FLEET STREET (NORTHERN TRIBUTARIES--SHOE LANE AND BELL YARD).
The Kit-Kat Club--The Toast for the Year--Little Lady Mary--Drunken
John Sly--Garth's Patients--Club removed to Barn Elms--Steele at the
"Trumpet"--Rogues' Lane--Murder--Beggars' Haunts--Thieves'
Dens--Coiners--Theodore Hook in Hemp's Sponging-house--Pope in Bell
Yard--Minor Celebrities--Apollo Court.
Opposite Child's Bank, and almost within sound of the jingle of its
gold, once stood Shire Lane, afterwards known as Lower Serle's Place. It
latterly became a dingy, disreputable defile, where lawyers' clerks and
the hangers-on of the law-courts were often allured and sometimes
robbed; yet it had been in its day a place of great repute. In this lane
the Kit-Kat, the great club of Queen Anne's reign, held its sittings, at
the "Cat and Fiddle," the shop of a pastrycook named Christopher Kat.
The house, according to local antiquaries, afterwards became the
"Trumpet," a tavern mentioned by Steele in the _Tatler_, and latterly
known as the "Duke of York." The Kit-Kats were originally Whig patriots,
who, at the end of King William's reign, met in this out-of-the-way
place to devise measures to secure the Protestant succession and keep
out the pestilent Stuarts. Latterly they assembled for simple enjoyment;
and there have been grave disputes as to whether the club took its name
from the punning sign, the "Cat and Kit," or from the favourite pies
which Christopher Kat had christened; and as this question will probably
last the antiquaries another two centuries, we leave it alone. According
to some verses by Arbuthnot, the chosen friend of Pope and Swift, the
question was mooted even in his time, as if the very founders of the
club had forgotten. Some think that the club really began with a weekly
dinner given by Jacob Tonson, the great bookseller of Gray's Inn Lane,
to his chief authors and patrons. This Tonson, one of the patriarchs of
English booksellers, who published Dryden's "Virgil," purchased a share
of Milton's works, and first made Shakespeare's works cheap enough to be
accessible to the many, was secretary to the club from the commencement.
An average of thirty-nine poets, wits, noblemen, and gentlemen formed
the staple of the association. The noblemen were perhaps rather too
numerous for that republican equality that should prevail in the best
intellectual society; yet above all the dukes shine out Steele and
Addison, the two great luminaries of the club. Among the Kit-Kat dukes
was the great Marlborough; among the earls the poetic Dorset, the patron
of Dryden and Prior; among the lords the wise Halifax; among the
baronets bluff Sir Robert Walpole. Of the poets and wits there were
Congreve, the most courtly of dramatists; Garth, the poetical
physician--"well-natured Garth," as Pope somewhat awkwardly calls him;
and Vanbrugh, the writer of admirable comedies. Dryden could hardly have
seriously belonged to a Whig club; Pope was inadmissible as a Catholic,
and Prior as a renegade. Latterly objectionable men pushed in, worst of
all, Lord Mohun, a disreputable debauchee and duellist, afterwards run
through by the Duke of Hamilton in Hyde Park, the duke himself perishing
in the encounter. When Mohun, in a drunken pet, broke a gilded emblem
off a club chair, respectable old Tonson predicted the downfall of the
society, and said with a sigh, "The man who would do that would cut a
man's throat." Sir Godfrey Kneller, the great Court painter of the
reigns of William and Anne, was a member; and he painted for his friend
Tonson the portraits of forty-two gentlemen of the Kit-Kat, including
Dryden, who died a year after it started. The forty-two portraits,
painted three-quarter size (hence called Kit-Kat), to suit the walls of
Tonson's villa at Barn Elms, still exist, and are treasured by Mr. R.W.
Baker, a representative of the Tonson family, at Hertingfordbury, in
Hertfordshire. Among the lesser men of this distinguished club we must
include Pope's friends, the "knowing Walsh" and "Granville the polite."
