CHAPTER IX.

CHARING CROSS.

On July 20, 1864, was laid the first stone of the great Thames Embankment,

which now forms the wall of our river from Blackfriars to Westminster. A

couple of flags fluttered lazily over the stone as a straggling procession

of the members of the Metropolitan Board of Works moved down to the

wooden causeway leading to the river. For two years about a thousand men

were at work on it night and day. Iron caissons were sunk below the mud,

deep in the gravel, and within ten feet of the clay which is the real

foundation of London, and the Victoria Embankment rose gradually into

being. It was opened by Royalty in the summer of 1870. This scheme,

originally sketched out by Wren, was designed by Colonel Trench, M.P., and

also by Martin the painter; but it was never carried out until the days of

Lord Palmerston and the Metropolitan Board of Works. Its piers, its

flights of steps, its broad highway covering a railway, its gardens, its

terraces, are complete; and when the buildings along it are finished

London may for the first time claim to compare itself in architectural

grandeur with Nineveh, Rome, or modern Paris.

Northumberland House, which faced Charing Cross, covering the site of

Northumberland Avenue, was a good but dull specimen of Jacobean

architecture; it was built by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, son of

the poet Earl of Surrey, about 1605.[349] Walpole attributes the building

to Bernard Jansen, a Fleming, and an imitator of Dieterling, and to Gerard

Christmas, the designer of Aldersgate. Jansen probably built the house,

which was of brick, and Christmas added the stone frontispiece, which was

profusely ornamented with rich carved scrolls, and an open parapet worked

into letters and other devices. John Thorpe is also supposed to have been

associated in the work; and plans of both the quadrangles of this enormous

palace are preserved among the _Soane MSS._[350] Jansen was the architect

of Audley End, in Essex, one of the wonders of the age. Thorpe built

Burghley. The front was originally 162 feet long, the court 82 feet

square; as Inigo Jones has noted in a copy of _Palladio_ preserved at

Worcester College, Oxford.

The Earl of Northampton left the house by his will, in 1614, to his

nephew, Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, who died in 1626. This was the

father of the memorable Frances, Countess of Essex and Somerset; and from

him the house took the name of Suffolk House, till the marriage in 1642 of

Elizabeth, daughter of Theophilus, second Earl of Suffolk, with Algernon

Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland, when it changed its name accordingly.

Dorothy, sister of the rash and ungrateful Earl of Essex, whose violence

and follies nothing less than the executioner’s axe could cure, married

the “wizard” Earl of Northumberland, as he was called, whom “she led the

life of a dog, till he indignantly turned her out of doors.” He was

afterwards engaged in the Gunpowder Plot, being angry with the Government

that had overlooked him. “His name was used and his money spent by the

conspirators; one of his servants hired the vault, and procured the lease

of Vineyard House. Thomas Percy, his kinsman and steward, supped with him

on the very night of the plot. His servant, Sir Dudley Carleton, who hired

the house, was thrust into the Tower, and the earl joined him there not

long after; but Cecil was either unable or unwilling to touch his

life.”[351] Northumberland, with Cobham and Raleigh, had before this

engaged in schemes with the French against the Government. Thomas Percy

had been beheaded for plotting with Mary. Henry Percy had shot himself

while in the Tower, on account of the Throckmorton Conspiracy. Compounding

for a fine of £11,000, the earl devoted himself in the Tower to scientific

and literary pursuits, and gave annuities to six or seven eminent

mathematicians, who ate at his table. In 1611 he was again examined, and

finally released in 1617. The king’s favourite, Hay, afterwards Earl of

Carlisle, had married the earl’s daughter Lucy against his will, which so

irritated him that he was with difficulty persuaded to accept his own

release, because it was obtained through the intercession of Hay.

Joceline Percy, son of Algernon, dying in 1670, without issue male,

Northumberland House became the property of his only daughter Elizabeth

Percy, the heiress of the Percy estates. Her first husband was Henry

Cavendish, Earl of Ogle; her second, Thomas Thynne, of Longleat, in

Wilts, who was shot in his coach in Pall Mall, on Sunday, February 12,

1681-2; her third husband was Charles Seymour, the _proud_ Duke of

Somerset, who married her in 1682. This lady was twice a widow and three

times a wife before the age of seventeen.

The “proud” duke and duchess lived in great state and magnificence at

Northumberland House. The duchess died in 1722, and the duke followed in

1748. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Algernon, Earl of Hertford, and

the seventh Duke of Somerset, who was created Earl of Northumberland in

1749, with remainder, failing issue male, to his son-in-law, Sir Hugh

Smithson, who in 1766 was raised to the dukedom. The lion which country

cousins for two centuries remember to have crowned the central gateway of

the duke’s house, represented the Percy crest. It is of this stiff-tailed

animal, for the exact angle of the tail is treated by heralds as a matter

of the most vital importance, that the old story imputed to Sheridan is

told. Probably some audacious wit did once collect a London crowd by

declaring that its tail wagged--but certainly it was not Sheridan.

Tom Thynne, or, as he was called, “Tom of Ten Thousand,” was shot at the

east end of Pall Mall, opposite the Opera Arcade, by Borosky, a Polish

soldier urged on by Count Königsmark, a Swedish adventurer, son of one of

Gustavus’s old generals, and who was enraged with Thynne for having just

married the youthful widow of the Earl of Ogle, Lady Elizabeth Percy.

Thynne was a favourite of the Duke of Monmouth. Shaftesbury had been

lately released from the Tower, in spite of Dryden’s onslaught on him as

“Achitophel,” on the foolish duke as “Absalom,” and on Thynne as

“Issachar,” his wealthy western friend. The three murderers were hanged in

Pall Mall, but their master strangely escaped, partly owing to the

influence of Charles II. The count, who had shown great courage at Tangier

against the Moors, and had boarded a Turkish galley at his eminent peril,

died in 1686, at the battle of Argos in the Morea. His younger brother was

assassinated at Hanover, on suspicion of an intrigue with Sophia of Zell,

the young and beautiful wife of the Elector, afterwards George I. of

England.[352]

The Earl of Northampton, Surrey’s son, who built Northumberland House (as

Osborne, who loved scandal, says with Spanish gold), seems to have been an

unscrupulous time-server, flatterer, and parasite. In 1596 he wrote to

Burleigh, and spoke of his reverend awe at his lordship’s “piercing

judgment;” yet a year after he writes a plotting letter to Burleigh’s

great enemy, Essex, and says: “Your lordship by your last purchase hath

almost enraged the dromedary that would have won the Queen of Sheba’s

favour by bringing pearls. If you could once be so fortunate in dragging

old Leviathan (Burghley) and his rich tortuosum colubrum (Sir Robert

Cecil), as the prophet termeth them, out of their den of mischievous

device, the better part of the world would prefer your virtue to that of

Hercules.” The earl became a toady and creature of the infamous Carr, Earl

of Somerset, and is thought to have died just in time to escape

prosecution for the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower.[353]

It was shortly before Suffolk House changed its name that it became the

scene of one of Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s mad Quixotic quarrels. His

chivalrous lordship had had sundry ague fits, which had made him so lean

and yellow that scarce any man could recognise him. Walking towards

Whitehall he one day met a Mr. Emerson, who had spoken very disgraceful

words of Lord Herbert’s friend, Sir Robert Harley. Lord Herbert therefore,

sensible of the dishonour, took Emerson by his long beard, and then,

stepping aside, drew his sword; Captain Thomas Scriven being with Lord

Herbert, and divers friends with Mr. Emerson. All who saw the quarrel

wondered at the Welsh nobleman, weak and “consumed” as he was, offering to

fight; however, Emerson ran and took shelter in Suffolk House, and

afterwards complained to the Lords in Council, who sent for Lord Herbert,

the lean, yellow Welsh Quixote, but did not so much reprehend him for

defending the honour of his friend as for adventuring to fight, being at

the same time in such weak health.[354]

Algernon, the tenth Earl of Northumberland, is called by Clarendon “the

proudest man alive.” He had been Lord High Admiral to King Charles I., and

was appointed general against the Scotch Covenanters, but, being unable to

take the command from ill health, gave up his commission. He gradually

fell away from the king’s cause, but nevertheless refused to continue High

Admiral against the king’s wish. He treated the Dukes of York and

Gloucester and the Princess Elizabeth with “such consideration” that they

were removed from his care, and from that time he turned Royalist again.

Sir John Suckling refers to Suffolk House in his exquisite little poem on

the wedding of Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, with Lady Margaret Howard,

daughter of the Earl of Suffolk. The well known poem begins--

“At Charing-cross, hard by the way

Where we (thou know’st) do sell our hay,

There is a house with stairs.”

And then the gay and graceful poet goes on to sketch Lady Margaret--

“Her lips were red, and one was thin,

Compared with that was next her chin.

Some bee had stung it newly.”

And then follows that delightful, fantastic simile, comparing her feet to

little mice creeping in and out her petticoat.[355] Sir John was born in

1609.

The oldest part of Northumberland House was the Strand entrance. This was

crowned, as stated above, by a frieze or balustrade of large stone

letters, probably including the name and titles of the earl and the

glorified name of the architect. At the funeral of Anne of Denmark, 1619,

a young man, named Appleyard, was killed by the fall of the letter S[356]

from the house, which was then occupied by the Earl of Strafford, Lord

Treasurer. The house was originally only three sides of a quadrangle, the

river side remaining open to the gardens; but traffic and noise

increasing, the quadrangle was completed along the river side and the

principal apartments. There is a drawing by Hollar of the house in his

time, and another, a century later, by Canaletti. The new front towards

the gardens was spoiled by a clumsy stone staircase, which was attributed

to Inigo Jones, but probably incorrectly.

The date, 1746, on the façade referred to the repairs made in that year,

and the letters “A. S. P. N.” stood for Algernon Somerset, Princeps

Northumbriæ. The lion over the gateway was said to be a copy of one by

Michael Angelo; it is now at Sion House, Isleworth. The gateway was

covered with ornaments and trophies. Double ranges of grotesque pilasters

enclosed eight niches on the sides, and there was a bow window and an open

arch above the chief gate. Between each of the fourteen niches in the

front there were trophies of crossed weapons, and the upper stories had

twenty-four windows, in two ranges, and pierced battlements. Each wing

terminated in a little cupola, and the angles had rustic quoins. The

quadrangle within the gate was simpler and in better taste, and the house

was screened from the river by elm trees.[357]

There used to be a schoolboy tradition, prevalent at King’s College in the

author’s time, that one of the niches in the front of Northumberland House

was of copper and movable. So far the story was true; but the tradition

went on to relate how, once upon a time, a certain enemy of the house of

Percy obtained secret admission by this niche and murdered one of the

dukes, his enemy. History is, however, fortunately, quite silent on this

subject.

