FLEET STREET (NORTHERN TRIBUTARIES--CHANCERY LANE).
The Asylum for Jewish Converts--The Rolls Chapel--Ancient
Monuments--A Speaker Expelled for Bribery--"Remember
Caesar"--Trampling on a Master of the Rolls--Sir William Grant's
Oddities--Sir John Leach--Funeral of Lord Gifford--Mrs. Clark and
the Duke of York--Wolsey in his Pomp--Strafford--"Honest Isaak"--The
Lord Keeper--Lady Fanshawe--Jack Randal--Serjeants' Inn--An Evening
with Hazlitt at the "Southampton"--Charles Lamb--Sheridan--The
Sponging Houses--The Law Institute--A Tragical Story.
Chancery, or Chancellor's, Lane, as it was first called, must have been
a mere quagmire, or cart-track, in the reign of Edward I., for Strype
tells us that at that period it had become so impassable to knight,
monk, and citizen, that John Breton, Custos of London, had it barred up,
to "hinder any harm;" and the Bishop of Chichester, whose house was
there (now Chichester Rents), kept up the bar ten years; at the end of
that time, on an inquisition of the annoyances of London, the bishop was
proscribed at an inquest for setting up two staples and a bar, "whereby
men with carts and other carriages could not pass." The bishop pleaded
John Breton's order, and the sheriff was then commanded to remove the
annoyance, and the hooded men with their carts once more cracked their
whips and whistled to their horses up and down the long disused lane.
Half-way up on the east side of Chancery Lane a dull archway, through
which can be caught glimpses of the door of an old chapel, leads to the
Rolls Court. On the site of that chapel, in the year 1233, history tells
us that Henry III. erected a Carthusian house of maintenance for
converted Jews, who there lived under a Christian governor. At a time
when Norman barons were not unaccustomed to pull out a Jew's teeth, or
to fry him on gridirons till he paid handsomely for his release,
conversion, which secured safety from such rough practices, may not have
been unfrequent. However, the converts decreasing when Edward I., after
hanging 280 Jews for clipping coin, banished the rest from the realm,
half the property of the Jews who were hung stern Edward gave to the
preachers who tried to convert the obstinate and stiff-necked
generation, and half to the Domus Conversorum, in Chancellor's Lane. In
1278 we find the converts calling themselves, in a letter sent to the
king by John the Convert, "Pauperes Coelicolae Christi." In the reign of
Richard II. a certain converted Jew received twopence a day for life;
and in the reign of Henry IV. we find the daughter of a rabbi paid by
the keepers of the house of converts a penny a day for life, by special
patent.
Edward III., in 1377, broke up the Jewish almshouse in Chancellor's
Lane, and annexed the house and chapel to the newly-created office of
Custos Rotulorum, or Keeper of the Rolls. Some of the stones the old
gaberdines have rubbed against are no doubt incorporated in the present
chapel, which, however, has been so often altered, that, like the
Highlandman's gun, it is "new stock and new barrel." The first Master of
the Rolls, in 1377, was William Burstal; but till Thomas Cromwell, in
1534, the Masters of the Rolls were generally priests, and often king's
chaplains.
The Rolls Chapel was built, says Pennant, by Inigo Jones, in 1617, at a
cost of L2,000. Dr. Donne, the poet, preached the consecration sermon.