As at the "Devil," "the tribe of Ben" must have often discussed the
downfall of Lord Bacon, the poisoning of Overbury, the war in the
Palatinate, and the murder of Buckingham; so in Shire Lane, opposite,
the talk must have run on Marlborough's victories, Jacobite plots, and
the South-Sea Bubble; Addison must have discussed Swift, and Steele
condemned the littleness of Pope. It was the custom of this aristocratic
club every year to elect some reigning beauty as a toast. To the queen
of the year the gallant members wrote epigrammatic verses, which were
etched with a diamond on the club glasses. The most celebrated of these
toasts were the four daughters of the Duke of Marlborough--Lady
Godolphin, Lady Sunderland (generally known as "the Little Whig"), Lady
Bridgewater, and Lady Monthermer. Swift's friend, Mrs. Long, was
another; and so was a niece of Sir Isaac Newton. The verses seem flat
and dead now, like flowers found between the leaves of an old book; but
in their time no doubt they had their special bloom and fragrance. The
most tolerable are those written by Lord Halifax on "the Little Whig":--
"All nature's charms in Sunderland appear,
Bright as her eyes and as her reason clear;
Yet still their force, to man not safely known,
Seems undiscovered to herself alone."
Yet how poor after all is this laboured compliment in comparison to a
sentence of Steele's on some lady of rank whose virtues he
honoured,--"that even to have known her was in itself a liberal
education."
But few stories connected with the Kit-Kat meetings are to be dug out of
books, though no doubt many snatches of the best conversation are
embalmed in the _Spectator_ and the _Tatler_. Yet Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, whom Pope first admired and then reviled, tells one pleasant
incident of her childhood that connects her with the great club.
One evening when toasts were being chosen, her father, Evelyn Pierpoint,
Duke of Kingston, took it into his head to nominate Lady Mary, then a
child only eight years of age. She was prettier, he vowed, than any
beauty on the list. "You shall see her," cried the duke, and instantly
sent a chaise for her. Presently she came ushered in, dressed in her
best, and was elected by acclamation. The Whig gentlemen drank the
little lady's health up-standing and, feasting her with sweetmeats and
passing her round with kisses, at once inscribed her name with a diamond
on a drinking-glass. "Pleasure," she says, "was too poor a word to
express my sensations. They amounted to ecstasy. Never again throughout
my whole life did I pass so happy an evening."
It used to be said that it took so much wine to raise Addison to his
best mood, that Steele generally got drunk before that golden hour
arrived. Steele, that warm-hearted careless fellow in whom Thackeray so
delighted, certainly shone at the Kit-Kat; and an anecdote still extant
shows him to us with all his amiable weaknesses. On the night of that
great Whig festival--the celebration of King William's anniversary--Steele
and Addison brought Dr. Hoadley, the Bishop of Bangor, with them, and
solemnly drank "the immortal memory." Presently John Sly, an eccentric
hatter and enthusiastic politician, crawled into the room on his knees,
in the old Cavalier fashion, and drank the Orange toast in a tankard of
foaming October. No one laughed at the tipsy hatter; but Steele, kindly
even when in liquor, kept whispering to the rather shocked prelate,
"Do laugh; it is humanity to laugh." The bishop soon put on his hat and
withdrew, and Steele by and by subsided under the table. Picked up and
crammed into a sedan-chair, he insisted, late as it was, in going to
the Bishop of Bangor's to apologise. Eventually he was coaxed home
and got upstairs, but then, in a gush of politeness, he insisted on
seeing the chairmen out; after which he retired with self-complacency
to bed. The next morning, in spite of headache the most racking,
Steele sent the tolerant bishop the following exquisite couplet,
which covered a multitude of such sins:--
"Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits,
All faults he pardons, though he none commits."
One night when amiable Garth lingered over the Kit-Kat wine, though
patients were pining for him, Steele reproved the epicurean doctor.
"Nay, nay, Dick," said Garth, pulling out a list of fifteen, "it's no
great matter after all, for nine of them have such bad constitutions
that not all the physicians in the world could save them; and the other
six have such good constitutions that all the physicians in the world
could not kill them."
Three o'clock in the morning seems to have been no uncommon hour for the
Kit-Kat to break up, and a Tory lampooner says that at this club the
youth of Anne's reign learned
"To sleep away the days and drink away the nights."
