The London of Addison and Steele can be very easily reconstructed, from
a reading of the _Spectator_. It did not differ from the London of
Hogarth, except in very minor details, nor from the London of Johnson
of which, in 1768, Benjamin Franklin wrote in his Memoirs, (111, 315).
Even this capital is now a daily scene of lawless riot. Mobs
patrolling the streets at noonday, some knocking down all who will
not roar for Wilkes and liberty; courts of justice afraid to give
judgment against him; coal heavers and porters pulling down the
houses of coal merchants that refuse to give them more wages; sawyers
destroying saw mills; sailors unrigging all the outward bound ships
and suffering none to sail till merchants agreed to raise their pay;
watermen destroying private boats and threatening bridges, soldiers
firing among the mobs and killing men, women and children.... While
I am writing a great mob of coal porters fill the street, carrying a
wretch of their business upon poles to be ducked for working at the
old wages.
That paragraph, of course, paints a special picture and goes to show
that in some respects there were incidents afoot very similar to those
we know in our day. Always there have been labor troubles and those who
would grind the faces of the poor, and interfering efficiency experts
in the camps of both parties.
While the streets were narrow with a single kennel in the middle,
the narrow ways being impeded by coaches, sedan-chairs, carts and
barrows, it is well to bear in mind that it was but a short walk in
any direction to the suburban or genuine open country. A breath of
fresh air was thus within easy reach of workers and tradesmen. In one
direction indeed, it was a little over a mile from the most crowded
part of the city to the famous Bagnigge Wells, established on an old
residence of Nell Gwynn, where was a pump room, a formal garden, pond
and fountains and three rustic bridges crossed the Fleet River. Here
was a place open to all
Where the frail nymphs in amorous dalliance rove,
Where prentice youths enjoy the Sunday feast,
And city madams boast their Sunday best,
Where unfledged Templars first as fops parade,
And new made ensigns sport their first cockade.
--Gay.
The wealthy and fortunate, with a view to getting polish, were sent to
Paris. What they saw there was not vastly different from conditions
in their native country. There would be a furtive visit to the Rue du
Haut Pave looking toward the Pantheon--a crooked, evil street, an old
and murderous street, a vile and dishonored street where murderers and
brigands puffed cigarettes in the Cafe Vachette. Or the old Pont Neuf,
heavy and forbidding, which one crossed to the gambling house to see,
perhaps on one occasion, the famous Vicomte Nucingens on suicide bent,
after having staked his all on a last card. Or the Rue de Fossoyeurs at
night, with lights swaying and flickering, as citizens abroad carried
their lanterns to awe robbers. The swift _D’Artagnan_ lived there,
you may remember, and highwaymen carried off young girls over their
shoulders, and assassins cared little whose throats they cut.
But what of the _haut ton_ in those days? For Addison, and those in his
circle, climbed high, socially. I quote from the Journal of Madam de
Maintenon, January 22, 1713.
As a matter of politeness, the Duc de Bourgogne and his two brothers
had been taught to eat with a fork. But when they were admitted to
sup with the king, he would not hear of it, and forbade them to do
it. He never forbade me to do anything of the kind, for all my life I
have never used anything to eat my food save my knife and my fingers.
A Father Tixier tells of being present as spectator at a royal meal
and, “every time Marie-Terese spoke to the English King, he lifted
his hat to her, and by the end of the meal his hat was most terribly
greasy.”
I quote Jacques Boulanger in conclusion. “... access to the royal
residences was not difficult to obtain. At Versailles there were
beggars and hucksters selling trifles on the landings and stairways.
Thieves plied their trade, and one rogue went so far, one day, as to
steal the diamonds on the hat the King had just laid on the table.”
The gambling mania told of by Pepys in an earlier day had by no
means decreased. It culminated in the sublime madness of the South
Sea Bubble and the equally glorious Mississippi Scheme. On a famous
day in February, 1771, Charles James Fox set the pace. In Parliament
he delivered a speech on a religious question after having prepared
himself, as Gibbon put it, “by passing twenty-two hours in the pious
exercise of hazard.” During the game, he lost steadily at the rate
of five hundred pounds sterling per hour. On the next day he won six
thousand pounds, but, later in the week, he dropped twenty-one thousand
pounds in two sittings. The young Lord Stavordale, then eighteen, won
eleven thousand pounds in a single day and commented upon what would
have been the result had he “played deep.” One day, during the progress
of an extended game at Brooks’ gambling club, a new invention was born
in this wise. The Earl of Sandwich, one of the players, had sat for
several hours without interruption. Unwilling to leave the game, but
being hungry, he ordered the servant to bring him some meat without a
plate, suggesting that a slice of beef be placed between two slices of
bread. By such easy means it is given to some to achieve fame, to pass
a name to posterity!
The most remarkable social product of the age was the coffee-house.
Coffee was known in England a century before tobacco. A passage in
Evelyn’s diary of May 10, 1637, reads: “I saw one, Nathaniel Coniopos,
a Greek, the first I ever saw drink coffee, (which custom came not into
England until thirty years after).”