One of the monuments belonging to the earlier chapel is that of Dr. John
Yonge, Master of the Rolls in the reign of Henry VIII. Vertue and
Walpole attribute the tomb to Torregiano, Michael Angelo's contemporary
and the sculptor of the tomb of Henry VII. at Westminster. The master is
represented by the artist (who starved himself to death at Seville) in
effigy on an altar-tomb, in a red gown and deep square cap; his hands
are crossed, his face wears an expression of calm resignation and
profound devotion. In a recess at the back is a head of Christ, and an
angel's head appears on either side in high relief. Another monument of
interest in this quiet, legal chapel is that of Sir Edward Bruce,
created by James I. Baron of Kinloss. He was one of the crafty
ambassadors sent by wily James to openly congratulate Elizabeth on the
failure of the revolt of Essex, but secretly to commence a
correspondence with Cecil. The place of Master of the Rolls was Brace's
reward for this useful service. The ex-master lies with his head resting
on his hand, in the "toothache" attitude ridiculed by the old
dramatists. His hair is short, his beard long, and he wears a long
furred robe. Before him kneels a man in armour, possibly his son, Lord
Kinloss, who, three years after his father's death, perished in a most
savage duel with Sir Edward Sackville, ancestor to the Earls of Elgin
and Aylesbury. Another fine monument is that of Sir Richard Allington,
of Horseheath, Cambridgeshire, brother-in law of Sir William Cordall, a
former Master of the Rolls, who died in 1561. Clad in armour, Sir
Richard kneels,--
"As for past sins he would atone,
By saying endless prayers in stone."
His wife faces him, and beneath on a tablet kneel their three daughters.
Sir Richard's charitable widow lived after his death in Holborn, in a
house long known as Allington Place. Many of the past masters sleep
within these walls, and amongst them Sir John Trevor, who died in 1717
(George I.), and Sir John Strange; but the latter has not had inscribed
over his bones, as Pennant remarks, the old punning epitaph,--
"Here lies an honest lawyer--that is _Strange_!"
The above-mentioned Sir John Trevor, while Speaker of the House of
Commons, being denounced for bribery, was compelled himself to preside
over the subsequent debate--an unparalleled disgrace. The indictment
ran:--
"That Sir John Trevor, Speaker of the House, receiving a gratuity of
1,000 guineas from the City of London, after the passing of the Orphans'
Bill, is guilty of high crime and misdemeanour." Trevor was himself, as
Speaker, compelled to put this resolution from the chair. The "Ayes"
were not met by a single "No," and the culprit was required to
officially announce that, in the unanimous opinion of the House over
which he presided, he stood convicted of a high crime. "His expulsion
from the House," says Mr. Jeaffreson, in his "Book about Lawyers,"
"followed in due course. One is inclined to think that in these days no
English gentleman could outlive such humiliation for four-and-twenty
hours. Sir John Trevor not only survived the humiliation, but remained a
personage of importance in London society. Convicted of bribery, he was
not called upon to refund the bribe; and expelled from the House of
Commons, he was not driven from his judicial office. He continued to be
the Master of the Rolls till his death, which took place on May 20,
1717, in his official mansion in Chancery Lane. His retention of office
is easily accounted for. Having acted as a vile negotiator between the
two great political parties, they were equally afraid of him. Neither
the Whigs nor the Tories dared to demand his expulsion from office,
fearing that in revenge he would make revelations alike disgraceful to
all parties concerned."
The arms of Sir Robert Cecil and Sir Harbottle Grimstone gleam in the
chapel windows. Swift's detestation, Bishop Burnet, the historian and
friend of William of Orange, was preacher here for nine years, and here
delivered his celebrated sermon, "Save me from the lion's mouth: thou
hast heard me from the horns of the unicorn." Burnet was appointed by
Sir Harbottle, who was Master of the Rolls; and in his "Own Times" he
has inserted a warm eulogy of Sir Harbottle as a worthy and pious man.
Atterbury, the Jacobite Bishop of Rochester, was also preacher here; nor
can we forget that amiable man and great theologian, Bishop Butler, the
author of the "Analogy of Religion." Butler, the son of a Dissenting
tradesman at Wantage, was for a long time lost in a small country
living, a loss to the Church which Archbishop Blackburne lamented to
Queen Caroline. "Why, I thought he had been dead!" exclaimed the queen.
"No, madam," replied the archbishop; "he is only buried." In 1718 Butler
was appointed preacher at the Rolls by Sir Joseph. Jekyll. This
excellent man afterwards became Bishop of Bristol, and died Bishop of
Durham.
[Illustration: WOLSEY IN CHANCERY LANE (_see page 81_).]
