LONDON DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
From Maitland, who published his History of London in 1739, we learn
that there were at that time, within the bills of mortality, 5,099
streets, 95,968 houses, 207 inns, 447 taverns, and 551 coffee-houses.
In 1681, the bills included 132 parishes; 147 are found in those for
the year 1744. Judging from the bills of mortality, which however
cannot be trusted as accurate, population considerably increased in
that portion of the century included in Maitland's history. During the
seventeen years from 1703 to 1721, the total number of burials was
393,034. During the next seventeen years, to 1738, they amounted to
457,779. The extension of London was still towards the west. In the
Weekly Journal of 1717 it is stated, the new buildings between
Bond-street and Marylebone go on with all possible diligence, and the
houses even let and sell before they are built. In 1723, the duke of
Grafton and the earl of Grantham purchased the waste ground at the
upper end of Albemarle and Dover-streets for gardens, and turned a road
leading into May Fair another way. (London, vol. i, p. 310.)
Devonshire House remained for some time the boundary of the buildings
in Piccadilly, though farther on, by the Hyde Park Corner, there were
several habitations. Lanesborough House stood there by the top of
Constitution-hill, and was, in 1773, converted into an infirmary, since
rebuilt, and now known as St. George's Hospital. It may be added, that
Westminster Hospital, the first institution of the kind supported by
voluntary contributions, was founded in 1719. Several churches were
erected in the early part of the eighteenth century. In the year 1711,
an act was passed for the erection of no less than fifty, but only ten
had been built on new foundations when Maitland published his work.
These ecclesiastical edifices exhibit the architectural taste of the
age. The finest specimen of the period is the church of St.
Martin-in-the-fields, built by Gibbs. It was commenced in 1721, and
finished in 1726, at a cost of nearly L37,000. In spite of the
drawback in the ill-placed steeple over the portico, without any
basement tower, the building strikes the beholder with an emotion of
delight. St. George's, Hanover-square, and St. George's, Bloomsbury,
(the latter exhibiting a remarkable campanile,) were also built about
the same time, the one in 1724, the other in 1731. Almost all the
churches built after the fire are in the modern style, imported from
Italy. In its colonnades, porticoes, architraves, and columns, this
style presents elements of the Greek school of design, but differently
arranged, more complicated in composition, more florid and ambitious in
detail. Taste must assign the palm of superiority to the Grecian
temple, with its severe beauty and chastened sublimity. The one style
indicates the era of original genius, and exhibits the fruits of
masterminds in that line of invention, while the other marks an epoch
of mere imitation, supplying only the degenerate produce of
transplanted taste.
Feeble attempts were made to improve the state of the streets, but they
remained pretty much in their former condition till the Paving Act of
1762. Stalls, sheds, and sign-posts obstructed the path, and the
pavement was left to the inhabitants, to be made "in such a manner, and
with such materials, as pride, poverty, or caprice might suggest. Curb
stones were unknown, and the footway was exposed to the carriage-way,
except in some of the principal streets, where a line of posts and
chains, or wooden paling, afforded occasional protection. It was a
matter of moment to go near the wall; and Gay, in his Trivia, supplies
directions to whom to yield it, and to whom to refuse it."--_Handbook_,
by Cunninghame, xxxi. "In the last age," says Johnson, "when my mother
lived in London, there were two sets of people--those who gave the wall
and those who took it, the peaceable and the quarrelsome. Now it is
fixed that every man keeps to the right; and if one is taking the wall
another yields it, and it is never a dispute." The lighting, drainage,
and police, were all in a wretched condition.
To attempt to give anything like a detailed chronological account of
events in London during the first half of the eighteenth century, is
neither possible nor desirable in a work like this. Indeed, the far
greater part of the incidents recorded in the city chronicles relates
to royal visits, city feasts, celebration of victories, local tumults,
and remarkable storms and frosts. All that can be done, or expected,
in this small volume, is to fix upon a few leading and important scenes
and events, illustrative of the times.
In the reign of queen Anne, the chief matter of interest in connection
with London was the political excitement which prevailed. It turned
upon questions relating to the Church and the toleration of dissenters.