The earliest two coffee houses in England were established in 1652
and 1656, the second, being one James Farr’s. Admission to the coffee
house cost a penny, and a cup of tea or coffee, two pence. Favored and
regular customers had their own tables and as soon as one of these
appeared, the waiting man carried to him the latest gazette or news
sheet. Hence, the statement that Addison made that his _Spectator_
reached twenty more people than bought it, would not appear to be
extravagant.
In a few years coffee houses spread over the whole of London and it was
currently thought that they were established on granite foundation,
but thirty years ago they had declined so that only two or three
survived fairly unchanged. I recall going to one one night and meeting
there that strange saturnine figure of the 1880’s, Lothrop Withington,
reputed to have a very extensive knowledge of Elizabethan England. It
was in Tottenham Court Road and Gissing used to frequent the place.
We sat in a long room with neatly sanded floor. The tables were bare
topped, each with a straight bench on either side, with high partitions
between each table and its neighbor. At the end of the room was the
open fire-place with a couple of shining steaming kettles at which
presided a neat woman in a print frock. There was no bill of fare and
no variety in the course served. You had a mutton chop with coffee and
bread, or nothing. Entering, a lad brought you a new, long clay pipe
called a church-warden. The surroundings were conducive to conversation
and the prices charged were extremely modest.
At such coffee houses the affairs of the nation and universe were
settled and unsettled; clubs and social groups were formed, and, on
occasions, political plots hatched. An amusing account of the various
London resorts of this nature in the days of Addison was given in _A
Brief and Merry History of Great Britain_, and, for the information
of intellectual strangers, the subjects usually discussed at each was
listed and classified thus:
At those Coffee Houses, near the Court, called White’s, St.
James’, William’s, the conversation turns chiefly upon Equipages,
Horse Matches, Mode of Mortgages: The Cocoa Tree upon Bribery and
Corruption, Evil Ministers, Errors and Mistakes in Government: the
Scotch Coffee-Houses towards Charing Cross, on Places and Pensions;
the Tilt Yard and Young Man’s on Affronts, Honor, Satisfaction,
Duels and Recounters.... In these Coffee-Houses about the Temple
the subjects are generally on Causes, Costs, Demurrers, Rejoiners
and Exceptions; David’s the Welch Coffee-House on Fleet Street,
on Births, Pedigrees, and Descents; Child’s and the Chapter, upon
Globes, Tithes, Rectories, and Lectureships; ... Hamlin’s, Infant
Baptism, Lay Ordination, Free Will, Election, Reprobation; ... and
all those about the Exchange, where the merchants meet to transact
their affairs, are in a perpetual hurry about Stock Jobbing, Lying,
Cheating, Tricking Widows and Orphans, and committing Spoil and
Rapine on the Publick.
Says the _Spectator_, having in mind the atmosphere intellectual of
this coffee house and that:
I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently
seen in most public places, though there are not above half a dozen
of my select friends that know me; of whom my next paper shall give a
more particular account. There is no place of general resort wherein
I do not make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head
into a round of politicians at Will’s, and listening with great
attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular
audiences; sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child’s, and, while I seem
attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of
every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights at St. James’
Coffee House and sometimes join the little committee in the inner
room, as one who comes there to hear and improve. My face is likewise
very well known at the Grecian, the Cocoa Tree, and in the theaters
both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. (_Spectator_ No. 1.)
That the coffee house was not at all times a cave of harmony is
evidenced in many places. We recall that _Sir Roger de Coverley_ had
“kicked Bully Dawson in a coffee house for calling him a youngster.”
Then, too, a letter written by Colley Cibber to Mr. Pope would seem to
show that the irascible and waspish temper of the Twickenham poet had
got him into trouble.
“When you used to pass your hours at Button’s,” writes Cibber in
1742, p. 65, “you were even then remarkable for your satirical itch
of provocation; scarce was there a gentleman of any pretention to
wit, whom your unguarded temper had fallen upon in some biting
epigram, among which you once caught a pastoral tartar, whose
resentment, that your punishment might be proportionate to the smart
of your poetry, had stuck up a birchen rod in the room to be ready
whenever you might come within reach of it; and at this rate, you
writ and rallied and writ on, till you rhymed yourself quite out of
the coffee-house.”
Pope, obviously was made for a coffee house career. Dryden, Addison,
Steele and Savage on the other hand were in their glories at such
gatherings. Once, at St. James’ Coffee House, Addison and his friends
had noticed for several days a singular parson, who put his hat on the
table, walked up and down the sanded floor for half an hour without
speaking to any one, paid his money and left. They dubbed him the “mad
parson.” One day Addison saw this “mad parson” step up to a new arrival
who appeared to have come from the country, and heard him say, without
any introduction:
“Pray sir, do you know any good weather in the world?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the other, “thank God I remember a great deal of
good weather in my time.”
“That is more than I can say,” grumbled the “mad” one. “I never
remember any weather that was not too hot or too cold, too dry or too
wet; but however God Almighty contrives it, at the end of the year ’tis
all very well.”
That was the first time Addison and Swift met.
We gather that occasional dead beats walked the world even as with us.
In the _Spectator_ of March 28, 1711, appears the following: