedo.”
Strype describes Surrey Street as replenished with good buildings,
especially that of Nevison Fox, Esq., towards the Strand, “which is a
fine, large, and curious house of his own building,” and the two houses
that front the Thames, that on the east side being the Hon. Charles
Howard’s, brother to the Duke of Norfolk. Both of these houses had
pleasant though small gardens towards the Thames.[85]
In 1736 died here George Sale, the useful translator of the Mohammedan
Bible, the Koran, that strange compound of pure prayers and impure
plagiarisms from the laws of Moses. Sale had published his Koran in 1734,
and in the year of his death he joined Paul Whitehead, Dr. Birch, and Mr.
Strutt, in founding a “Society for the Encouragement of Learning.” He
spent many years in writing for the _Universal History_, in which Bayle’s
ten folio volumes were included.
Edward Pierce, a sculptor, son of a painter of altar-pieces and
church-ceilings, and a pupil of Vandyke, lived at the corner of Surrey
Street, and was buried in the Savoy. He helped Sir Christopher Wren to
build St. Clement’s church, and carved the four guardian dragons on the
Monument of London. The statue of Sir William Walworth at the fishmongers’
Hall is from his hand, and so is the bust of Thomas Evans in the hall of
the painters and stainers. He executed also busts of Cromwell, Wren, and
Milton.[86]
The charming actress, Mrs. Bracegirdle, lived in Howard Street. She was
the belle and toast of London; every young man of mode was, or pretended
to be, in love with her; and the wits wrote verses upon her beauty, in
imitation of Sedley and Waller. Congreve tells us that it was the fashion
to avow a tenderness for her. Rowe, in an imitation of an ode of Horace,
urges the Earl of Scarsdale to marry her (though he had a wife living) and
set the town at defiance.
Among this crowd of admirers was a Captain Hill, a half-cracked
man-about-town, a drunken, profligate bully, of low character, and a
friend of the infamous duellist, Lord Mohun. One of Mrs. Bracegirdle’s
favourite parts was Statira, her lover Alexander being her friend and
neighbour, the eminent actor Mountfort. Cibber describes him in this
character as “great, tender, persistent, despairing, transported,
amiable.” Hill, “that dark-souled fellow in the pit,” as Leigh Hunt calls
him, mistook the frantic extravagance of stage-passion for real love, and
in a fit of mad jealousy swore to be revenged on Mountfort, and to carry
off the lady by force. Lord Mohun, always ready for any desperate
mischief, agreed to help him in his design. On the night appointed the
friends dined together, and having changed clothes, went to Drury Lane
Theatre at six o’clock; but as Mrs. Bracegirdle did not act that night,
they next took a coach and drove to her lodgings in Howard Street. They
then, finding that she had gone to supper with a Mr. Page, in Princes
Street, Drury Lane, went to his house and waited till she came out. She
appeared at last at the door, with her mother and brother, Mr. Page
lighting them out.
Hill immediately seized her, and endeavoured, with the aid of some hired
ruffians, to drag her into the coach, where Lord Mohun sat with a loaded
pistol in each hand; but her brother and Mr. Page rushing to the rescue,
and an angry crowd gathering, Hill was forced to let go his hold and
decamp. Mrs. Bracegirdle and her escort then proceeded to her lodgings in
Howard Street, followed by Captain Hill and Lord Mohun on foot. On
knocking at the door, as it was said, to beg Mrs. Bracegirdle’s pardon,
they were refused admittance; upon which they sent for a bottle of wine to
a neighbouring tavern, which they drank in the street, and then began to
patrol up and down with swords drawn, declaring they were waiting to be
revenged on Mountfort the actor. Messengers were instantly despatched to
warn Mountfort, both by Mrs. Bracegirdle’s landlady and his own wife, but
he could not be found. The watch were also sent for, and they begged the
two ruffians to depart peaceably. Lord Mohun replied, “He was a peer of
the realm, that he had been drinking a bottle of wine, but that he was
ready to put up his sword if they particularly desired it: but as for his
friend, he had lost his scabbard.” The cautious watch then went away.