A few anecdotes about past dignitaries at the Rolls. Of Sir Julius
Caesar, Master of the Rolls in the reign of Charles I., Lord Clarendon,
in his "History of the Rebellion," tells a story too good to be passed
by. This Sir Julius, having by right of office the power of appointing
the six clerks, designed one of the profitable posts for his son, Robert
Caesar. One of the clerks dying before Sir Julius could appoint his son,
the imperious treasurer, Sir Richard Weston, promised his place to a
dependant of his, who gave him for it L6,000 down. The vexation of old
Sir Julius at this arbitrary step so moved his friends, that King
Charles was induced to promise Robert Caesar the next post in the clerks'
office that should fall vacant, and the Lord Treasurer was bound by this
promise. One day the Earl of Tullibardine, passionately pressing the
treasurer about his business, was told by Sir Richard that he had quite
forgotten the matter, but begged for a memorandum, that he might remind
the king that very afternoon. The earl then wrote on a small bit of
paper the words, "Remember Caesar!" and Sir Richard, without reading it,
placed it carefully in a little pocket, where he said he kept all the
memorials first to be transacted. Many days passed, and the ambitious
treasurer forgot all about Caesar. At length one night, changing his
clothes, his servant brought him the notes and papers from his pocket,
which he looked over according to his custom. Among these he found the
little billet with merely the words "Remember Caesar!" and on the sight
of this the arrogant yet timid courtier was utterly confounded. Turning
pale, he sent for his bosom friends, showed them the paper, and held a
solemn deliberation over it. It was decided that it must have been
dropped into his hand by some secret friend, as he was on his way to the
priory lodgings. Every one agreed that some conspiracy was planned
against his life by his many and mighty enemies, and that Caesar's fate
might soon be his unless great precautions were taken. The friends
therefore persuaded him to be at once indisposed, and not venture forth
in that neighbourhood, nor to admit to an audience any but persons of
undoubted affection. At night the gates were shut and barred early, and
the porter solemnly enjoined not to open them to any one, or to venture
on even a moment's sleep. Some servants were sent to watch with him, and
the friends sat up all night to await the event. "Such houses," says
Clarendon, who did not like the treasurer, "are always in the morning
haunted by early suitors;" but it was very late before any one could now
get admittance into the house, the porter having tasted some of the
arrears of sleep which he owed to himself for his night watching, which
he accounted for to his acquaintance by whispering to them "that his
lord should have been killed that night, which had kept all the house
from going to bed." Shortly afterwards, however, the Earl of
Tullibardine asking the treasurer whether he had remembered Caesar, the
treasurer quickly recollected the ground of his perturbation, could not
forbear imparting it to his friends, and so the whole jest came to be
discovered.
[Illustration: IZAAK WALTON'S HOUSE (_see page 82_).]
In 1614, L6 12s. 6d. was claimed by Sir Julius Caesar for paving the
part of Chancery Lane over against the Rolls Gate.
Sir Joseph Jekyll, the Master of the Rolls in the reign of George I.,
was an ancestor of that witty Jekyll, the friend and adviser of George
IV. Sir Joseph was very active in introducing a Bill for increasing the
duty on gin, in consequence of which he became so odious to the mob that
they one day hustled and trampled on him in a riot in Lincoln's Inn
Fields. Hogarth, who painted his "Gin Lane" to express his alarm and
disgust at the growing intemperance of the London poor, has in one of
his extraordinary pictures represented a low fellow writing J.J. under a
gibbet.
Sir William Grant, who succeeded Lord Alvanley, was the last Master but
one that resided in the Rolls. He had practised at the Canadian bar, and
on returning to England attracted the attention of Lord Thurlow, then
chancellor. He was an admirable speaker in the House, and even Fox is
said to have girded himself tighter for an encounter with such an
adversary. "He used," says Mr. Cyrus Jay, in his amusing book, "The
Law," "to sit from five o'clock till one, and seldom spoke during that
time. He dined before going into court, his allowance being a bottle of
Madeira at dinner and a bottle of port after. He dined alone, and the
unfortunate servant was expected to anticipate his master's wishes by
intuition. Sir William never spoke if he could help it. On one occasion
when the favourite dish of a leg of pork was on the table, the servant
saw by Sir William's face that something was wrong, but he could not
tell what. Suddenly a thought flashed upon him--the Madeira was not on
the table. He at once placed the decanter before Sir William, who
immediately flung it into the grate, exclaiming, "Mustard, you fool!""