In February 1762 Horace Walpole and a party of quality set out from

Northumberland House to hear the ghost in Cock Lane that Dr. Johnson

exposed, and that Hogarth and Churchill ridiculed with pen and pencil.

The Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, and Lord Hertford,

all returned from the Opera with Horace Walpole, then changed their dress,

and set out in a hackney coach. It rained hard, and the lane and house

were “full of mob.” The room of the haunted house, small and miserable,

was stuffed with eighty persons, and there was no light but one tallow

candle. As clothes-lines hung from the ceiling, Walpole asked drily if

there was going to be rope-dancing between the acts. They said the ghost

would not come till 7 A.M., when only ’prentices and old women remained.

The party stayed till half-past one. The Methodists had promised

contributions, provisions were sent in like forage, and the neighbouring

taverns and ale-houses were making their fortunes.[358]

On May 14, 1770, poor Chatterton, who suffered so terribly for the

deceptions of his ambitious boyhood, writes from the King’s Bench (for the

present) that a gentleman who knew him at the Chapter coffee-house, in

Paternoster Row--frequented by authors and publishers--would have

introduced him to the young Duke of Northumberland as a companion in his

intended general tour, “but, alas! I spake no tongue but my own.”[359] But

this is taken from a most questionable work, full of fictions and

forgeries. Its author was a Bristol man, who afterwards fled to America.

He also wrote a series of Conversations with the poets of the Lake school,

many of which are too obviously imaginary.

On March 18, 1780, the Strand front of Northumberland House was totally

destroyed by fire. The apartments of Dr. Percy, the Duke’s kinsman and

chaplain, afterwards Bishop of Dromore and editor of the _Reliques of

Ancient Poetry_ were consumed; but great part of his library escaped.

Goldsmith’s simple-hearted ballad of _Edwin and Angelina_ was originally

“printed for the amusement of the Countess of Northumberland.” Two years

after, Kenrick accused him in the papers of plagiarising it from Percy’s

pasticcio from Shakspere in the _Reliques_, which was probably written in

1765.[360]

It is probable that Goldsmith often visited Percy, when acting as chaplain

at Northumberland House. Sir John Hawkins, indeed, describes meeting the

poet waiting for an audience in an outer room. At his own audience Hawkins

mentioned that the doctor was waiting. On their way home together,

Goldsmith told Hawkins that his lordship said that he had read the

_Traveller_ with delight, that he was going as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland,

and should be glad, as Goldsmith was an Irishman, to do him any kindness.

Hawkins was enraptured at the rich man’s graciousness. But Goldsmith had

mentioned only his brother, a clergyman there, who needed help. “As for

myself,” he added, bitterly, “I have no dependence on the promises of

great men. I look to the booksellers for support; they are my best

friends, and I am not inclined to forsake them for others.” “Thus,” says

Hawkins, “did this idiot in the affairs of the world trifle with his

fortunes and put back the hand that was held out to assist him.” The earl

told Percy, after Goldsmith’s death, that had he known how to help the

poet he would have done so, or he would have procured him a salary on the

Irish establishment that would have allowed him to travel. Let men of the

world remember that the poet a few days before had been forced to borrow

15s. 6d. to meet his own wants.

This conversation took place in 1765. In 1771, when Goldsmith was stopping

at Bath with his good-natured friend Lord Clare, he blundered by mistake

at breakfast time into the next door on the same Parade, where the Duke

and Duchess of Northumberland were staying. As he took no notice of them,

but threw himself carelessly on a sofa, they supposed there was some

mistake, and therefore entered into conversation with him, and when

breakfast was served up, invited him to stay and partake of it. The poet,

hot, stammering, and irrecoverably confused, withdrew with profuse

apologies for his mistake, but not till he had accepted an invitation to

dinner. This story, a parallel to the laughable blunder in _She Stoops to

Conquer_, was told by the duchess herself to Dr. Percy.

It was probably of the first of these interviews that Goldsmith used to

give the following account:--

“I dressed myself in the best manner I could, and, after studying some

compliments I thought necessary on such an occasion, proceeded to

Northumberland House, and acquainted the servants that I had particular

business with the duke. They showed me into an ante-chamber, where, after

waiting some time, a gentleman, very elegantly dressed, made his

appearance. Taking him for the duke, I delivered all the fine things I had

composed, in order to compliment him on the honour he had done me; when to

my fear and astonishment, he told me I had mistaken him for his master,

who would see me immediately. At that instant the duke came into the

apartment, and I was so confounded on the occasion that I wanted words

barely sufficient to express the sense I entertained of the duke’s

politeness, and went away exceedingly chagrined at the blunder I had

committed.”[361]

Dr. Waagen, the picture critic, seems to have been rather dazzled at the

splendour of Northumberland House. He praises the magnificent staircase,

lighted from above and reaching up through three stories, the white marble

floors, the balustrades and chandeliers of gilt bronze, the cabinets of

Florentine mosaic, and the arabesques of the drawing-room.[362] The great

picture of the duke’s collection was the Cornaro family, by Titian; I

believe from the Duke of Buckingham’s collection. It is a splendid

specimen of the painter’s middle period and golden tone. The faces of the

kneeling Cornari are grand, simple, senatorial, and devout. There was also

a Saint Sebastian, by Guercino, “clear and careful,” and large as life; a

fine Snyders and Vandyke; many copies by Mengs (particularly “The School

of Athens”); and a good Schalcken, with his usual candlelight effect. The

gem of all the English pictures was one by Dobson, Vandyke’s noble pupil.

It contained the portrait of the painter and those of Sir Balthasar

Gerbier, the architect, and Sir Charles Cotterell. The colour is as rich

and juicy as Titian’s, the drapery learned and graceful, the faces are

full of fire and spirit. Dobson died at the age of thirty-six. Sir Charles

was his patron.[363] Vandyke is said to have disinterred Dobson from a

garret, and recommended him to the king. Gerbier was a native of Antwerp,

a painter, architect, and ambassador. This picture of Dobson was bought at

Betterton’s sale for £44.[364] The gallery of the Duke of Northumberland

was removed in 1875, when the house was demolished, to Sion House.

Northumberland House was connected with, at all events, one period of

English history. In the year 1660, when General Monk was in quarters at

Whitehall, the Earl of Northumberland, in the name of the nobility and

gentry of England, invited him here to the first conference in which the

restoration of the Stuarts was publicly talked of. Algernon Percy, the

tenth earl, had been Lord High Admiral under Charles I.

That staunch, brave, crotchety man, Sir Harry Vane the younger (the son of

Lord Strafford’s enemy), lived next door to Northumberland House,

eastwards, in the Strand. The house in Charles II.’s time became the

official residence of the Secretary of State, and Mr. Secretary Nicholas

dwelt there, when meetings were held to found a commonwealth and put down

that foolish, good-natured, incompetent Richard Cromwell. To the great

Protector, Vane was a thorn in the flesh, for he wanted a republic when

the nation required a stronger and more compact government. Oliver’s

exclamation, “Oh, Sir Harry Vane! Sir Harry Vane!--The Lord deliver me

from Sir Harry Vane!” expresses infinite vexation with an impracticable

person. Vane was a “Fifth-monarchy man,” and believed in universal

salvation. He must have been a good man, or Milton would never have

addressed the sonnet to him in which he says--

“Therefore, on thy firm hand Religion leans

In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son.”

Sir Harry left behind him some very tough and dark treatises on prophecy,

and other profound matters that few but angels or fools dare to meddle

with.

There is a foolish tradition that Charing Cross was so named originally by

Edward I. in memory of his _chère reine_. Peele, one of the glorious band

of Elizabethan dramatists, helped to spread this tradition. He makes King

Edward say--

“Erect a rich and stately carved cross,

Whereon her statue shall with glory shine;

And henceforth see you call it Charing Cross.

For why?--the _chariest_ and the choicest queen

That ever did delight my royal eyes

There dwells in darkness.”[365]

The inconsolable widower, however, in spite of his costly grief, soon

married again.

The truth is, there are in England one or two Charings; one of them is a

village thirteen miles from Maidstone. “_Ing_” means meadow in Saxon.[366]

The meaning of “_Char_” is uncertain; it may be the contraction of the

name of some long-forgotten landowner, “rich in the possession of

dirt.”[367] The Anglo-Saxon word _cerre_--a turn (says Mr. Robert

Ferguson, an excellent authority), is retained in the name given in

Carlisle and other northern towns to the chares, or _wynds_--small

streets. In King Edward’s time Charing was bounded by fields, both north

and west. There has been a good deal of nonsense, however, written about

“the pleasant village of Charing.” In Aggas’s map, published under

Elizabeth, Hedge Lane (now Whitcombe Street) is a country lane bordered

with fields; so is the Haymarket, and all behind the Mews up to St.

Martin’s Lane is equally rural.

Horne Tooke[368] derives the word Charing from the Saxon verb _charan_--to

turn; but the etymology is still doubtful, however much the river may bend

on its way to Westminster. However, doubtless, the place was named

Charing as far back as the Saxon times.

It was Peele also who kept alive the old tradition of Queen Eleanor

sinking at Charing Cross and rising again at Queenhithe. When falsely

accused of _her crimes_, his heroine replies in the words of a rude old

ballad well known in Elizabeth’s time--

“If that upon so vile a thing

Her heart did ever think,

She wished the ground might open wide,

And therein she might sink.

With that at Charing Cross she sank

Into the ground alive,

And after rose with life again,

In London at Queenhithe.”[369]

The Eleanor crosses were erected at Lincoln, Geddington, Northampton,

Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Albans, Waltham, Cheap, and

Charing. Three only now remain,--Northampton, Geddington, and Waltham.

Charing Cross was probably the most costly; it was octagonal, and was

adorned with statues in tiers of niches, which were crowned with

pinnacles. It was begun by Master Richard de Crundale, “cementarius,” but

he died about 1293, before it was finished, and the work went on under the

supervision of Roger de Crundale. Richard received about £500 for his

work, exclusive of materials furnished him, and Roger £90: 7: 5. The stone

was brought from Caen, and the marble steps from Corfe in Dorsetshire.