In the meantime the unlucky Mountfort, suspecting no evil, passed down the
street on his way home, heedless of warnings. On coming up to the
swordsmen, a female servant heard the following conversation:--
Lord Mohun embraced Mountfort, and said--
“Mr. Mountfort, your humble servant. I am glad to see you.”
“Who is this?--Lord Mohun?” said Mountfort.
“Yes, it is.”
“What brings your lordship here at this time of night?”
Lord Mohun replied--
“I suppose you were sent for, Mr. Mountfort?”
“No, indeed, I came by chance.”
“Have you not heard of the business of Mrs. Bracegirdle?”
“Pray, my lord,” said Hill, breaking in, “hold your tongue. This is not a
convenient time to discuss this business.”
Hill seemed desirous to go away, and pulled Lord Mohun’s sleeve; but
Mountfort, taking no notice of Hill, continued to address Lord Mohun,
saying he was sorry to see him assisting Captain Hill in such an evil
action, and begging him to forbear.
Hill instantly gave the actor a box on the ear, and on Mountfort demanding
what that was for, attacked him sword in hand, and ran him through before
he had time to draw his weapon. Mountfort died the next day of the wound,
declaring with his last breath that Lord Mohun had offered him no
violence. Hill fled from justice, and Lord Mohun was tried for murder, but
unfortunately acquitted for want of evidence.
That fortunate poet, Congreve, whom Pope declared to be one of the three
most honest-hearted and really good men in the Kit-cat Club, lived for
some time in Howard Street, where he was a neighbour and frequent guest of
Mrs. Bracegirdle.
Congreve, on becoming acquainted with the Duchess of Marlborough, removed
from Howard Street to a better house in Surrey Street, where he died,
January 19, 1729. The career of this son of a Yorkshire officer had been
one long undisturbed triumph. His first play had been revised by Dryden
and praised by Southerne. Besides being commissioner of hackney-coach and
wine licences, he also held a place in the Pipe Office, a post in the
Custom House, and a secretaryship in Jamaica. He never quarrelled with the
wits: both Addison and Steele admired and praised him, and Voltaire
eulogises his comedies.
It was here that Voltaire, while lodging in Maiden Lane, visited the gouty
and nearly blind dramatist, then infirm and on the verge of life. “Mr.
Congreve,” he says, “had one defect, which was his entertaining too mean
an idea of his profession--that of a writer--though it was to this he owed
his fame and fortune. He spoke of his works as of trifles that were
beneath him, and hinted to me in our first conversation that I should
visit him upon no other footing than that of a gentleman who led a life of
plainness and simplicity. I answered, that _had he been so unfortunate as
to be a mere gentleman_ I should never have come to see him; and I was
very much disgusted at so unseasonable a piece of vanity.”
The body of Congreve lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and was
afterwards interred with great solemnity in Henry VII.’s Chapel. The Duke
of Bridgewater and the Earl of Godolphin were amongst those who bore the
pall. The monument was erected by the Duchess of Marlborough, to whom the
favoured poet had left £10,000. Above his body--
“The ancient pillars rear their marble heads
To bear aloft the arch’d and pond’rous roof,
By its own weight made steadfast and immoveable.”[87]
Congreve’s bequest to the duchess of all his property, except £1000,
including £200 to Mrs. Bracegirdle (a legacy afterwards cancelled),
created much scandal. The shameless bookseller, Curll, instantly launched
forth a life of Congreve, professing to be written by one Charles Wilson,
Esq., but generally attributed to Oldmixon. The duchess’s friends were
alarmed, and Arbuthnot interfered. Upon being told that some genuine
letters and essays were to be published in the work, Mrs. Bracegirdle or
the duchess[88] cried out with defiant affectation and a dramatic drawl,
“Not one single sheet of paper, I dare to swear.”