Sir John Leach, another Master of the Rolls, was the son of a tradesman
at Bedford, afterwards a merchant's clerk and an embryo architect. Mr.
Canning appointed him Master of the Rolls, an office previously, it has
been said, offered to Mr. Brougham. Leach was fond, says Mr. Jay, of
saying sharp, bitter things in a bland and courtly voice. "No submission
could ameliorate his temper, no opposition lend asperity to his voice."
In court two large fan shades were always placed in a way to shade him
from the light, and to render Sir John entirely invisible. "After the
counsel who was addressing the court had finished, and resumed his seat,
there would be an awful pause for a minute or two, when at length out of
the darkness which surrounded the chair of justice would come a voice,
distinct, awful, solemn, but with the solemnity of suppressed
anger--'the bill is dismissed with costs.'" No explanations, no long
series of arguments were advanced to support the conclusion. The
decision was given with the air of a man who knew he was right, and that
only folly or villainy could doubt the propriety of his judgments. Sir
John was the Prince Regent's great adviser during Queen Caroline's
trial, and assisted in getting up the evidence. "How often," says Mr.
Jay, "have I seen him, when walking through the Green Park between four
and five o'clock in the afternoon, knock at the private door of Carlton
Palace. I have seen him go in four or five days following."
Gifford was another eminent Master of the Rolls, though he did not hold
the office long. He first attracted attention when a lawyer's clerk by
his clever observations on a case in which he was consulted by his
employers, in the presence of an important client. The high opinion
which Lord Ellenborough formed of his talents induced Lord Liverpool to
appoint him Solicitor-General. While in the House he had frequently to
encounter Sir Samuel Romilly. Mr. Cyrus Jay has an interesting anecdote
about the funeral of Lord Gifford, who was buried in the Rolls Chapel.
"I was," he says, "in the little gallery when the procession came into
the chapel, and Lord Eldon and Lord Chief Justice Abbott were placed in
a pew by themselves. I could observe everything that took place in the
pew, it being a small chapel, and noted that Lord Eldon was very shaky,
and during the most solemn part of the service saw him touch the Chief
Justice. I have no doubt he asked for his snuff-box, for the snuff-box
was produced, and he took a large pinch of snuff. The Chief Justice was
a very great snuff-taker, but he only took it up one nostril. I kept my
eye on the pinch of snuff, and saw that Lord Eldon, the moment he had
taken it from the box, threw it away. I was sorry at the time, and was
astonished at the deception practised by so great a man, with the grave
yawning before him."
When Sir Thomas Plumer was Master of the Rolls, and gave a succession of
dinners to the Bar, Romilly, alluding to Lord Eldon's stinginess, said,
"Verily he is working off the arrears of the Lord Chancellor."
At the back of the Rolls Chapel, in Bowling-Pin Alley, Bream's Buildings
(No. 28, Chancery Lane), there once lived, according to party calumny, a
journeyman labourer, named Thompson, whose clever and pretty daughter,
the wife of Clark, a bricklayer, became the mischievous mistress of the
good-natured but weak Duke of York. After making great scandal about the
sale of commissions obtained by her influence, the shrewd woman wrote
some memoirs, 10,000 copies of which, Mr. Timbs records, were, the year
after, burnt at a printer's in Salisbury Square, upon condition of her
debts being paid, and an annuity of L400 granted her.
Wilberforce's unscrupulous party statement, that Mrs. Clark was a low,
vulgar, and extravagant woman, was entirely untrue. Mrs. Clark, however
imprudent and devoid of virtue, was no more the daughter of a journeyman
bricklayer than she was the daughter of Pope Pius. She was really, as
Mr. Cyrus Redding, who knew most of the political secrets of his day,
has proved, the unfortunate granddaughter of that unfortunate man,
Theodore, King of Corsica, and daughter of even a more unhappy man,
Colonel Frederick, a brave, well-read gentleman, who, under the pressure
of a temporary monetary difficulty, occasioned by the dishonourable
conduct of a friend, blew out his brains in the churchyard of St.