Only one foreigner was employed on all the crosses, and he was a

Frenchman. The Abbot Ware brought mosaics, porphyry, and perhaps designs

from Italy, but there is no proof that he brought over Cavallini. A

replica of the original cross, designed by Mr. Barry, has been erected at

the west end of the Strand, opposite the Charing Cross Railway Station and

Hotel.

The cluster of houses at Charing acquired the name of Cross from the

monument set up by Edward I. to the memory of his gentle, pious, and

brave wife Eleanor, the sister of Alphonso, King of Castille. This good

woman was the daughter of Ferdinand III., and after the death of her

mother, heiress of Ponthieu. She bore to her fond husband four sons and

eleven daughters, of whom only three are supposed to have survived their

father.

Queen Eleanor died at Hardley, near Lincoln, in 1290. The king followed

the funeral to Westminster, and afterwards erected a cross to his wife’s

memory at every place where the corpse rested for the night. In the

circular which the king sent on the occasion to his prelates and nobles,

he trusts that prayers may be offered for her soul at these crosses, so

that any stains not purged from her, either from forgetfulness or other

causes, may through the plenitude of the Divine grace be removed.[370] It

was Queen Eleanor who, when Edward was stabbed at Acre, by an emissary of

the Emir of Joppa, according to a Spanish historian,[371] sucked the

poison from the wounds at the risk of her own life.

This warlike king, who subdued Wales and Scotland, who expelled the Jews

from England, who hunted Bruce, hanged Wallace, and who finally died on

his march to crush Scotland, had a deep affection for his wife, and strove

by all that art could do to preserve her memory.

Old Charing Cross was long supposed to have been built from the designs of

Pietro Cavallini, a contemporary of Giotto. He is said to have assisted

that painter in the great mosaic picture over the chief entrance of St.

Peter’s. But there is little ground for accepting the tradition as true,

though asserted by Vertue, as we learn from Horace Walpole’s ‘Anecdotes.’

Cavallini was born in 1279, and died in 1364. The monument to Henry III.

at the Abbey, and the old paintings round the chapel of St. Edward are

also attributed to this patriarch of art by Vertue.[372]

Queen Eleanor had three tombs--one in Lincoln Cathedral, over her viscera;

another in the church of the Blackfriars in London, over her heart; a

third in Westminster Abbey, over the rest of her body. The first was

destroyed by the Parliamentarians; the second probably perished at the

dissolution of the monasteries; the third has escaped. It is a valuable

example of the thirteenth century beau-ideal. The tomb was the work of

William Torel, a London goldsmith. The statue is not a portrait statue any

more than the statue of Henry III. by the same artist. Torel seems to have

received for his whole work about £1700 of our money.[373]

The beautiful cross, with its pinnacles and statues, was demolished in

1647 under an order of the House of Commons, which had remained dormant

for three years; and at the same time fell its brother cross in Cheapside.

The Royalist ballad-mongers, eager to catch the Puritans tripping,

produced a lively street song on the occasion, beginning--

“Undone, undone the lawyers are,

They wander about the town,

Nor can find the way to Westminster,

Now Charing Cross is down.

At the end of the Strand they make a stand,

Swearing they are at a loss,

And chaffing say that’s not the way,

They must go by Charing Cross.”

The ballad-writer goes on to deny that the Cross ever spoke a word against

the Parliament, though he confesses it might have inclined to Popery; for

certain it was that it “never went to church.”

The workmen were engaged for three months in pulling down the Cross.[374]

Some of the stones went to form the pavement before Whitehall; others were

polished to look like marble, and were sold to antiquaries for

knife-handles. The site remained vacant for thirty-one years.

After the Restoration Charing Cross was turned into a place of execution.

Here Hugh Peters, Cromwell’s chaplain, and Major-General Harrison, the

sturdy Anabaptist, Colonel Jones, and Colonel Scrope were executed. They

all died bravely, without a doubt or a fear.

Harrison was the son of a Staffordshire farmer, and had fought bravely at

the siege of Basing; he had been major-general in Scotland; had helped

Cromwell at the disbanding of the Rump; had served in the Council of

State; and finally having expressed honest Anabaptist scruples about the

Protectorate, had been imprisoned to prevent rebellion. Cromwell’s son

Oliver had been captain in Harrison’s regiment.[375] As he was led to the

scaffold some base scullion called out to the brave old Ironside, “Where

is your good _old_ cause now?” Harrison replied with a cheerful smile,

clapping his hand on his breast, “Here it is, and I am going to seal it

with my blood.” When he came in sight of the gallows he was transported

with joy; his servant asked him how he did? He answered, “Never better in

my life.” His servant told him, “Sir, there is a crown of glory prepared

for you.”[376] “Yes,” replied he, “I see.” When he was taken off the

sledge, the hangman desired him to forgive him. “I do forgive thee,” said

he, “with all my heart, as it is a sin against me,” and told him he wished

him all happiness; and further said, “Alas, poor man, thou dost it

ignorantly; the Lord grant that this sin may not be laid to thy charge!”

and putting his hand into his pocket he gave him all the money he had; and

so parting with his servant, hugging him in his arms, he went up the

ladder with an undaunted countenance. The cruel rabble observing him

tremble in his hands and legs, he took notice of it, and said, “Gentlemen,

by reason of some scoffing that I do hear, I judge that some do think I am

afraid to die by the shaking I have in my hands and knees. I tell you

_No_; but it is by reason of much blood I have lost in the wars, and many

wounds I have received in my body, which caused this shaking and weakness

in my nerves. I have had it this twelve years. I speak this to the praise

and glory of God. He hath carried me above the fear of death, and I value

not my life, because I go to my Father, and I am assured I shall take it

again. Gentlemen, take notice, that for being an instrument in that cause

(an instrument of the Son of God) which hath been pleaded amongst us, and

which God hath witnessed to by many appeals and wonderful victories, I am

brought to this place to suffer death this day, and if I had ten thousand

lives I could freely and cheerfully lay them down all to witness to this

matter.”

Then he prayed to himself with tears, and having ended, the hangman pulled

down his cap, but he thrust it up and said, “I have one word more to the

Lord’s people. Let them not think hardly of any of the good ways of God

for all this, for I have found the way of God to be a perfect way, and He

hath covered my head many times in the day of battle. By my God I have

leaped over a wall, by my God I have run through a troop, and by my God I

will go through this death, and He will make it easy to me. Now, into thy

hands, O Lord Jesus, I commit my spirit.”

After he was hanged they cut down this true martyr, and stripping him,

slashed him open in order to disembowel him. In the last rigour of his

agony this staunch soldier is said to have risen up and struck the

executioner.

Three days after, Carew and Cook were hanged at the same place, rejoicing

and praying cheerfully to the last. As Cook parted from his wife he said

to her, “I am going to be married in glory this day. Why weepest

thou?--let them weep who part and shall never meet again.”

On the 17th, Thomas Scot perished at the same place. His last words

were--“God engaged me in a cause not to be repented of--I say, in a cause

not to be repented of.”

Jones and Scrope (both old men) were drawn in one sledge. Their grave yet

cheerful and courageous countenances caused great admiration and

compassion among the crowd. Observing one of his friend’s children weeping

at Newgate, Colonel Jones took her by the hand. He said, “Suppose your

father were to-morrow to be King of France, and you were to tarry a little

behind, would you weep so? Why, he is going to reign with the King of

kings.” When he saw the sledge, he said, “It is like Elijah’s fiery

chariot, only it goes through Fleet Street.” The night before he suffered,

he told a friend the only temptation he had was lest he should be too much

transported, and so neglect and slight his life, so greatly was he

satisfied to die in such a cause. Another friend he grasped in his arms

and said, “Farewell! I could wish thee in the same condition as myself,

that our souls might mount up to heaven together and share in eternal

joys.” To another friend he said, “Ah, dear heart! if we had perished

together in that storm going to Ireland, we had been in heaven to welcome

honest Harrison and Carew; but we will be content to go after them--we

will go after.” It is added that “the executioner, having done his part

upon three others that day, was so surfeited with blood and sick, that he

sent his boy to finish the tragedy on Colonel Jones.”

Hugh Peters was much afraid while in Newgate lest his spirits should fail

him when he saw the gibbet and the fire, but his courage did not fail him

in that hour of great need. On his way to execution he looked about and

espied a man to whom he gave a piece of gold, having bowed it first, and

desired him to carry that as a token to his daughter, and to let her know

that her father’s heart was as full of comfort as it could be, and that

before the piece should come into her hands he should be with God in

glory.

While Cook was being hanged they made Peters sit within the rails to

behold his death. While sitting thus, one came to him and upbraided the

old preacher with the king’s death, and bade him repent. Peters replied,

“Friend, you do not well to trample upon a dying man: you are greatly

mistaken--I had nothing to do in the death of the king.”

When Mr. Cook was cut down and about to be quartered, Colonel Turner told

the sheriff’s men to bring Mr. Peters nearer to see the body. By and by

the hangman came to him, rubbing his bloody hands, and tauntingly asked

him, “Come, how do you like this--how do you like this work?” To whom Mr.

Peters calmly replied, “I am not, I thank God, terrified at it--you may do

your worst.”

Being upon the ladder, he spoke to the sheriff and said, “Sir, you have

here slain one of the servants of God before mine eyes, and have made me

to behold it on purpose to terrify and discourage me, but God hath made it

an ordinance to me for my strengthening and encouragement.”

When he was going to die, he said, “What, flesh! art thou unwilling to go

to God through the fire and jaws of death? Oh! this is a good day. He is

come that I have long looked for, and I shall soon be with Him in glory.”

And he smiled when he went away. “What Mr. Peters said further it could

not be taken, in regard his voice was low at the time and the people

uncivil.”

In May 1685 that consummate scoundrel Titus Oates came to the pillory at

Charing Cross. He had been condemned to pay a thousand marks fine, to be

stripped of his gown, to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn, from Aldgate

to Newgate, and to stand in the pillory at the Royal Exchange and before

Westminster Hall. He was also condemned to stand one hour in the pillory

at Charing Cross every 10th of August, and there an eye-witness describes

seeing him in 1688.[377]

In 1666 and 1667 an Italian puppet-player set up his booth at Charing

Cross, and there and then probably introduced “Punch and Judy” into

England. He paid a small rent to the overseers of St. Martin’s parish, and

is called in their books “Punchinello.” In 1668 we learn that a Mr. Devone

erected a small playhouse in the same place.[378]

There is still extant a song written to ridicule the long delay in setting

up the king’s statue, and it contains an allusion to “Punch”--

“What can the mistry be, why Charing Cross

These five months continues still blinded with board?