The duchess, who raised a monument in the Abbey to her brilliant but
artificial friend, is said to have had a wax image of him made to place on
her toilette table. “To this she would talk as to the living Mr. Congreve,
with all the freedom of the most _polite_ and unreserved
conversation.”[89]
Strand Lane used formerly to lead to a small landing-pier for wherries,
called Strand Bridge. In Stow’s time the lane passed under a bridge down
to the landing-place.[90] A writer in the _Spectator_ describes how he
landed here on a summer morning, arriving with ten sail of apricot boats,
consigned to Covent Garden,[91] after having first touched at Nine Elms
for melons. In this lane there is a fine Roman bath which, if indeed
Roman, is the most western relic of Roman London, the centre of which was
on the east end of the Royal Exchange.
No. 165 has been long used as a warehouse for the sale of Dr. Anderson’s
pills. Dr. Patrick Anderson was physician to Charles I., and as early as
1649 a man named Inglis sold these quack pills at the Golden Unicorn, over
against the Maypole in the Strand. Tom Brown says, “There are at least a
score of pretenders to Anderson’s Scotch pills, and the Lord knows who has
the true preparation.” Brown died in 1704. Sir Walter Scott used to tell
one of his best stories about these pills. It dwelt on the passion for
them entertained by a certain hypochondriacal Lowland laird. Bland or
rough, old or young, no visitor at his house escaped a dose--“joost ane
leetle Anderson;” and his toady “the doer” used always to swallow a
brace.[92]
The Turk’s Head Coffee-house stood on the site of No. 142 Strand. Dr.
Johnson used to sup at this house to encourage the hostess, who was a
good civil woman, and had not too much business. July 28, 1763, Boswell
mentions supping there with Dr. Johnson; and again, on August 3, in the
same year, just before he set out for his wildgoose chase in Corsica.[93]
No. 132 was the shop of a bookseller named Bathoe. The first circulating
library in London was established here in 1740.
Jacob Tonson, Dryden’s grinding publisher and bookseller, lived at the
Shakspere’s Head, over against Catherine Street, now No. 141 Strand, from
about 1712 till he died, in 1735-6. Tonson seems to have been rough, hard,
and penurious. The poet and publisher were perpetually squabbling, and
Dryden was especially vexed at his trying to force him to dedicate his
translation of Virgil to King William, and when he refused, making the
engraver of the frontispiece aggravate the nose of Æneas till it became “a
hooked promontory,” like that of the Protestant king. It was to Tonson’s
shop at Gray’s Inn, however, that Dryden, on being refused money, probably
sent that terrible triplet to the obdurate bibliopole:--
“With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair,
With two left legs, and Judas-colour’d hair,
And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air.”[94]
“Tell the dog,” said Dryden to his messenger, “that he who wrote those can
write more.” But Tonson was perfectly satisfied with this first shot, and
surrendered at discretion. The irascible poet afterwards accused him of
intercepting his letters to his sons at Rome, and he confessed to
Bolingbroke on one occasion that he was afraid of Tonson’s tongue.[95]
Tonson’s house, since rebuilt, was afterwards occupied by Andrew Millar,
the publisher and friend of Thomson, Fielding, Hume, and Robertson, and
after his death by Thomas Cadell, his apprentice, and the friend and
publisher of Gibbon the historian. The _Seasons_, _Tom Jones_, and the
Histories of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon were first published at this
house. Millar was a Scotchman, and distinguished his shop by the sign of
Buchanan’s Head, afterwards the badge of Messrs. Blackwood.
The _Illustrated London News_, whose office is near Somerset House, was
started in 1842 by Mr. Herbert Ingram, originally a humble newsvendor at
Northampton; an industrious man, who would run five miles with a newspaper
to oblige an old customer. In the first year he sold a million copies; in
the second, two; and in 1848, three millions. Dr. Mackay, the song-writer,
wrote leaders; Mr. Mark Lemon aided him; Mr. Peter Cunningham collected
his column of weekly chat; Thomas Miller, the basket-maker poet, was also
on his staff. Mr. Ingram obtained a seat in Parliament, and was eventually
drowned in a steamboat collision on Lake Michigan.
[Illustration: PENN’S HOUSE, NORFOLK STREET, 1749.]
[Illustration: SOMERSET HOUSE FROM THE RIVER, 1746.]