Margaret's, Westminster. In 1798 a poem, written, we believe, by Mrs.,
then Miss Clark, called "Ianthe," was published by subscription at
Hookham's, in New Bond Street, for the benefit of Colonel Frederick's
daughter and children, and dedicated to the Prince of Wales. The girl
married an Excise officer, much older than herself, and became the
mistress of the Duke of York, to whom probably she had applied for
assistance, or subscriptions to her poem. The fact is, the duke's vices
were turned, as vices frequently are, into scourges for his own back. He
was a jovial, good-natured, affable, selfish man, an incessant and
reckless gambler, quite devoid of all conscience about debts, and,
indeed, of moral principle in general. When he got tired of Mrs. Clark,
he meanly and heartlessly left her, with a promised annuity which he
never paid, and with debts mutually incurred at their house in
Gloucester Place, which he shamefully allowed to fall upon her. In
despair and revengeful rage the discarded mistress sought the eager
enemies whom the duke's careless neglect had sown round him, and the
scandal broke forth. The Prince of Wales, who was as fond of his brother
as he could be of any one, was greatly vexed at the exposure, and sent
Lord Moira to buy up the correspondence from the Radical bookseller, Sir
Richard Phillips, who had advanced money upon it, and was glorying in
the escapade.
Mr. Timbs informs us that Sir Richard Phillips, used to narrate the
strange and mysterious story of the real secret cause of the Duke of
York scandal. The exposure originated in the resentment of one M'Callum
against Sir Thomas Picton, who, as Governor of Trinidad, had, among
other arbitrary acts, imprisoned M'Callum in an underground dungeon. On
getting to England he sought justice; but, finding himself baffled, he
first published his travels in Trinidad, to expose Picton; then ferreted
out charges against the War Office, and at last, through Colonel Wardle,
brought forward the notorious great-coat contract. This being negatived
by a Ministerial majority, he then traced Mrs. Clark, and arranged the
whole of the exposure for Wardle and others. To effect this in the teeth
of power, though destitute of resources, he wrought night and day for
months. He lodged in a garret in Hungerford Market, and often did not
taste food for twenty-four hours. He lived to see the Duke of York
dismissed from office, had time to publish a short narrative, then died
of exhaustion and want.
An eye-witness of Mrs. Clark's behaviour at the bar of the House of
Commons pronounced her replies as full of sharpness against the more
insolent of her adversaries, but her bearing is described as being "full
of grace." Mr. Redding, who had read twenty or thirty of this lady's
letters, tells us that they showed a good education in the writer.
A writer who was present during her examination before the House of
Commons, has pleasantly described the singular scene. "I was," he says,
"in the House of Commons when Mary Anne Clark first made her appearance
at the bar, dressed in her light-blue pelisse, light muff and tippet.
She was a pretty woman, rather of a slender make. It was debated whether
she should have a chair; this occasioned a hubbub, and she was asked who
the person with her deeply veiled was. She replied that she was her
friend. The lady was instantly ordered to withdraw, then a chair was
ordered for Mrs. Clark, and she seemed to pluck up courage, for when she
was asked about the particulars of an annuity promised to be settled on
her by the Duke of York, she said, pointing with her hand, 'You may ask
Mr. William Adam there, as he knows all about it.' She was asked if she
was quite certain that General Clavering ever was at any of her parties;
she replied, 'So certain, that I always told him he need not use any
ceremony, but come in his boots.' It will be remembered that General C.
was sent to Newgate for prevarication on that account, _not having
recollected in time_ this circumstance.
"Perceval fought the battle manfully. The Duke of York could not be
justified for some of his acts--for instance, giving a footboy of Mrs.