Dear Wheeler, impart--wee are all att a loss,

Unless Punchinello is to be restored.”[379]

The royal statue at Charing Cross is the work of Hubert Le Sœur, a

Frenchman and a pupil of the famous John of Bologna, the sculptor of the

“Rape of the Sabines” in the Loggia at Florence. Le Sœur’s copy of the

“Fighting Gladiator,” which is praised by Peacham in his “Compleat

Gentleman,” once at the head of the canal in St. James’s Park, is now at

Hampton Court. Le Sœur also executed the monuments of Sir George Villiers,

and Sir Thomas Richardson the judge, in Westminster Abbey.

The original contract for the brazen equestrian statue, a foot larger than

life, is dated 1630. The sculptor was to receive £600. The agreement was

drawn up by Sir Balthasar Gerbier for the purchaser, the Lord High

Treasurer Weston. Yet the existing statue was not cast till 1633, and the

above-mentioned agreement speaks of it as to be erected in the Lord

Treasurer’s garden at Roehampton; so that the agreement may not refer to

the same work, although it certainly specifies that the sculptor shall

“take advice of his Maj. riders of greate horses, as well for the shape of

the horse and action as for the graceful shape and action of his Maj.

figure on the same.”[380]

The present statue was cast in 1633, on a piece of ground near the church

in Covent Garden, and not being actually erected when the Civil War broke

out, it was sold by the Parliament to John Rivet, a brazier, living at

“the Dial, near Holburn Conduit,” with strict orders to break it up. But

the man, being a shrewd Royalist, produced some fragments of old brass,

and hid the statue underground till the Restoration. Rivet refusing to

deliver up the statue after Charles’s return, a replevin was served upon

him to compel its surrender. The dispute, however, lasted many years, and

he probably pleaded compensation. The statue was erected in its present

position about 1674, by an order from the Earl of Danby, afterwards Duke

of Leeds. Le Sœur died, it is supposed, before the statue was erected.

Horace Walpole, who praises the “commanding grace of the figure,” and the

“exquisite form of the horse,”[381] incorrectly says, “The statue was made

at the expense of the family of Howard, Lord Arundel, who have still the

receipt to show by whom and for whom it was cast.”

There is still extant a very rare large sheet print of the statue,

engraved in the manner and time of Faithorne, but without name or date.

The inscription beneath it describes the statue as almost ten feet high,

and as “preserved underground,” with great hazard, charge, and care, by

John Rivet, a brazier.[382]

John Rivet may have been a patriot, but he was certainly a shrewd one. To

secure his concealed treasure he had manufactured a large quantity of

brass handles for knives and forks, and advertised them as being forged

from the destroyed statue. They sold well; the Royalists bought them as

sad and precious relics; the Puritans as mementos of their triumph. He

doubled his prices, and still his shop was crowded with eager customers,

so that in a short time he realised a considerable fortune.[383]

The brazier, or the brazier’s family, probably sold the statue to Charles

II. at his restoration. The Parliament voted £70,000 for solemnising the

funeral of Charles I., and for erecting a monument to his memory.[384]

Part of this sum went for the pedestal, but whether the brazier or his kin

were rewarded is not known. Charles II. probably spent most of the money

on his pleasures.

There is a fatality attending the verses of most time-serving poets.

Waller never wrote a court poem well but when he lauded that great man,

the Protector. When the statue of “the Martyr” was set up, _fourteen

years_ after the Restoration--so tardy was filial affection--Waller wrote

the following dull and unworthy lines about the statue of a faithless

king:--

“That the first Charles does here in triumph ride,

See his son reign where he a martyr died,

And people pay that reverence as they pass

(Which then he wanted) to the sacred brass

Is not th’ effect of gratitude alone,

To which we owe the statue and the stone;

But Heaven this lasting monument has wrought,

That mortals may eternally be taught

Rebellion, though successful, is but vain,

And kings so kill’d rise conquerors again.

This truth the royal image does proclaim

Loud as the trumpet of surviving fame.”

Andrew Marvell, one of the most powerful of lampoon writers, and the very

Gillray of political satirists, wrote some bitter lines on the statue of

the so-called Martyr at Charing Cross, lines which in an earlier reign

would have cost the honest daring poet his ears, if not his head.

There was an equestrian stone statue of Charles II. at Woolchurch

(Woolwich?), and the poet imagines the two horses, the one of stone and

the other of brass, talking together one evening, when the two riders,

weary of sitting all day, had stolen away together for a chat.

“WOOLCHURCH.--To see Dei gratia writ on the throne,

And the king’s wicked life says God there is none.

CHARING.--That he should be styled Defender of the Faith

Who believes not a word what the Word of God saith.

WOOLCHURCH.--That the Duke should turn Papist and that church defy

For which his own father a martyr did die.

CHARING.--Tho’ he changed his religion, I hope he’s so civil

Not to think his own father has gone to the devil.”

Upon the brazen horse being asked his opinion of the Duke of York, it

replies with terrible truth and force:--

“The same that the frogs had of Jupiter’s stork.

With the Turk in his head and the Pope in his heart,

Father Patrick’s disciple will make England smart.

If e’er he be king, I know Britain’s doom:

We must all to the stake or be converts to Rome.

Ah! Tudor! ah! Tudor! of Stuarts enough.

None ever reigned like old Bess in her ruff.

* * * * *

WOOLCHURCH.--But can’st thou devise when kings will be mended?

CHARING.--When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended.”

In April 1810 the sword, buckles, and straps fell from the statue.[385]

The king’s sword was stolen on the day on which Queen Victoria went to

open the Royal Exchange.

London has its local traditions as well as the smallest village. There is

a foolish story that the sculptor of Charles I. and his steed committed

suicide in vexation at having forgotten to put a girth to the horse. The

myth has arisen from the supposition of there being no girth, and

retailers of such stories, Mr. Leigh Hunt included, did not take the

trouble to ascertain whether there was or was not a girth. Unfortunately

for the story there is a girth, and it is clearly visible.

The pedestal, by some assigned to Marshal, by others to Grinling Gibbons,

the great wood-carver, and a Dutchman by birth, is seventeen feet high,

and is enriched with the arms of England, trophies of armour, cupids, and

palm-branches. It is erected in the centre of a circular area, thirty feet

in diameter, raised one step from the roadway, and enclosed with iron

rails. The lion and unicorn are much mutilated, and the trophies are

honeycombed and corroded by the weather. It has not been generally

observed that on the south side of the pedestal two weeping children

support a crown of thorns, and that the same emblem is repeated on the

opposite side, below the royal arms.

In 1727 (1st George II.) that infamous rogue, Edmund Curll, the publisher

of all the filth and slander of his age, stood in the pillory at Charing

Cross for printing a vile work called _Venus in a Cloyster_. He was not,

however, pelted or ill-used; for, with the usual lying and cunning of his

reptile nature, he had circulated printed papers telling the people that

he stood there for daring to vindicate the memory of Queen Anne. The mob

allowed no one to touch him; and when he was taken down they carried him

off in triumph to a neighbouring tavern.[386]

Archenholz, an observant Prussian officer who was in England in 1784,

tells a curious anecdote of the statue at Charing Cross. During the war in

which General Braddock was defeated by the French in America, about the

time when Minorca was in the enemy’s hands, and poor Byng had just fallen

a victim to popular fury, an unhappy Spaniard, who did not know a word of

English, and had just arrived in England, was surrounded by a mob near

Whitehall, who took him by his dress for a French spy. One of the rabble

instantly proposed to mount him on the king’s horse. The idea was adopted.

A ladder was brought, and the miserable Spaniard was forced upon its back,

to be loaded with insults and pelted with mud. Luckily for the stranger,

at that moment a cabinet minister happening to pass by, stopped to inquire

the cause of the crowd. On addressing the man in French he discovered the

mistake, and informed the mob. They instantly helped the man down, and the

minister, taking him in his coach to the Spanish ambassador, apologised in

the name of the nation for a mistake that might have been fatal.[387]

In June 1731 Japhet Crook, _alias_ Sir Peter Stranger, who had been found

guilty of forging the writings to an estate, was sentenced to imprisonment

for life.[388] He was condemned to stand for one hour in the pillory at

Charing Cross. He was then seated in an elbow-chair; the common hangman

cut off both his ears with an incision knife, and then delivered them to

Mr. Watson, a sheriff’s officer. He also slit both Crook’s nostrils with a

pair of scissors, and seared them with a hot iron, pursuant to the

sentence. A surgeon attended on the pillory and instantly applied styptics

to prevent the effusion of blood. The man bore the operations with

undaunted courage. He laughed on the pillory, and denied the fact to the

last. He was then removed to the Ship Tavern at Charing Cross, and thence

taken back to the King’s Bench prison, to be confined there for life.[389]

This Crook had forged the conveyance, to himself, of an estate, upon which

he took up several thousand pounds. He was at the same time sued in

Chancery for having fraudulently obtained a will and wrongfully gained an

estate. In spite of losing his ears, he enjoyed the ill-gained money in

prison till the day of his death, and then quietly left it to his

executor. He is mentioned by Pope in his 3d epistle, written in 1732.

Talking of riches, he says--

“What can they give?--to dying Hopkins heirs?

To Chartres vigour? Japhet nose and ears?”[390]

It was in this essay that, having been accused of attacking the Duke of

Chandos, Pope first began to attack vices instead of follies, and, in

order to prevent mistakes, boldly to publish the names of the malefactors

whom he gibbeted.

Crook had been a brewer on Tower Hill. The 2d George II., c. 25, made

forgery a felony; and the first sufferer under the new law was Richard

Cooper, a Stepney victualler, who was hanged at Tyburn, in June 1731, six

days only after the older and luckier thief had stood in the pillory.