The club latterly held its meetings at Tonson's villa at Barn Elms
(previously the residence of Cowley), or at the "Upper Flask" tavern, on
Hampstead Heath. The club died out before 1727 (George II.); for
Vanbrugh, writing to Tonson, says,--"Both Lord Carlisle and Cobham
expressed a great desire of having one meeting next winter, not as a
club, but as old friends that have been of a club--and the best club
that ever met." In 1709 we find the Kit-Kat subscribing 400 guineas for
the encouragement of good comedies. Altogether such a body of men must
have had great influence on the literature of the age, for, in spite of
the bitterness of party, there was some generous _esprit de corps_ then,
and the Whig wits and poets were a power, and were backed by rank and
wealth.
[Illustration: LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU AND THE KIT-KATS (_see page
71_).]
Whether the "Trumpet" (formerly half-way up on the left-hand side
ascending from Temple Bar) was the citadel of the Kit-Kats or not,
Steele introduces it as the scene of two of the best of his _Tatler_
papers. It was there, in October, 1709, that he received his deputation
of Staffordshire county gentlemen, delightful old fogies, standing
much on form and precedence. There he prepares tea for Sir Harry
Quickset, Bart.; Sir Giles Wheelbarrow; Thomas Rentfree, Esq., J.P.;
Andrew Windmill, Esq., the steward, with boots and whip; and Mr.
Nicholas Doubt, of the Inner Temple, Sir Harry's mischievous young
nephew. After much dispute about precedence, the sturdy old fellows are
taken by Steele to "Dick's" Coffee-house for a morning draught; and
safely, after some danger, effect the passage of Fleet Street, Steele
rallying them at the Temple Gate. In Sir Harry we fancy we see a faint
sketch of the more dignified Sir Roger de Coverley, which Addison
afterwards so exquisitely elaborated.
[Illustration: BISHOP BUTLER (_see page 77_).]
At the "Trumpet" Steele also introduces us to a delightful club of old
citizens that met every evening precisely at six. The humours of the
fifteen Trumpeters are painted with the breadth and vigour of Hogarth's
best manner. With a delightful humour Steele sketches Sir Geoffrey
Notch, the president, who had spent all his money on horses, dogs, and
gamecocks, and who looked on all thriving persons as pitiful upstarts.
Then comes Major Matchlock, who thought nothing of any battle since
Marston Moor, and who usually began his story of Naseby at
three-quarters past six. Dick Reptile was a silent man, with a nephew
whom he often reproved. The wit of the club, an old Temple bencher,
never left the room till he had quoted ten distiches from "Hudibras" and
told long stories of a certain extinct man about town named Jack Ogle.
Old Reptile was extremely attentive to all that was said, though he had
heard the same stories every night for twenty years, and upon all
occasions winked oracularly to his nephew to particularly mind what
passed. About ten the innocent twaddle closed by a man coming in with a
lantern to light home old Bickerstaff. They were simple and happy times
that Steele describes with such kindly humour; and the London of his
days must have been full of such quiet, homely haunts.
Mr. R. Wells, of Colne Park, Halstead, kindly informs us that as late as
the year 1765 there was a club that still kept up the name of Kit-Kat.
The members in 1765 included, among others, Lord Sandwich (Jemmy
Twitcher, as he was generally called), Mr. Beard, Lord Weymouth, Lord
Bolingbroke, the Duke of Queensbury, Lord Caresford, Mr. Cadogan, the
Marquis of Caracciollo, Mr. Seymour, and Sir George Armytage. One of the
most active managers of the club was Richard Phelps (who, we believe,
afterwards was secretary to Pitt). Among letters and receipts preserved
by Mr. Wells, is one from Thomas Pingo, jeweller, of the "Golden Head,"
on the "Paved Stones," Gray's Inn Lane, for gold medals, probably to be
worn by the members.