Dean Swift, in a letter dated London, December, 1703, tells a friend,
that the occasional Conformity Bill, intended to nullify the Toleration
Act, was then the subject of everybody's conversation. "It was so
universal," observes the witty dean, "that I observed the dogs in the
street much more contumelious and quarrelsome than usual; and the very
night before the bill went up, a committee of Whig and Tory cats had a
very warm debate upon the roof of our house." Defoe, the well-known
author of Robinson Crusoe, and a London citizen, rendered himself very
conspicuous by his advocacy of the rights of conscience; and in
consequence of writing an ironical work, which then created great
excitement, entitled, "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters," he was
doomed to stand three successive days in the pillory, at the Royal
Exchange by the Cheapside Conduit, and near Temple Bar. Immense crowds
gathered to gaze on the sufferer; but "the people, who were expected to
treat him ill, on the contrary pitied him, and wished those who set him
there were placed in his room, and expressed their affections by loud
shouts and acclamations when he was taken down."--_Life of Defoe_, by
Chalmers, p. 28.
The political excitement of London reached its height during the trial
of Dr. Sacheverell. He had preached two sermons, one of which was
delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral, on the 5th of November, 1709, in
which he inculcated the doctrine of passive obedience and
non-resistance, and inveighed with great bitterness against all
nonconformists. The drift of his sermon was to undermine the
principles of the Revolution, though he professed to approve of that
event, pretending to consider it as by no means a case of resistance to
the supreme power. The ministry, considering that his doctrine struck
a fatal blow at the constitution, as established in 1688, prosecuted
him accordingly. With Sacheverell numbers of the clergy sympathized,
especially Atterbury, the leader of his party. It was supposed that
the queen was not unfriendly to the arraigned divine. He was escorted
to Westminster Hall, the place of his trial, by immense crowds of
people, who rent the air with their huzzas. The queen herself attended
at the proceedings, and was hailed with deafening shouts, as she
stepped from her carriage, "God bless your majesty; we hope your
majesty is for Dr. Sacheverell." The spacious building in which he was
tried, the scene of so many state trials, was fitted up for the
occasion, benches and galleries being provided for peers and commoners,
peeresses and gentlewomen, who crowded every seat; the lower classes
squeezing themselves to suffocation into the part of the old building
allotted to their use. The London rabble were so much excited by what
took place, or were so completely swayed by more influential
malcontents, that on the evening of the second day of the trial they
attacked a meeting-house in New-Court, tearing away doors and
casements, pews and pulpit, and proceeding with the spoil to
Lincoln's-inn-fields. In the open space--where was then no fair garden
inclosed with palisades, it being a rendezvous for mountebanks, dancing
bears, and baited bulls--the populace kindled a bonfire, and consumed
the ruins of the conventicle. They went forth in quest of the
minister, Mr. Burgess, in order to burn him and his pulpit together.
Happily disappointed of their victim, they wreaked their vengeance upon
six other dissenting places of worship. An episcopal church in
Clerkenwell shared the same fate, being mistaken for one of the hated
structures through want of a steeple; for steeple and no steeple
probably constituted the only difference in religion appreciable by
these infatuated mortals. The advocates of toleration, even though
they might be good Churchmen, as Bishop Burnet for example, were also
in danger. Indeed, the tumult became of such grave importance, that
queen and magistrates, court and city, felt it a duty to combine in
order to quell the disgraceful outbreak. A few sword cuts, and the
capture of several prisoners, put down the insurrection; but
ecclesiastical politics still ran high in London, and whigs and
dissenters were in low estimation in many quarters, till the Hanoverian
succession brightened the prospects of the liberal party. While Queen
Anne lay ill, deep anxiety pervaded the political circles in London.
It is not generally known, but it is stated on the authority of
tradition, that the first place in which the decease of Anne was
publicly announced, and the accession of George I. proclaimed, was the
very meeting-house in New Court which had been formerly attacked by the
mob. The day on which the queen died was a Sunday; and as Bishop
Burnet was riding in his coach through Smithfield, he met Mr. Bradbury,
then the minister of the chapel, and told him that immediately upon the
royal demise, then momentarily expected, he would send a messenger to
give tidings of the event. Before the morning service was over a man
appeared in the gallery, and dropped a handkerchief, being the
preconcerted signal; whereupon the preacher, in his last prayer,
alluded to the removal of her majesty, and implored a blessing on King
George and the house of Hanover.
The most striking feature in the history of London in the reign of
George I., was the extraordinary spirit of speculation which then
existed. The moderate gains of trade and commerce did not satisfy the
cupidity of the human breast, which then, as it has done since, burst
out into a fever, that consumed all reason, prudence, and principle.
Men made haste to be rich, and consequently fell into temptation and a
snare. In 1717, an unprecedented excitement pervaded the money market.
Every one familiar with the city knows the plain-looking edifice of
brick and stone which stands in Threadneedle-street, not far from the
Flower-pot, and which is so well described by one whose youth was
passed within it, as "deserted or thinly peopled, with few or no traces
of comers-in or goers-out, like what Ossian describes, when he says, I
passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate." That
grave-looking edifice, now like some respectable citizen retired from
business, was at one time the busiest place in the world. A scheme was
planned and formed for making fortunes by the South Sea trade. A
company was incorporated by government for the purpose, and the house
in Threadneedle-street was the scene of business. Stock rapidly
doubled in value, and went on till it reached a premium of nine hundred
per cent. People of all ranks flocked to Change-alley, and crowded the
courts in riotous eagerness to purchase shares. The nobleman drove
from the West-end, the squire came up from the country, ladies of
fashion, and people of no fashion, swarmed round the new El Dorado, to
dig up the sparkling treasure. Swift compares these crowds of human
beings to the waters of the South Sea Gulf, from which their
imagination was drawing such abundant draughts of wealth.
"Subscribers here by thousands float,
And jostle one another down,
Each paddling in her leaky boat,
And here they fish for gold, and drown.
Now buried in the depths below,
Now mounted up to heaven again;
They reel and stagger to and fro,
At their wits' end like drunken men."
The mania spread so that the South Sea scheme itself could not satisfy
the lust for money. Maitland enumerates one hundred and fifty-six
companies formed at this time. Among some which look feasible, there
were the following characterized by extravagant absurdities:--An
association for discovering gold mines, for bleaching hair, for making
flying engines, for feeding hogs, for erecting salt-pans in Holy
Island, for making butter from beech trees, for making deal boards out
of saw-dust, for extracting silver from lead, and finally, (which seems
to have been much needed to exhaust the maddening vapors that had made
their way into it,) for manufacturing an air pump for the brain.
Some of them were surely mere satires on the rest; yet Maitland says,
after giving his long list, "Besides these bubbles, there were
innumerable more that perished in embryo; however, the sums intended to
be raised by the above airy projects amounted to about three hundred
million pounds. Yet the lowest of the shares in any of them advanced
above cent. per cent., most above four hundred per cent., and some to
twenty times the price of subscription." The bulk of these speculators
must clearly have been bereft of their senses, and the madness was too
violent to last long. The evil worked its own cure. The golden bubble
was blown larger, and larger, till it burst. Then came indescribable
misery. Thousands were ruined. Revenge against the inventors now took
the place of cupidity, and indignation aroused those who had looked
patiently on during the rage of the _money_ mania. One nobleman in
parliament proposed that the contrivers of the South Sea scheme should,
after the manner of the Roman parricide, be sown up alive in sacks, and
flung into the Thames. A more moderate punishment was inflicted in the
confiscation of all the estates belonging to the directors of the
company, amounting to above two millions, which sum was divided among
the sufferers. The railway speculation in our own time was a display
of avarice of the same order; and all such indulgence in the inordinate
lust of gain is sure to be overtaken, in the end, by its righteous
penalty. The laws of Divine providence provide for the punishment of
those who thus, under the influence of an impetuous selfishness, grasp
at immoderate possessions. Covetousness overreaches itself in such
cases, and misses its mark. How many instances have occurred in the
present day illustrative of that wise saying in Holy Scripture: "As the
partridge sitteth on eggs and hatcheth them not, so he that getteth
riches and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and
at the end shall be a fool!" The solemn lessons thus suggested should
be practically studied by the man of business, and while he is taught
to moderate his desires after the things of this world, he is also
instructed to turn the main current of his thoughts and feelings into a
far different channel, to seek durable riches and righteousness--bags
which wax not old--treasures which thieves cannot break through and
steal; and to "so pass through things temporal, as not to lose the
things which are eternal."
The history of London in the reign of George II. is remarkable for the
excitement which was produced by the northern rebellion, and for a far
different excitement, which we shall presently notice with great
delight. The progress of the arms of Prince Edward, the pretender, in
the year 1745, created much alarm in all parts of the country,
especially in London, the seat of government. When the invading army
was found to have proceeded as far as Derby, it was generally expected
it would advance to the metropolis. The loyalty of the citizens was
called forth by the impending peril, and all classes hastened to
express their attachment to the sovereign, and their readiness to
support the house of Hanover in this great emergency. The corporation,
the clergy, and the dissenting ministers, presented dutiful addresses.
Several corps of volunteers were raised, large sums of money were
contributed, and even the peace-loving body of Friends came forward to
furnish the troops with woolen waistcoats to be worn under their
clothing. As the cause of Popery was identified with that of the
pretender, the Papists in London were regarded with great apprehension.
A proclamation was issued for putting the laws in force against them
and all non-jurors. Romanists and reputed Romanists were required to
remove out of the city, to at least ten miles off. All Jesuits and
priests who, after a certain time, should be found within that distance
were to be brought to trial. The pretender was defeated at Culloden,
and the news took off a heavy burden of fear from the minds of the
London citizens. Many prisoners were brought to the metropolis, and
among them the Earl of Kilmarnock, Lord Balmerino, and Lord Lovat, who
were all executed for treason on Tower-hill. The beheading of the last
of these brought to a close the long series of sanguinary spectacles of
that nature, which had gathered from time to time such a vast concourse
of citizens, on the hill by the Tower gates.
The other kind of excitement in London, hinted at above, relates to the
most important of all subjects. Spiritual religion had been at a low
ebb for a considerable period among the different denominations of
Christians. A cold formalism was but too common. It is not, however,
to be inferred that men of sound and earnest piety did not exist, both
among Churchmen and dissenters. One beautiful specimen of religious
fervor and consistency may be mentioned in connection with the earlier
part of this century. Sir Thomas Abney, who filled the office of lord
mayor in 1701, and also represented the city in parliament, is
described as having been an eminent blessing to his country and the
Church of God. He died in 1722, deeply regretted, not only by his
religious friends, but by his fellow-citizens in general. We have seen
or heard it stated respecting him, that during his mayoralty he
habitually maintained family worship, without suffering it to be
interrupted by any parties or banquets. On such occasions prayer was
introduced, or he retired to present it in the bosom of his family.
Many other beautiful instances of a devout spirit, of faith in Christ,
and of love to God, were, no doubt, open at that time to the eye of Him
who seeth in secret; but neither then, nor for some time afterwards,
were any vigorous efforts made to bring religion home with power to the
mass of the London population. That distinguished man, the Rev. George
Whitefield, was an instrument in the hand of God of effecting in the
metropolis, before the close of the first half of the century, an
unprecedented religious awakening. He came up to officiate in the
Tower in 1737, but his first sermon in London was delivered in
Bishopsgate church. On his second visit, crowds climbed the leads, and
hung on the rails of the buildings in which he was engaged to minister,
while multitudes went away because not able to get anywhere within the
sound of his voice. Nothing had been seen like it since the days of
such men as Baxter and Vincent. When collections were needed,
Whitefield was eagerly sought, as the man capable above all others of
replenishing the exhausted coffers of Christian beneficence. The
people sat or stood densely wedged together, with eyes riveted on the
speaker, and many a tear rolled down the cheeks of citizen and
apprentice, matron and maiden, as the instructions and appeals of that
wonderful preacher, expressed in stirring words and phrases, fell upon
their ears, in tones marvelously rich, varied, and musical. With an
eloquence, which now flashed and rolled like the elements in a
thunder-storm, and then tenderly beamed forth like the sun-ray on the
flower whose head the storm had drenched and made to droop, did he
enforce on the people truths which he had gathered out of God's
precious word, and the power of which he had evidently himself realized
in all the divinity of their origin, the sublimity of their import, the
directness of their application, and the unutterable solemnity of their
results. As a man dwelling amidst eternal things, with heaven and hell
before him, the eye of God upon him, and immortal souls around him,
hastening to their account,--in short, as every minister of Christ's
holy gospel ought to deliver his message, did he do so. The holiness
of God, as a Being of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; the perfect
excellence of the Divine law; its demand of entire obedience; its
adaptation, if observed, to promote the happiness of man; its
spirituality, reaching to the most secret thoughts and affections of
the heart; the corruption of human nature; the alienation of man from
God, and his moral inability to keep the Divine law; the sentence of
everlasting condemnation, which, as the awful, but righteous
consequence, falls upon our race; the marvelous kindness of God in so
commending his love to us, "that while we were yet sinners Christ died
for us;" the Saviour's fulfillment of the law in his gracious
representative character; the perfect satisfaction for sin rendered by
his atoning sacrifice; the unutterable condescension and infinite love
with which he receiveth sinners; the grace of the Holy Spirit; the
necessity of an entire regeneration of the soul by his Divine agency;
the full and free invitations of the gospel to mankind at large;
forgiveness through the blood of Christ offered to all who believe; the
universal obligation of repentance; the requirement of holiness of
heart and life, as the evidence of love to Christ, and the indwelling
of the Spirit, as the Author of holiness; such were the grand truths
which formed the theme of Whitefield's discourses, and which, in
numerous instances, fell with startling power on ears unaccustomed to
evangelical statements and appeals. The preacher was a man of prayer
as well as eloquence, and in his London visits poured out his heart in
earnest supplication to God for the effusion of his Holy Spirit upon
the vast masses of unconverted souls, slumbering around him in the arms
of spiritual death. Whitefield could not confine himself to churches,
and his out-door preaching soon increased the interest which his former
services had produced. "I do not know," said the celebrated Countess
of Hertford, in one of her letters, "whether you have heard of our new
sect, who call themselves Methodists. There is one Whitefield at the
head of them, a young man of about five-and-twenty, who has for some
months gone about preaching in the fields and market-places of the
country, and in London at May Fair and Moorfields to ten or twelve
thousand people at a time." Larger multitudes still are said to have
been sometimes convened; on Kennington Common, for example, the number
of Whitefield's congregation has been computed at sixty thousand.
The notice taken of the young preacher by this lady of fashion, is only
a specimen of the interest felt in his proceedings by many persons in
the same rank of life. The nobility attended in the drawing-room of
the Countess of Huntingdon to listen to his sermons, or accompanied her
to the churches where he had engaged to officiate. Long lists of these
titled names have been preserved, in which some of the unlikeliest
occur, such as Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, the Earl of Chesterfield,
Lord Bolingbroke, Bubb Doddington, and George Selwyn. Indeed, it seems
to have been quite the fashion for the great ones of the land to
cluster round this man of God. He was the theme of their conversation.
By all he was marveled at; by some he was censured or ridiculed; by
more he was praised and caressed; by a few he was honored and blessed
as the means of their spiritual renewal or edification. Among the
middle and lower classes in London, as elsewhere, did he reap his
richest harvests. How many hundreds and thousands were melted down
under the power of the word which he proclaimed! How many of that
generation in our old city are now before the throne of the Lamb,
adoring the gracious Providence which brought them within the sound of
Whitefield's voice!
A remarkable occurrence in London, in the year 1750, gave occasion for
a singular display of this great preacher's holy zeal. Shocks of an
earthquake were felt in different parts of London and the vicinity,
especially in the neighborhood of the river Thames. Such visitations
are sure to produce violent terror, and on this occasion the feeling
reached its highest pitch. The people, apprehending there was greater
danger in their own houses, and in the streets lined with buildings,
than in wide spaces open and unencumbered, rushed, in immense crowds,
to Hyde Park, and there waited, in fearful foreboding of the judgments
of the Almighty. One night, when the excitement was overwhelming, and
a dense multitude had congregated there under the dark arch of heaven,
Whitefield, regarding it as a signal opportunity for preaching the
gospel to his fellow-countrymen, hastened to the spot, and delivered
one of his most powerful and pathetic discourses. He called the
attention of the throngs before him to the coming advent of the Son of
God, to judge the world in righteousness, when not the inhabitants of
one city only, but all of Adam's race, in every clime, would be
gathered together, to receive from the lips of Eternal Justice their
final and unalterable sentence. Nor did he fail to point out the
character of Christ in his relation to man as a Saviour as well as
Judge, urging his hearers to flee from the wrath to come, and to lay
hold on the hope set before them in the gospel. "The awful manner in
which he addressed the careless, Christless sinner, the sublimity of
the discourse, and the appearance of the place, added to the gloom of
night, continued to impress the mind with seriousness, and to render
the event solemn and memorable in the highest degree." While the
shades of night rendered him invisible to his audience, his clear
voice--which could be heard distinctly at the distance of a mile,
passing through a marvelous variety of intonations, in which the very
soul of the speaker seemed to burst out in gushes of terror or
love--must, as it sounded over the park, and fell upon the eager
listening thousands, have seemed to them like the utterance of some
impalpable and unseen spirit, who, with unearthly powers of address,
had come down from heaven to warn and invite. "God," he observed, in
writing to Lady Huntingdon, "has been terribly shaking the metropolis;
I hope it is an earnest of his giving a shock to secure sinners, and
making them to cry out, 'What shall we do to be saved?' What can shake
a soul whose hopes of happiness in time and in eternity are built upon
the Rock of ages? Winds may blow, rains may and will descend even upon
persons of the most exalted stations, but they that trust in the Lord
Jesus Christ never shall, never can be totally confounded." Charles
Wesley was in town during this dispensation of Providence, (which
happily passed off without inflicting any serious injury,) and he also
employed himself in faithful and earnest preaching. So did Mr.
Romaine, whose ministry will be noticed more particularly in the next
chapter. The only additional information we can give respecting this
religious revival, is that the Rev. John Wesley, equally distinguished
with Whitefield, but by gifts of a different order, began his course in
London as the founder of the Methodist Connection, in 1740, and spent
among the London citizens a large portion of his apostolic and
self-denying labors, with unconquerable perseverance and eminent
success. He was accustomed, at the commencement of his career, to meet
with the Moravians for religious exercises in their chapel in
Fetter-lane; thus associating that edifice, which still remains, with
the early history of Methodism. "There the great leaders in this
glorious warfare, with their zealous coadjutors--persons whose whole
souls were consecrated to the cause of God our Saviour--often took
sweet counsel together. They have all long since gone to their rest,
to meet in a better temple together, as they have often worshiped in
the temple below, and to go out no more."
In further illustration of the state of London at the time now under
our review, we will turn to consider some other of its social aspects.
Literary society presents some curious and amusing facts. The
booksellers before the fire were located, for the most part, in St.
Paul's Church-yard. It is stated that not less than L150,000 worth of
books were consumed during that conflagration. The calamity proved the
ruin of many, and was the occasion of raising very enormously the price
of old books. Little Britain, near Duck-lane, became the rendezvous of
the trade, which remained there for some years afterwards. "It was,"
says Roger North, "a plentiful and perpetual emporium of learned
authors." The shops were spacious, and the literati of the day gladly
resorted thither, where they seldom failed to find agreeable
conversation. The booksellers themselves were intelligent persons,
with whom, for the sake of their bookish knowledge, the most brilliant
wits were pleased to converse. Before 1750, the literary emporium of
London was transferred to Paternoster-row. Up to that time the
activity in the publishing business was very great, especially in the
pamphlet line; perhaps there were more publishers then than even now.
Dunton, a famous member of the fraternity, wrote his own life, in which
he enumerates a long list of his brethren, with particulars relating to
their character and history. The authors of London were computed by
Swift to amount in number to some thousands. While a Swift, a Pope, an
Addison, a Steele, a Bolingbroke, a Johnson, and other world-known
names in that Augustan age of letters, produced works of original
genius, the bulk of the writers who supplied the trade were "mere
drudges of the pen--manufacturers of literature." A whole herd of
these were dealers in ghosts, murders, and other marvels, published in
periodical pamphlets, upon every half sheet of which the tax of a
halfpenny was laid on in the reign of Queen Anne. "Have you seen the
red stamp the papers are marked with?" asks Dean Swift, in a letter to
Mr. Dingley--"methinks the stamping is worth a half-penny." These
panderers to a vitiated taste, which is far from having disappeared in
our own day, and other writers of the humbler class, were so numerous
in Grub-street, that the name became the cognomen for the humblest
brethren of the book craft. There and elsewhere did they pour forth
their lucubrations in lofty attics, which led Johnson to make the
pompous remark, "that the professors of literature generally reside in
the highest stories. The wisdom of the ancients was well acquainted
with the intellectual advantages of an elevated situation; why else
were the muses stationed on Olympus or Parnassus, by those who could,
with equal right, have raised them bowers in the vale of Tempe, or
erected their altars among the flexures of Meander?" The favorite
places of resort for poets, wits, and authors, were the coffee-houses,
especially Wills', in Russell-street, Convent Garden, where Dryden had
long occupied the critics' throne, and swayed the sceptre over the
kingdom of letters. Thither went the aspirant after fame, to obtain
subscribers for his forthcoming publication, or to secure the approving
nod of some literary Jupiter; and there many an offspring of the muse
was strangled in the birth, or if suffered to live, treated with
merciless severity. In the same street lived Davies, the bookseller,
at whose house Boswell, the biographer of Johnson, became acquainted
with his hero. "The very place," he says, "where I was fortunate
enough to be introduced to the illustrious subject of this work,
deserves to be particularly marked. It was No. 8. I never pass by
without feeling reverence and regret."
Pope was the most successful author of his time, and realized L5,320 by
his Iliad. The keenness of his satire in the Dunciad threw literary
London into convulsions. On the day the book was first vended, a crowd
of authors besieged the shop, threatening to prosecute the publisher,
while hawkers crushed in to buy it up, with the hope of reaping a good
harvest from the retailing of so caustic an article. The dunces held
weekly meetings to project hostilities against the satirical critic,
whose keen weapon had cut them to the quick. One wrote to the prime
minister to inform him that Mr. Pope was an enemy to the government;
another bought his image in clay to execute him in effigy. A
surreptitious edition was published, with an owl in the frontispiece,
the genuine one exhibiting an ass laden with authors. Hence arose a
contest among the booksellers, some recommending the edition of the
owl, and others the edition of the ass, by which names the two used to
be distinguished. In 1737, Dr. Johnson came up to the metropolis with
two-pence halfpenny in his pocket--David Garrick, his companion, having
one halfpenny more. Toiling in the service of Cave, and writing for
the Gentleman's Magazine, then a few years old, the former could but
obtain a bare subsistence, which forced from him the well-known lines
in his poem on London:--
"This mournful truth is everywhere confessed,
Slow rises worth by poverty depressed."
He lodged at a stay-maker's, in Exeter-street, and dined at the Pine
Apple, just by, for eight-pence. An odd example of the intercourse
between bookmakers and bookvenders, is preserved in the anecdote of
Johnson beating Osborne, his publisher, for alleged impertinence. Of
the genial habits of literary men in London, we have an illustration in
the clubs which he formed, or to which he belonged. That which still
continues to hold its meetings at the Thatched House, is the
continuation of the famous one established at a later period than is
embraced in this chapter, at the Turk's Head, where Johnson used to
meet Reynolds, Burke, and Goldsmith.
But it is time to glance at fashionable London. As to its locality, it
has been anything but stationary. Gradually, however, it has been
gliding westward for the last three centuries and more. First breaking
its way through Ludgate, and lining the Thames side of the Strand with
noble houses, then pushing its course farther on, and spreading itself
out over the favored parishes of St. James and St. George. Here,
during the first half of the last century, might be seen the increasing
centralization of English patricians. The city was deserted of
aristocratic inhabitants, and Devonshire-square was the spot "on which
lingered the last lady of rank who clung to her ancestral abode." But
this westward tendency, flowing wave on wave, was checked for awhile in
Soho and Leicester-squares, which remained till within less than a
hundred years ago, the abode or resort of the sons and daughters of
fashion. St. James's, Grosvenor, and Hanover-squares, were, however,
of a more select and magnificent character. The titled in Church and
state loved to reside in the elegant mansions which lined and adorned
them, so convenient for visits to court, which then migrated backwards
and forwards between St. James's and Kensington. Still, though these
anti-plebeian regions were scenes of increasing convenience, comfort,
and luxury, some of the nuisances of former days lingered amidst them;
and as late as 1760, a great many hogs were seized by the overseers of
St. George's, Hanover-square, because they were bred, or kept in the
immediate neighborhood of these wealthy abodes.
On the levee day of a prime minister, a couple of streets were
sometimes lined with the coaches of political adherents, seeking power
or place, when favored visitors were admitted to an audience in his
bedchamber. The royal levees were thronged with multitudes of
courtiers, who thereby accomplished the double purpose of paying their
respect to the sovereign and reviving their friendships with each
other. It is very melancholy to read in dean Swift's letters such a
passage as the following, since it evinces so painful a disregard of
the religious character and privileges of the Lord's-day, very common,
it is feared, at the time to which it relates: "Did I never tell you,"
he says, "that I go to court on Sundays, as to a coffee-house, to see
acquaintances whom I should not otherwise see twice a year."
"Drawing-rooms were first introduced in the reign of George II., and
during the lifetime of the queen were held every evening, when the
royal family played at cards, and all persons properly dressed were
admitted. After the demise of the queen in 1737, they were held but
twice a week, and in a few years were wholly discontinued, the king
holding his 'state' in the morning twice a week."--_Cunninghame_.
Promenading in Pall Mall and the parks on foot was a favorite
recreation of the lords and ladies of the first two Georges' reigns, at
which they might be seen in court dresses, the former with bag wig and
sword, the latter with hooped petticoats and high-heeled shoes,
sweeping the gravel with their trains, and looking with immense
contempt on the citizens east of Temple-bar who dared to invade the
magic circle which fashion had drawn around itself. These gathering
places for the gay were often infested by persons who committed
outrages, to us almost incredible. Emulous of the name, as of the
deeds of the savage, they took the title of Mohawks, the appellation of
a well-known tribe of Indians. Their sport was, sword in hand, to
attack and wound the quiet wayfarer. On one occasion, we find from
Swift's letters, that he was terribly frightened by these inhuman
wretches. Even women did not escape their violence. "I walked in the
park this evening," says Swift, under date of March 9th, 1713, "and
came home early to avoid the Mohawks." Again, on the 16th, "Lord
Winchelsea told me to-day at court, that two of the Mohawks caught a
maid of old lady Winchelsea's at the door of their house in the park
with a candle, who had just lighted out somebody. They cut all her
face, and beat her without any provocation."
Another glimpse of the London of that day, which we catch while turning
over its records, presents a further unfavorable illustration of the
state of society, both in high and in low life. In May Fair there
stood a chapel, where a certain Dr. Keith, of infamous notoriety,
performed the marriage service for couples who sought a clandestine
union; and while the rich availed themselves of this provision, persons
in humbler life found a similar place open to them in the Fleet prison.
Parliament put down these enormities in 1753.
Ranelagh and Vauxhall were places of frivolous amusement resorted to
even by the higher classes. From these and other haunts of folly,
lumbering coaches or sedan chairs conveyed home the ladies through the
dimly lighted or pitch dark streets, and the gentlemen picked their way
over the ruggedly paved thoroughfares, glad of the proffered aid of the
link boys, who crowded round the gates of such places of public
entertainment or resort as were open at night, and who, arrived at the
door to which they had escorted some fashionable foot passenger,
quenched the blazing torch in the trumpet-looking ornament, which one
now and then still sees lingering over the entrance to some house in an
antiquated square or court, a characteristic relic of London in the
olden time. A walk along some of the more quiet and retired streets at
the west end of the metropolis, which were scenes of fashion and gayety
a hundred years ago, awaken in the mind, when it is in certain moods,
trains of solemn and healthful reflection. We think of the generations
that once, with light or heavy hearts, passed and repassed along those
ways, too many of them, we fear, however burdened with earthly
solicitudes, sadly heedless of the high interests of the everlasting
future. Led away by the splendid attractions of this world, its
wealth, power, praise, or pleasure, they too surely found at last that
what they followed so eagerly, and thought so delightful, was only a
delusion, like the gorgeous mirage of the desert. Some few years
hence, and we shall have ourselves gone the way of all the earth.
Other feet will tread the pavement, and other eyes drink in the light,
and look upon the works and ways of fellow-mortals; and other minds
will call up recollections of the past, and moralize with sombre hues
of feeling as we do now; and where then will the reader be? It is no
impertinent suggestion in a work like this, that he should make that
grave inquiry--nor pause till, in the light which illumines the world
to come, he has duly considered all the materials he possesses for
supplying a probable answer.