In 1763 Parsons, the parish-clerk of St. Sepulchre’s, and the impudent

contriver of the “Cock Lane ghost” deception, mounted here to the same bad

eminence. Parsons’s child, a cunning little girl of twelve years, had

contrived to tap on her bed in a way that served to convey what were

supposed to be supernatural messages. It proved to be a plot devised by

Parsons out of malice against a gentleman of Norfolk who had sued him for

a debt. This gentleman was a widower, who had taken his wife’s sister as

his mistress--a marriage with her being forbidden by law--and had brought

her to lodge with Parsons, from whence he had removed her to other

lodgings, where she had died suddenly of small-pox. The object of Parsons

was to obtain the ghost’s declaration that she had been poisoned by

Parsons’s creditor. The rascal was set three times in the pillory and

imprisoned for a year in the King’s Bench. The people, however, singularly

enough, did not pelt the impudent rogue, but actually collected money for

him.

There is a rare sheet-print of Charing Cross by Sutton Nicholls, in the

reign of Queen Anne. It shows about forty small square stone posts

surrounding the pedestal of the statue. The spot seems to have been a

favourite standing-place for hackney coaches and sedan chairs. Every house

has a long stepping-stone for horsemen at a regulated distance from the

front.

In 1737 Hogarth published his four prints of the “Times of the Day.”[391]

The scene of _Night_ is laid at Charing Cross; it is an

illumination-night. Some drunken Freemasons and the Salisbury “High-flyer”

coach upset over a street bonfire near the Rummer Tavern, fill up the

picture, which is curious as showing the roadway much narrower than it is

now, and impeded with projecting signs above and bulkheads below.

The place is still further immortalised in the old song--

“I cry my matches by Charing Cross,

Where sits a black man on a black horse.”

In a sixpenny book for children, published about 1756, the absurd figure

of King George impaled on the top of Bloomsbury Church is contrasted with

that of King Charles at the Cross.

“No longer stand staring,

My friend, at Cross Charing,

Amidst such a number of people;

For a man on a horse

Is a matter of course,

But look! here’s a king on a steeple.”[392]

It was at Robinson’s coffee-house, at Charing Cross, that that clever

scamp, vigorous versifier, and, as I think, great impostor, Richard

Savage, stabbed to death a Mr. Sinclair in a drunken brawl. Savage had

come up from Richmond to settle a claim for lodgings, when, meeting two

friends, he spent the night in drinking, till it was too late to get a

bed. As the three revellers passed Robinson’s, a place of no very good

name, they saw a light, knocked at the door, and were admitted. It was a

cold, raw, November night; and hearing that the company in the parlour

were about to leave, and that there was a fire there, they pushed in and

kicked down the table. A quarrel ensued, swords were drawn, and Mr.

Sinclair received a mortal wound. The three brawlers then fled, and were

discovered lurking in a back-court by the soldiers who came to stop the

fray. The three men were taken to the Gate House at Westminster, and the

next morning to Newgate. That cruel and bullying judge, Page, hounded on

the jury at the trial in the following violent summing up:--“Gentlemen of

the jury, you are to consider that Mr. Savage is a very great man, a much

greater man than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he wears very fine

clothes, much finer than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he has

abundance of money in his pocket, much more money than you or I, gentlemen

of the jury; but, gentlemen of the jury, is it not a very hard case,

gentlemen of the jury, that Mr. Savage should therefore kill you or me,

gentlemen of the jury?”

The verdict was of course “Guilty,” for these homicides during tavern

brawls had become frightfully common, and quiet citizens were never sure

of their lives. Sentence of death was recorded against him. Eventually a

lady at court interceded for the poet, who escaped with six months’

imprisonment in Newgate, which he certainly well deserved.

There is every reason to suppose from the researches of Mr. W. Moy Thomas,

that Savage was an impostor. He claimed to be the illegitimate son of the

Countess of Macclesfield by Lord Rivers. The lady had an illegitimate

child born in Fox Court, Gray’s Inn Lane in 1697; but this child, there

is reason to think, died in 1698.[393] Savage imposed on Dr. Johnson and

other friends with stories of being placed at school and apprenticed to a

shoemaker in Holborn by his countess mother, until among his nurse’s old

letters he one day accidentally discovered the secret of his birth. There

is no proof at all of his being persecuted by the countess, whose life he

rendered miserable by insults, lampoons, abuse, slander, and begging

letters.

Pope has embalmed Page in the _Dunciad_ just as a scorpion is preserved in

a spirit-bottle:--

“Morality by her false guardians drawn,

Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn,

Gasps as they straighten at each end the cord,

And dies when Dulness gives her _Page_ the word.”[394]

And again, with equal bitterness and truth, in his _Imitations of

Horace_:--

“Slander or poison dread from Delia’s rage,

Hard words or hanging if your judge be Page.”

This “hanging judge,” who enjoyed his ermine and his infamy till he was

eighty, first obtained preferment by writing political pamphlets. He was

made a Baron of the Exchequer in 1718, a Justice of the Common Pleas in

1726, and in 1727 transferred to the Court of King’s Bench. Page was so

illiterate that he commenced one of his charges to the grand jury of

Middlesex with this remarkable statement: “I dare venture to affirm,

gentlemen, on my own knowledge, that England never was so happy, both _at

home and abroad_, as it now is.” Horace Walpole mentions that when Crowle,

the punning lawyer, was once entering an assize court, some one asked him

if Judge Page was not “just behind.” Crowle replied, “I don’t know, but I

am sure he never was just before.”[395]

The various mews, now stables, about London, derive their name from the

enclosure where falcons in the Middle Ages were kept to mew (_mutare_,

Minshew) their feathers. The King’s Mews stood on the site of the present

Trafalgar Square. In the 13th Edward II. John de la Becke had the custody

of the Mews “apud Charing, juxta Westminster.” In the 10th Edward III.

John de St. Albans succeeded Becke. In Richard II.’s time the office of

king’s falconer, a post of importance, was held by Sir Simon Burley, who

was constable of the castles of Windsor, Wigmore, and Guilford, and also

of the royal manor of Kennington. This Sir Simon had been selected by the

Black Prince as guardian of Richard II., and he also negotiated his

marriage. One of the complaints of Wat Tyler and his party was that he had

thrown a burgher of Gravesend into Rochester Castle. The Duke of

Gloucester had him executed in 1388, in spite of Richard’s queen praying

upon her knees for his life. At the end of this reign or in the first year

of Henry IV., the poet Chaucer was clerk of the king’s works and also of

the Mews at Charing; and here, from his fluttering, angry little feathered

subjects, he must have drawn many of those allusions to the brave sport of

hawking to be found in the immortal _Canterbury Tales_.

The falconry continued at Charing till 1534 (26th Henry VIII.), when the

king’s fine stabling, with many horses and a great store of hay, being

destroyed by fire, the Mews was rebuilt and turned into royal stables, in

the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary.[396]

M. St. Antoine, the riding-master, whose portrait Vandyke painted,

performed his caracoles and demi-tours at the Mews. Here Cromwell

imprisoned Lieut.-Colonel George Joyce, who, when plain cornet, had

arrested the king at Holmby. An angry little Puritan pamphlet of four

pages, published in 1659, gives an account of Cromwell’s troubles with the

fractious Joyce, and how he had resolved to cashier him and destroy his

estate.

The colonel was carried by musqueteers to the common Dutch prison at the

Mews, and seems to have been much tormented by Cavalier vermin. There he

remained ten days, and was then removed to another close room, where he

fell sick from the “evil smells,” and remained so for ten weeks, refusing

all the time to lay down his commission, declaring that he had been

unworthily dealt with, and that all that had been sworn against him was

false.

There was at the Mews gate a celebrated old book shop, opened in 1750 by

Mr. Thomas Payne, who kept it alive for forty years. It was the rendezvous

of all noblemen and scholars who sought rare books. It may be remarked, by

the way, that booksellers’ shops have always been the haunts of wits and

poets. Dodsley, the ex-footman, gathered round him the wisest men of his

age, as Tonson had also done before him; while, as for John Murray’s back

parlour, it was in Byron’s and Moore’s days a very temple of the Muses.

In Charles II.’s time the famous but ugly horse Rowley lived at the Mews,

and gave a nickname to his swarthy royal master.

In 1732 that impudent charlatan, Kent, rebuilt the Mews, which was only

remarkable after that for sheltering for a time Mr. Cross’s menagerie,

when first removed from Exeter Change in 1829.

The National Gallery, one of the poorest buildings in London (which is

saying a good deal), was built between 1832 and 1838, from the designs of

a certain unfortunate Mr. Wilkins, R.A. It is not often that Fortune is so

malicious as to give an inferior artist such ample room to show his

inability. The vote for founding the Gallery passed in Parliament in April

1824. The columns of the portico were part of the screen of Carlton

House--interesting memorials of a debasing regency, and, if possible, of a

worse reign. The site has been called “the finest in Europe:” it is,

however, a fine site, which is more than can be said of the building that

covers it. The front is 500 feet long. In the centre is a portico, on

stilts, with eight Corinthian columns approached by a double flight of

steps; a low squat dome not much larger than a washing basin; and two

pepper-castor turrets that crown the eyesore of London. Though on high

ground--very high ground for a rather flat city--the architect, pinched

for money, contrived to make the building lower than the grand portico of

St. Martin’s Church, and even than the houses of Suffolk Place.

One of the last occasions on which William IV. appeared in public was in

1837, before the opening of the first Academy Exhibition here in May. The

good-natured king is said to have suggested calling the square

“Trafalgar,” and erecting a Nelson monument. A subscription was opened,

and the Duke of Buccleuch was appointed chairman.

The square was commenced in 1829, but was not completed till after 1849.

The Nelson column was begun in 1837, and the statue set up in November

1843. Three premiums were offered for the three best designs, and Mr.

Railton carried off the palm. Upwards of £20,480 were subscribed, and,

£12,000 it was thought would be required to complete the monument.[397] It

was originally intended to expend only £30,000 upon the whole.[398] Alas

for estimates so sanguine, so fallacious! the granite work alone cost

upwards of £10,000.

Mr. Railton chose a column, after mature reflection; although triumphal

columns are bad art, and the invention of a barbarous people and a corrupt

age.[399] He rejected a temple, as too expensive and too much in the way;

a group of figures he condemned as not visible at a distance; he finally

chose a Corinthian column as new, as harmonious, and as uniting the

labours of sculptor and architect.

The column, with its base and pedestal, measures 193 feet. The fluted

shaft has a torus of oak leaves. The capital is copied from the fine

example of Mars Ultor at Rome; from it rises a circular pedestal wreathed

with laurel, and surmounted by a statue of Nelson, eighteen feet high, and

formed of two blocks of stone from the Granton quarry. The great pedestal

is adorned with four bassi-relievi, eighteen feet square each,

representing four of Nelson’s great victories. It is difficult to say

which is tamest of the four. That of “Trafalgar” is by Mr. Carew; the

“Nile,” by Mr. Woodington; “St. Vincent,” by Mr. Watson; and “Copenhagen,”

by Mr. Ternouth.

The pedestal is raised on a flight of fifteen steps, at the angles of

which are placed couchant lions from the designs of Sir Edwin Landseer.

They are forged out of French cannon. The capital is of the same costly

material, which, considering the brave English blood it has cost, should

have been painted crimson. Many years passed by after the commission was

given to Sir Edwin Landseer before they were placed _in situ_.

The cocked hat on Mr. Baily’s statue has been somewhat unjustly ridiculed,

and so has the coil of rope or pigtail supporting the hero.

The bronze equestrian statue of George IV., at the north-east end of the

square, is by Chantrey. It was ordered by the king in 1829. The price was

to be 9000 guineas, but the worthy monarch never paid the sculptor more

than a third of that sum; the rest was given by the Woods and Forests out

of the national taxes, and the third instalment in 1843, after Chantrey’s

death, by the Lords of the Treasury. It is a sprightly and clever statue,

but of no great merit. It should have been paid for by William IV., just

as the Nelson statue should have been erected by Parliament, the honour

being one due to Nelson from an ungrateful nation. This statue of George

IV. was originally intended to crown the arch in front of Buckingham

Palace--an arch that cost £80,000, and that was hung with gates that cost

3000 guineas. The so-called Chartist riots of 1848 were commenced by boys

destroying the hoarding round the base of the Nelson monument.

The fountains in the centre of the Square are of Peterhead granite, and

were made at Aberdeen. They are mean, despicable, and unworthy of the

noble position which they occupy. Some years ago there was a fuss about an

Artesian well that was to feed these stone punch-bowls with inexhaustible

gushes of silvery water. This supply has dwindled down to a sort of

overflow of a ginger-beer bottle once a day. I blush when I take a

foreigner to see Trafalgar Square, with its squat domes, its mean statues,

its tame bassi-relievi, and its disgraceful fountains.

I will not trust myself to criticise the statues of Napier and Havelock.

The figures are poor, and unworthy of the fiery soldier and the Christian

hero they misrepresent. They should be in the Abbey. Why has the Abbey

grown, like the Court, less receptive than ever? What passport is there

into the Abbey, where such strange people sleep, if the conquest of Scinde

and the relief of Lucknow will not take a body there.

But to return to the National Gallery. Mr. G. Agar-Ellis, afterwards Lord

Dover, first proposed a National Gallery in Parliament in 1824; Government

having previously purchased thirty-eight pictures from Mr. Angerstein for

£57,000. This collection included “The Raising of Lazarus,” by Del Piombo.

It is supposed that Michael Angelo, jealous of Raphael’s

“Transfiguration,” helped Sebastian in the drawing of his cartoon, which

was to be a companion picture for Narbonne Cathedral. It was purchased

from the Orleans Gallery for 3500 guineas.[400]

In 1825 some pictures were purchased for the Gallery from Mr. Hamlet.

These included the “Bacchus and Ariadne” of Titian, for £5000. This golden

picture (extolled by Vasari) was painted about 1514 for the Duke of

Ferrara. Titian was then in the full vigour of his thirty-seventh

year.[401]

In the same year “La Vierge au Panier” of Correggio was purchased from Mr.

Nieuwenhuy, a picture-dealer, for £3800. It is a late picture, and hurt in

cleaning. It was one of the gems of the Madrid Gallery.

In 1826, Sir George Beaumont presented sixteen pictures, valued at 7500

guineas. These included one of the finest landscapes of Rubens, “The

Chateau,” which originally cost £1500, and Wilkie’s _chef-d’œuvre_, that

fine Raphaelesque composition, “The Blind Fiddler.”

In 1834 the Rev. William Holwell Carr left the nation thirty-five

pictures, including fine specimens of the Caracci, Titian, Luini,

Garofalo, Claude, Poussin, and Rubens.

Another important donation was that of the great “Peace and War,” bought

for £3000 by the Marquis of Stafford, and given to the nation. It was

originally presented to Charles I., by Rubens, who gave unto the king not

as a painter but as almost a king.

The British Institution also gave three esteemed pictures by Reynolds,

Gainsborough, and West, and a fine Parmigiano.

But the greatest addition to the collection was made in 1834, when

£11,500[402] were given for the two great Correggios, the “Ecce Homo” and

the “Education of Cupid,” from the Marquis of Londonderry’s collection. To

the “Ecce Homo” Pungileoni assigns the date 1520, when the great master

was only twenty-six. It once belonged to Murat. The “Education of Cupid,”

which once belonged to Charles I., has been a good deal retouched.[403]

In 1836 King William IV. presented to the gallery six pictures; in 1837

Colonel Harvey Ollney gave seventeen; in 1838 Lord Farnborough bequeathed

fifteen, and R. Simmons, Esq., fourteen. The last pictures were chiefly of

the Netherlands school. In 1854 the nation possessed two hundred and

sixteen pictures, and of these seventy only had been purchased.

In 1857 that greatest of all landscape-painters, Joseph M. W. Turner, left

the nation 362 oil-paintings, and about 19,000 sketches (including 1757

water-colour drawings of value). In his will this eccentric man

particularly desired that two of his pictures--a Dutch coast-scene and

“Dido Building Carthage”--should be hung between Claude’s “Sea-Port” and

“Mill.”

The will was disputed, and the engravings and the money, all but £20,000,

went to the next of kin.

The diploma pictures (that formerly were annually exhibited to the public)

are of great interest. They were given by various members of the Royal

Academy at their elections. That of the parsimonious Wilkie--“Boys digging

for Rats” (fine as Teniers)--is remarkably small. There is a very fine

graceful portrait of Sir William Chambers, the architect, by Reynolds, and

one still more robust and glowing of Sir Joshua by himself. He is in his

doctor’s robes. There is a splendid but rather pale Etty--“A Satyr

surprising a Nymph;” and a fine vigorous picture by Briggs, of “Blood

stealing the Crown.”

In 1849, Robert Vernon, Esq., nobly left the nation one hundred and

sixty-two fine examples of the English school. These are now removed to

the Kensington Museum.

Of the pictures given by Turner to the nation, the masterpieces are the

“Téméraire” and the “Escape of Ulysses,”--both triumphs of colour and

imagination. The one is a scene from the _Odyssey_; the other represents

an old man-of-war being towed to its last berth--a scene witnessed by the

artist himself while boating near Greenwich. The works of Turner may be

divided very fairly into three eras: those in which he imitated the Dutch

landscape-painters, the period when he copied idealised Nature, and the

time when he resorted from eccentricity or indifference to reckless

experiments in colour and effect--most of them quite unworthy of his

genius. Not in drawing the figure, but in aërial perspective, did Turner

excel. The great portfolios of drawings that he left the nation show with

what untiring and laborious industry he toiled. In habits sordid and mean,

in tastes low and debased, this great genius, the son of a humble

hairdresser in Maiden Lane, succeeded in attaining an excellence in

landscape, fitful and unequal it is true, but often rising to poetic

regions unknown to Claude, Ruysdael, Vandervelde, Salvator, or Backhuysen.

Ever since the modern pictures were removed to South Kensington, there has

been a constant effort to transfer the ancient pictures and to abandon the

National Gallery to the Royal Academy--a rich society, making £5000 or

£6000 a year, which its members cannot spend, and which tenants the

national building only by permission. To remove the pictures from the

centre of London is to remove them from those who cannot go far to see

them, to the neighbourhood of rich people who do not need their teaching,

and who have picture-galleries of their own.

In 1859, twenty pictures were bequeathed to the gallery by Mr. Jacob Bell,

and a few years later twenty-two others were added as a gift by Her

Majesty. The last great addition is the presentation of ninety-four

pictures by Mr. Wynn Ellis. But in spite of all these treasures, acquired

by purchase or by bequest, the nation cannot boast that its gallery does

justice to our taste or national wealth. It is still lamentably deficient

in more than one department; and there are not wanting those who assert

that the Royal Academy stifles art rather than promotes it. It is regarded

by the outside world as a close-borough, in which the interests of the

public and of students are postponed to those of its Associates and

Members, the A.R.A.’s and R.A.’s of the age.

The building in which the collection is deposited was erected at the

national expense, from the designs of Mr. William Wilkins, R.A., and

opened to the public in 1838. It was considerably altered and enlarged in

1860, and in 1869 five other rooms were added by the surrender to the

Trustees of those hitherto appropriated by the Royal Academy. In 1876 a

new wing was added, after a design by Mr. E. M. Barry, R.A., and the whole

collection is now under one roof.

The Royal College of Physicians is a large classic building at the

north-west corner of Trafalgar Square. It was built in 1823 from the

designs of Sir Robert Smirke. The college was founded in 1518 by Dr.

Linacre, the successor to Shakspeare’s Dr. Butts, and physician to Henry

VII. From Knightrider Street the doctors moved to Amen Corner, and thence

to Warwick Lane, between Newgate Street and Paternoster Row. The number of

fellows, originally thirty, is now as unlimited as the “dira cohors” of

diseases that the college has to encounter.

In the gallery above the library there are seven preparations made by the

celebrated Harvey when at Padua--“learned Padua.” There are also some

excellent portraits--Harvey, by Jansen; Sir Thomas Browne, the author of

_Religio Medici_; Sir Theodore Mayerne, the physician of James I.; Sir

Edmund King, who, on his own responsibility, bled Charles II. during a

fit; Dr. Sydenham, by Mary Beale; Doctor Radcliffe, William III.’s doctor,

by Kneller; Sir Hans Sloane, the founder of the British Museum, by

Richardson, whom Hogarth rather unjustly ridiculed; honest Garth (of the

“Dispensary”), by Kneller; Dr. Freind, Dr. Mead, Dr. Warren (by

Gainsborough); William Hunter, and Dr. Heberden.

There are also some valuable and interesting busts--George IV., by

Chantrey (a _chef-d’œuvre_); Dr. Mead, by the vivacious Roubilliac; Dr.

Sydenham, by Wilton; Harvey, by Scheemakers; Dr. Baillie, by Chantrey,

from a model by Nollekens; Dr. Babington, by poor Behnes. One of the

treasures of the place is Dr. Radcliffe’s gold-headed cane, which was

successively carried by Drs. Mead, Askew, Pitcairn, and Baillie. There is

also a portrait-picture by Zoffany of Hunter delivering a lecture on

anatomy to the Royal Academy. Any fellow can give an order to see this

hoarded collection, which should be thrown open to the public on certain

days. It is selfish and utterly wanting in public spirit to keep such

treasures in the dark.

The wits buzzed about Charing Cross between 1680 and 1730 as thick as bees

round May flowers. In this district, between those years, stood “The

Elephant,” “The Sugarloaf,” “The Old Man’s Coffee-house,” “The Old Vine,”

“The Three Flower de Luces,” “The British Coffee-house,” “The Young Man’s

Coffee-house,” and “The Three Queens.”

There is an erroneous tradition that Cromwell had a house on the site of

Drummond’s bank. He really lived farther south, in King Street. When the

bank was built, the houses were set back full forty yards more to the

west, upon an open square place called “Cromwell’s Yard.”[405]

Drummond’s is said to have gained its fame by advancing money secretly to

the Pretender. Upon this being known, the Court withdrew all their

deposits. The result was that the Scotch Tory noblemen rallied round the

house and brought in so much money that the firm soon became leading

bankers, dividing the West End custom with Messrs. Coutts.

Craig’s Court, on the east side of Charing Cross, was built in 1702. It is

generally supposed to have been named after the father of Mr. Secretary

Craggs, the friend of Pope and Addison: Mr. Cunningham, an excellent and

reliable authority, says that as early as the year 1658 there was a James

Cragg living on the “water side,” in the Charing Cross division of St.

Martin’s-in-the-Fields. The Sun Fire-office was established in this court

in 1726; and here is Cox and Greenwood’s, the largest army agency office

in Great Britain.

Locket’s, the famous ordinary, so called from Adam Locket, the landlord in

1674, stood on the site of Drummond’s bank. An Edward Locket succeeded to

him in 1688, and remained till 1702.[406] In 1693 the second Locket took

the Bowling-green House at Putney Heath. That fair, slender, genteel Sir

George Etherege, whom Rochester praises for “fancy, sense, judgment, and

wit,” frequented Locket’s, and displayed there his courtly foppery, which

served as a model for his own Dorimant, and that prince and patriarch of

fops Sir Fopling Flutter. Sir George was always gentle and courtly, and

was compared in this to Sedley.

He once got into a violent passion at the ordinary, and abused the

“drawers” for some neglect. This brought in Mrs. Locket, hot and fuming.

“We are so provoked,” said Sir George, “that even I could find it in my

heart to pull the nosegay out of your bosom, and fling the flowers in your

face.” This mild and courteous threat turned his friends’ anger into a

general laugh.

Sir George having run up a long score at Locket’s, added to the injury by

ceasing to frequent the house. Mrs. Locket began to dun and threaten him.

He sent word back by the messenger that he would kiss her if she stirred a

step in it. When Mrs. Locket heard this, she bridled up, called for her

hood and scarf, and told her anxious husband that she’d see if there was

any fellow alive who had the impudence! “Prythee, my dear, don’t be so

rash,” said her milder husband; “you don’t know what a man may do in his

passion.”[407]

Wycherly, that favourite of Charles II. till he married his titled wife,

writes in one of his plays (1675), “Why, thou art as shy of my kindness as

a Lombard Street alderman of a courtier’s civility at Locket’s.”[408]

Shadwell too, Dryden’s surly and clever foe, says (1691), “I’ll answer you

in a couple of brimmers of claret at Locket’s at dinner, where I have

bespoke an admirable good one.”[409]

A poet of 1697 describes the sparks, dressed by noon hurrying to the Mall,

and from thence to Locket’s.[410] Prior proposes to dine at a crown a head

on ragouts washed down with champagne; then to go to court; and lastly he

says[411]--

“With evening wheels we’ll drive about the Park,

Finish at Locket’s, and reel home i’ the dark.”

In 1708, Vanbrugh makes Lord Foppington doubtful whether he shall return

to dinner, as the noble peer says--“As Gad shall judge me I can’t tell,

for ’tis possible I may dine with some of our House at Lacket’s.”[412]

And in the same play the very energetic nobleman remarks--“From thence

(the Park) I go to dinner at Lacket’s, where you are so nicely and

delicately served that, stap my vitals! they shall compose you a dish no

bigger than a saucer shall come to fifty shillings. Between eating my

dinner and washing my mouth, ladies, I spend my time till I go to the

play.”

In 1709 the epicurean and ill-fated Dr. King, talking of the changes in

St. James’s Park, says--

“For Locket’s stands where gardens once did spring,

And wild ducks quack where grasshoppers did sing.”[413]

Tom Brown also mentions Locket’s, for he writes--“We as naturally went

from Mann’s Coffee-house to the Parade as a coachman drives from Locket’s

to the play-house.”

Prior, the poet, when his father the joiner died, was taken care of by his

uncle, who kept the Rummer Tavern at the back of No. 14 Charing Cross, two

doors from Locket’s. It was a well-frequented house, and in 1685 the

annual feast of the nobility and gentry of St. Martin’s parish was held

there. Prior was sent by the honest vintner to study under the great Dr.

Busby at Westminster: and in a window-seat at the Rummer the future poet

and diplomatist was found reading Horace, according to Bishop Burnet, by

the witty Earl of Dorset, who is said to have educated him. Prior, in the

dedication of his poems to the earl’s son, proves his patron to have been

a paragon. Waller and Sprat consulted Dorset about their writings. Dryden,

Congreve, and Addison praised him. He made the court read _Hudibras_, the

town praise Wycherly’s “Plain Dealer,” and Buckingham delay his

“Rehearsal” till he knew his opinion. Pope imitated his “Dorinda,” and

King Charles took his advice upon Lely’s portraits.

One of Prior’s gayest and pleasantest poems seems to prove, however, that

Fleetwood Shepherd was a more essential patron than even the earl. The

poet writes--

“Now, as you took me up when little,

Gave me my learning and my vittle,

Asked for me from my lord things fitting,

Kind as I’d been your own begetting,

Confirm what formerly you’ve given,

Nor leave me now at six and seven,

As Sunderland has left Mun Stephen.”

And again, still more gaily--

“My uncle, rest his soul! when living,

Might have contrived me ways of thriving,

Taught me with cider to replenish

My vats or ebbing tide of Rhenish;

So when for hock I drew pricked white-wine,

Swear’t had the flavour, and was right wine;

Or sent me with ten pounds to Furni-

val’s Inn, to some good rogue attorney,

Where now, by forging deeds and cheating,

I’d found some handsome ways of getting.

All this you made me quit to follow

That sneaking, whey-faced god, Apollo;

Sent me among a fiddling crew

Of folks I’d neither seen nor knew,

Calliope and God knows who,

I add no more invectives to it:

You spoiled the youth to make a poet.”

That rascally housebreaker, Jack Sheppard, made his first step towards the

gallows by the robbery of two silver spoons at the Rummer Tavern. This

young rogue, whose deeds Mr. Ainsworth has so mischievously recorded, was

born in 1701, and ended his short career at Tyburn in 1724.[414] The

Rummer Tavern is introduced by Hogarth into his engraving of “Night.” The

business was removed to the water side of Charing Cross in 1710, and the

new house burnt down in 1750. In 1688, Samuel Prior offered ten guineas

reward for the discovery of some persons who had accused him of clipping

coin.[415]

Mrs. Centlivre, whom Pope pilloried in the _Dunciad_[416] was the daughter

of a Lincolnshire gentleman, who, being a Nonconformist, fled to Ireland

at the Restoration to escape persecution. Being left an orphan at the age

of twelve, she travelled to London on foot to seek her fortune. In her

sixteenth year she married a nephew of Sir Stephen Fox, who, however, did

not live more than a twelvemonth after. She afterwards wedded an officer

named Carrol, who was killed in a duel soon after their marriage. Left a

second time a widow, she then took to dramatic writing for a subsistence,

and from 1700 to 1705 produced six comedies, to one of which--“The

Gamester”--the poet Rowe contributed a prologue. She next tried the stage;

and while performing Alexander the Great, at Windsor, won the heart of Mr.

Centlivre, “a Yeoman of the Mouth,” or principal cook to Queen Anne, who

married her. She lived happily with her husband for eighteen years, and

wrote some good, bustling, but licentious plays. “The Busybody,” and

“Wonder; a Woman keeps a Secret,” act well.

In May, 1716, Mrs. Centlivre visited her native town of Holbeach for her

health, and on King George’s birthday[417] invited all the pauper widows

of the place to a tavern supper. The windows were illuminated, the

church-bells were set ringing, there were musicians playing in the room,

the old women danced, and most probably got drunk, the enthusiastic

loyalist making them all fall on their knees and drink the healths of the

royal family, the Duke of Marlborough, Mr. Walpole, the Duke of Argyle,

General Cadogan, etc. etc. She ended the feast by sending the ringers a

copy of stirring verses denouncing the Jacobites;--

“Disdain the artifice they use

To bring in mass and wooden shoes

With transubstantiation:

Remember James the Second’s reign,

When glorious William broke the chain

Rome had put on this nation.”

This clever but not too virtuous woman died at her house in Buckingham

Court, Spring Gardens, December 1, 1723.[418]

Pope’s dislike to Mrs. Centlivre is best explained by one of his own notes

to the _Dunciad_:--“She (Mrs. C.) wrote many plays and a song before she

was seven years old: she also wrote a ballad against Mr. Pope’s _Homer_

before he began it.” And why should not an authoress have expressed her

opinion of Mr. Pope’s inability to translate Homer?

Mrs. Centlivre is rather bitterly treated by Leigh Hunt, who says that

she, “without doubt, wrote the most entertaining dramas of intrigue, with

a genius infinitely greater, and a modesty infinitely less, than that of

her sex in general; and she delighted, whenever she could not be obscene,

to be improbable.”[419]

Milton lodged at one Thomson’s, next door to the Bull-head Tavern at

Charing Cross, close to the opening to the Spring Gardens, during the time

he was writing his book _Joannis Philippi Angli Defensio_.[420]

The Golden Cross ran up beside the King’s Mews a little east of its

present site; it was the “Bull and Mouth” of the West End till railways

drew travellers from the old roads; it then became a railway parcel

office. Poor reckless Dr. Maginn wrote a ballad lamenting the change, in

which he mourned the Mews Gate public-house, Tom Bish and his lotteries,

and the barrack-yard. He curses Nash and Wyatville, and then bursts

forth--

“No more I’ll eat the juicy steak

Within its boxes pent,

When in the mail my place I take,

For Bath or Brighton bent.