Even in the reign of James I. Shire Lane was christened Rogues' Lane,
and, in spite of all the dukes and lords of the Kit-Kat, it never grew
very respectable. In 1724 that incomparable young rascal, Jack Sheppard,
used to frequent the "Bible" public-house--a printers' house of call--at
No. 13. There was a trap in one of the rooms by which Jack could drop
into a subterraneous passage leading to Bell Yard. Tyburn gibbet cured
Jack of this trick. In 1738 the lane went on even worse, for there
Thomas Carr (a low attorney, of Elm Court) and Elizabeth Adams robbed
and murdered a gentleman named Quarrington at the "Angel and Crown"
Tavern, and the miscreants were hung at Tyburn. Hogarth painted a
portrait of the woman. One night, many years ago, a man was robbed,
thrown downstairs, and killed, in one of the dens in Shire Lane. There
was snow on the ground, and about two o'clock, when the watchmen grew
drowsy and were a long while between their rounds, the frightened
murderers carried the stiffened body up the lane and placed it bolt
upright, near a dim oil lamp, at a neighbour's door. There the watchmen
found it; but there was no clue to guide them, for nearly every house in
the lane was infamous. Years after, two ruffianly fellows who were
confined in the King's Bench were heard accusing each other of the
murder in Shire Lane, and justice pounced upon her prey.
One thieves' house, known as the "Retreat," led, Mr. Diprose says, by a
back way into Crown Court; and other dens had a passage into No. 242,
Strand. Nos. 9, 10, and 11 were known as Cadgers' Hall, and were much
frequented by beggars, and bushels of bread, thrown aside by the
professional mendicants, were found there by the police.
The "Sun" Tavern, afterwards the "Temple Bar Stores," had been a great
resort for the Tom and Jerry frolics of the Regency; and the
"Anti-Gallican" Tavern was a haunt of low sporting men, being kept by
Harry Lee, father of the first and original "tiger," invented and made
fashionable by the notorious Lord Barrymore. During the Chartist times
violent meetings were held at a club in Shire Lane. A good story is told
of one of these. A detective in disguise attended an illegal meeting,
leaving his comrades ready below. All at once a frantic hatter rose,
denounced the detective as a spy, and proposed off-hand to pitch him out
of window. Permitted by the more peaceable to depart, the policeman
scuttled downstairs as fast as he could, and, not being recognised in
his disguise, was instantly knocked down by his friends' prompt
truncheons.
In Ship Yard, close to Shire Lane, once stood a block of disreputable,
tumble-down houses, used by coiners, and known as the "Smashing Lumber."
Every room had a secret trap, and from the workshop above a shaft
reached the cellars to hurry away by means of a basket and pulley all
the apparatus at the first alarm. The first man made his fortune, but
the new police soon ransacked the den and broke up the business.
In August, 1823, Theodore Hook, the witty and the heartless, was brought
to a sponging-house kept by a sheriff's officer named Hemp, at the upper
end of Shire Lane, being under arrest for a Crown debt of L12,000, due
to the Crown for defalcations during his careless consulship at the
Mauritius. He was editor of _John Bull_ at the time, and continued while
in this horrid den to write his "Sayings and Doings," and to pour forth
for royal pay his usual scurrilous lampoons at all who supported poor,
persecuted Queen Caroline. Dr. Maginn, who had just come over from Cork
to practise Toryism, was his constant visitor, and Hemp's barred door no
doubt often shook at their reckless laughter. Hook at length left Shire
Lane for the Rules of the Bench (Temple Place) in April, 1824.
Previously to his arrest he had been living in retirement at lodgings,
in Somer's Town, with a poor girl whom he had seduced. Here he renewed
the mad scenes of his thoughtless youth with Terry, Matthews, and
wonderful old Tom Hill; and here he resumed (but not at these revels)
his former acquaintanceship with that mischievous obstructive, Wilson
Croker. After he left Shire Lane and the Rules of the Bench he went to
Putney.
In spite of all bad proclivities, Shire Lane had its fits of
respectability. In 1603 there was living there Sir Arthur Atie, Knt., in
early life secretary to the great Earl of Leicester, and afterwards
attendant on his step-son, the luckless Earl of Essex. Elias Ashmole,
the great antiquary and student in alchemy and astrology, also honoured
this lane, but he gathered in the Temple those great collections of
books and coins, some of which perished by fire, and some of which he
afterwards gave to the University of Oxford, where they were placed in a
building called, in memory of the illustrious collector, the Ashmolean
Museum.
To Mr. Noble's research we are indebted for the knowledge that in 1767
Mr. Hoole, the translator of Tasso, was living in Shire Lane, and from
thence wrote to Dr. Percy, who was collecting his "Ancient Ballads," to
ask him Dr. Wharton's address. Hoole was at that time writing a dramatic
piece called Cyrus, for Covent Garden Theatre. He seems to have been an
amiable man but a feeble poet, was an esteemed friend of Dr. Johnson,
and had a situation in the East India House.
Another illustrious tenant of Shire Lane was James Perry, the proprietor
of the _Morning Chronicle_, who died, as it was reported, worth
L130,000. That lively memoir-writer, Taylor, of the Sun, who wrote
"Monsieur Tonson," describes Perry as living in the narrow part of Shire
Lane, opposite a passage which led to the stairs from Boswell Court. He
lodged with Mr. Lunan, a bookbinder, who had married his sister, who
subsequently became the wife of that great Greek scholar, thirsty Dr.
Porson. Perry had begun life as the editor of the _Gazeteer_, but being
dismissed by a Tory proprietor, and on the _Morning Chronicle_ being
abandoned by Woodfall, some friends of Perry's bought the derelict for
L210, and he and Gray, a friend of Barett, became the joint-proprietors
of the concern. Their printer, Mr. Lambert, lived in Shire Lane, and
here the partners, too, lived for three or four years, when they removed
to the corner-house of Lancaster Court, Strand.
Bell Yard can boast of but few associations; yet Pope often visited the
dingy passage, because there for some years resided his old friend
Fortescue, then a barrister, but afterwards a judge and Master of the
Rolls. To Fortescue Pope dedicated his "Imitation of the First Satire of
Horace," published in 1733. It contains what the late Mr. Rogers, the
banker and poet, used to consider the best line Pope ever wrote, and it
is certainly almost perfect,--
"Bare the mean heart that lurks behind a star."
In that delightful collection of Pope's "Table Talk," called "Spence's
Anecdotes," we find that a chance remark of Lord Bolingbroke, on taking
up a "Horace" in Pope's sick-room, led to those fine "Imitations of
Horace" which we now possess. The "First Satire" consists of an
imaginary conversation between Pope and Fortescue, who advises him to
write no more dangerous invectives against vice or folly. It was
Fortescue who assisted Pope in writing the humorous law-report of
"Stradling _versus_ Stiles," in "Scriblerus." The intricate case is
this, and is worthy of Anstey himself: Sir John Swale, of Swale's Hall,
in Swale Dale, by the river Swale, knight, made his last will and
testament, in which, among other bequests, was this: "Out of the kind
love and respect that I bear my much-honoured and good friend, Mr.
Matthew Stradling, gent., I do bequeath unto the said Matthew Stradling,
gent., all my black and white horses." Now the testator had six black
horses, six white, and six pied horses. The debate, therefore, was
whether the said Matthew Stradling should have the said pied horses, by
virtue of the said bequest. The case, after much debate, is suddenly
terminated by a motion in arrest of judgment that the pied horses were
mares, and thereupon an inspection was prayed. This, it must be
confessed, is admirable fooling. If the Scriblerus Club had carried out
their plan of bantering the follies of the followers of every branch of
knowledge, Fortescue would no doubt have selected the law as his special
butt. "This friend of Pope," says Mr. Carruthers, "was consulted by the
poet about all his affairs, as well as those of Martha Blount, and, as
may be gathered, he gave him advice without a fee. The intercourse
between the poet and his 'learned counsel' was cordial and sincere; and
of the letters that passed between them sixty-eight have been published,
ranging from 1714 to the last year of Pope's life. They are short,
unaffected letters--more truly _letters_ than any others in the series."
Fortescue was promoted to the bench of the Exchequer in 1735, from
thence to the Common Pleas in 1738, and in 1741 was made Master of the
Rolls. Pope's letters are often addressed to "his counsel learned in the
law, at his house at the upper end of Bell Yard, near unto Lincoln's
Inn." In March, 1736, he writes of "that filthy old place, Bell Yard,
which I want them and you to quit."
Apollo Court, next Bell Yard, has little about it worthy of notice
beyond the fact that it derived its name from the great club-room at the
"Devil" Tavern, that once stood on the opposite side of Fleet Street,
and the jovialities of which we have already chronicled.