“No more the coaches I shall see

Come trundling from the yard,

Nor hear the horn blown cheerily

By brandy-sipping guard.

King Charles, I think, must sorrow sore,

E’en were he made of stone,

When left by all his friends of yore

(Like Tom Moore’s rose) alone.

“No wonder the triumphant Turk

O’er Missolonghi treads,

Roasts bishops, and in bloody work

Snips off some thousand heads!

No wonder that the Crescent gains,

When we the fact can’t gloss,

That we ourselves are at such pains

To trample down the Cross!

“Oh! London won’t be London long,

For ’twill be all pulled down,

And I shall sing a funeral song

O’er that time-honoured town.

One parting curse I here shall make,

And then lay down my quill,

Hoping Old Nick himself may take

Both Nash and Wyatville.”[421]

Till late in the last century a lofty straddling sign-post and a long

water-trough, just such as still adorn country towns, stood before this

inn.[422]

Charing Cross Hospital, one of those great charities that atone for so

many of the sins of London, relieved, in the year 1878, 15,854 necessitous

persons, including more than 1000 cases of severe accident, while above

1500 persons were admitted on the recommendation of governors and

subscribers.[423] Surely, if anything can redeem our national vices, our

selfishness, our commercial dishonesty, our unjust wars, and our

unrighteous conquests, it must be such vast charities as these.

One authority represents that great scholar and divine, Dr. Isaac Barrow,

the friend of Newton, as having died “in mean lodgings at a saddler’s near

Charing Cross, an old, low, ill-built house, which he had used for many

years.” Barrow was then Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Roger North,

however, says that he died of an overdose of opium, and “ended his days in

London in a prebendary’s house that had a little stair to it out of the

cloisters, which made him call it a _man’s nest_.”[424] Barrow died in

1677, and was buried in the Abbey. Rhodes, the bookseller and actor, lived

at the Ship at Charing Cross. He had been wardrobe-keeper at the

Blackfriars Theatre; and in 1659 he reopened the Cockpit Theatre in Drury

Lane.

On September 7, 1650, as that dull, learned man, Bulstrode Whitelock, one

of the Commissioners for the Great Seal, was going in his coach towards

Chelsea, a messenger from Scotland stopped him about Charing Cross, and

cried, “Oh, my lord, God hath appeared gloriously to us in Scotland; a

glorious day, my lord, at Dunbar in Scotland.” “I asked him,” says

Whitelock, “how it was. He said that the General had routed all the Scots

army, but that he could not stay to tell me the particulars, being in

haste to go to the House.”[425]

Lord Dartmouth relates a story in Burnet of Sir Edward Seymour the

Speaker’s coach breaking down at Charing Cross, in Charles II.’s time. He

instantly, with proud coolness, ordered the beadles to stop the next

gentleman’s coach that passed and bring it to him. The expelled gentleman

was naturally both surprised and angry; but Sir Edward gravely assured him

that it was far more proper for him than for the Speaker of the House of

Commons to walk the streets, and accordingly left him to do so without any

further apology.[426]

Horace Walpole was a diligent attender at the State Trials of 1746. The

day “poor brave old” Balmerino retracted his plea, asked pardon, and

desired the Peers to intercede for mercy, Walpole tells us that his

lordship stopped the coach at Charing Cross as he returned to the Tower,

carelessly to buy “honey-blobs,” as the Scotch call gooseberries.

But we must not leave Charing Cross without specially remembering that

when Boswell dared to praise Fleet Street as crowded and cheerful, Dr.

Johnson replied in a voice of thunder, “Why, sir, Fleet Street _has_ a

very animated appearance; but I think the full tide of existence is at

Charing Cross.”[427]

Nearly where the Post Office at Charing Cross now stands, there was once

(of all things in the world) a hermitage. Even Prince George of Denmark

might have been pardoned by James II., his sour father-in-law, for making

his invariable reply, “Est-il possible?” to this statement. Yet the patent

rolls of the 47th Henry III. grant permission to William de Radnor, Bishop

of Llandaff, to lodge, with all his retainers, within the precinct of the

Hermitage at Charing, whenever he came to London.[428]

Opposite this stood the ancient Hospital of St. Mary Roncevalles. It was

founded by William Marechal, Earl of Pembroke, a son, I believe, of the

early English conqueror of Ireland. It was suppressed by Henry V. as an

alien priory, restored by Edward IV., and finally suppressed by Edward

VI., who granted it to Sir Thomas Carwarden, to be held in free soccage of

the honour of Westminster.

The mesh and labyrinth of obscure alleys and lanes running between the

bottom of St. Martin’s Lane and Bedford Street, towards Bedfordbury, with

old Round Court, so called in mockery, for its centre, were swept away by

the besom of improvement in 1829, when Trafalgar Square was begun, never

to be finished. In Elizabeth’s or James’s time, gallants who had cruised

in search of Spanish galleons wittily nicknamed these Straits “the

Bermudas,” from their narrow and intricate channels. Here the valorous

Captain Bobadill must have lived in Barmecidal splendour, and have taught

his dupes the true conduct of the weapon. Justice Overdo mentions the

Bermudas with a righteous indignation. “Look,” says that great legal

functionary, “into any angle of the town, the Streights or the Bermudas,

where the quarrelling lesson is read, and how do they entertain the time

but with bottled ale and tobacco?”[429] How natural for Drake’s men to

give such a name to a labyrinth of devious alleys! At a subsequent period

the cluster of avenues exchanged the title of _Bermudas_ for that of the

_C’ribbee Islands_, the learned possessors corrupting the name into a

happy allusion to the arts cultivated there.[430]

Gay, writing in 1715, describes the small streets branching from Charing

Cross as resounding with the shoeblacks’ cry, “Clean your honour’s shoes?”

Great improvements were made in 1829-30, when the present arcade leading

from West Strand to St. Martin’s Church, and inhabited chiefly by German

toymen, was built and named after Lord Lowther then Chief Commissioner of

the Woods and Forests.[431] The Strand was also widened, and many old

tottering houses were removed.

Porridge Island was the cant name for a paved alley near St. Martin’s

Church, originally a congeries of cookshops erected for the workmen at the

new church, and destroyed when the great rookery there was pulled down in

1829. It was a part of Bedfordbury, and derived its name from being full

of cookshops, or “slap-bangs,” as street boys called such odorous places.

A writer in _The World_, in 1753, describes a man like Beau Tibbs, who had

his dinner in a pewter plate from a cookshop in Porridge Island, and with

only £100 a year was foolish enough to wear a laced suit, go every evening

in a chair to a rout, and return to his bedroom on foot, shivering and

supperless, vain enough to glory in having rubbed elbows with the quality

of Brentford.[432]

It was in Round Court, in the centre of the key shops, herb shops, and

furniture warehouses of Bedfordbury that, in 1836, Robson the actor was

apprenticed to a Mr. Smellie, a copperplate engraver, and the printer of

the humorous caricatures of Mr. George Cruikshank.[433]

The Swan at Charing Cross, over against the Mews, flourished in 1665, when

Marke Rider was the landlord. The token of the house bore the figure of a

swan holding a sprig in its mouth. Its memory is embalmed in a curious

extempore grace once said by Ben Jonson before King James. These are the

verses:--

“Our king and queen the Lord God bless,

The Palsgrave and the Lady Besse;

And God bless every living thing

That lives and breathes, and loves the king;

God bless the Council of Estate,

And Buckingham the fortunate;

God bless them all, and keep them safe,

And God bless me, and God bless Ralph.”

The schoolmaster king being mighty inquisitive to know who this Ralph was,

Ben told him it was the drawer at the Swan Tavern, who drew him good

canary. For this drollery the king gave Ben a hundred pounds.[434] The

story is probably true, for it is confirmed by Powell the actor.[435]

The street signs of London were condemned in the second year of George

III.’s reign; but the sweeping Act for their final removal was not passed

till nine years later. In 1762, Bonnel Thornton (aided by Hogarth) opened

an exhibition of street signs in Bow Street[436] in ridicule of the Spring

Gardens exhibition. But as early as 1761 the street signs seem to have

been partially removed as dangerous obstructions. A writer in a

contemporary paper says,[437] “My master yesterday sent me to take a place

in the Canterbury stage; he said that when I came to Charing Cross I

should see which was the proper inn by the words on the sign. I rambled

about, but could see no sign at all. At last I was told that there used to

be such a sign under a little golden cross which I saw at a two pair of

stairs window. I entered and found the waiter swearing about innovations.

He said that the members of Parliament were unaccountable enemies to signs

which used to show trades; that, for his master’s part, he might put on

sackcloth, for nobody came to buy sack. ‘If,’ said he, ‘any of the signs

were too large, could they not have limited their size without pulling

down the sign-posts and destroying the painted ornaments of the Strand?’

On my return I saw some men pulling with ropes at a curious sign-iron,

which seemed to have cost some pounds: along with the iron down came the

leaden cover to the pent-house, which will cost at least some pounds to

repair.”

This was written the year of the first Act (2d George III.), and was

probably a groan from some one interested in the existence of the abuse.

The inferior artists gained much money from this source. Mr. Wale, one of

the first Academicians, painted a Shakspere five feet high[438] for a

public-house at the north-west corner of Little Russell Street, Covent

Garden. The picture was enclosed in a sumptuous carved gilt frame, and was

suspended by rich foliated ironwork. A London street a hundred years ago

must have been one long grotesque picture-gallery.

When the meat is all good it is difficult to know where to insert the

knife. In travelling, how hard it is to turn back almost in sight of some

Promised Land of which one has often dreamed! Like that traveller I feel,

when I find it necessary in this chapter to confine myself strictly to the

legends, traditions, and history of Charing Cross proper, leaving for

other opportunities Spring Gardens, the story of the greater part of which

belongs more to St. James’s Park, Whitehall, and Scotland Yard.

[Illustration: THE KING’S MEWS, 1750.]

[Illustration: BARRACK AND OLD HOUSES ON SITE OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE, 1826.]