Clark's a commission in the army, and allowing an improper influence to
be exerted over him in his thoughtless moments; but that the trial
originated in pique and party spirit, there can be no doubt; and, as he
justly merited, Colonel Wardle, the prosecutor in the case, sunk into
utter oblivion, whilst the Duke of York, the soldier's friend and the
beloved of the army, was, after a short period (having been superseded
by Sir David Dundas), replaced as commander-in-chief, and died deeply
regretted and fully meriting the colossal statue erected to him, with
his hand pointing to the Horse Guards."
Cardinal Wolsey lived, at some period of his extraordinary career, in a
house in Chancery Lane, at the Holborn end, and on the east side,
opposite the Six Clerks' Office. We do not know what rank the proud
favourite held at this time, whether he was almoner to the king, privy
councillor, Canon of Windsor, Bishop of Lincoln, Archbishop of York, or
Cardinal of the Cecilia. We like to think that down that dingy legal
lane he rode on his way to Westminster Hall, with all that magnificence
described by his faithful gentleman usher, Cavendish. He would come out
of his chamber, we read, about eight o'clock in his cardinal's robes of
scarlet taffeta and crimson satin, with a black velvet tippet edged with
sable round his neck, holding in his hand an orange filled with a sponge
containing aromatic vinegar, in case the crowd of suitors should in
commode him. Before him was borne the broad seal of England, and the
scarlet cardinal's hat. A sergeant-at-arms preceded him bearing a great
mace of silver, and two gentlemen carrying silver plates. At the
hall-door he mounted his mule, trapped with crimson and having a saddle
covered with crimson velvet, while the gentlemen ushers, bareheaded,
cried,--"On, masters, before, and make room for my lord cardinal." When
Wolsey was mounted he was preceded by his two cross-bearers and his two
pillow-bearers, all upon horses trapped in scarlet; and four footmen
with pole-axes guarded the cardinal till he came to Westminster. And
every Sunday, when he repaired to the king's court at Greenwich, he
landed at the Three Cranes, in the Vintrey, and took water again at
Billingsgate. "He had," says Cavendish, "a long season, ruling all
things in the realm appertaining to the king, by his wisdom, and all
other matters of foreign regions with whom the king had any occasion to
meddle, and then he fell like Lucifer, never to rise again. Here," says
Cavendish, "is the end and fall of pride; for I assure you he was in his
time the proudest man alive, having more regard to the honour of his
person than to his spiritual functions, wherein he should have expressed
more meekness and humility."
One of the greatest names connected with Chancery Lane is that of the
unfortunate Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, who, after leading his master,
Charles I., on the path to the scaffold, was the first to lay his head
upon the block. Wentworth, the son of a Yorkshire gentleman, was born in
1593 in Chancery Lane, at the house of Mr. Atkinson, his maternal
grandfather, a bencher of Lincoln's Inn. At first an enemy of
Buckingham, the king's favourite, and opposed to the Court, he was won
over by a peerage and the counsels of his friend Lord Treasurer Weston.
He soon became a headlong and unscrupulous advocate of arbitrary power,
and, as Lord Deputy of Ireland, did his best to raise an army for the
king and to earn his Court name of "Thorough." Impeached for high
treason, and accused by Sir Henry Vane of a design to subdue England by
force, he was forsaken by the weak king and condemned to the block. "Put
not your trust in princes," he said, when he heard of the king's consent
to the execution of so faithful a servant, "nor in any child of man, for
in them is no salvation." He died on Tower Hill, with calm and undaunted
courage, expressing his devotion to the Church of England, his loyalty
to the king, and his earnest desire for the peace and welfare of the
kingdom.
Of this steadfast and dangerous man Clarendon has left one of those
Titianesque portraits in which he excelled. "He was a man," says the
historian, "of great parts and extraordinary endowment of nature, and of
great observation and a piercing judgment both into things and persons;
but his too good skill in persons made him judge the worse of things,
and so that upon the matter he wholly relied upon himself; and
discerning many defects in most men, he too much neglected what they
said or did. Of all his passions his pride was most predominant, which a
moderate exercise of ill fortune might have corrected and reformed; and
which was by the hand of Heaven strangely punished by bringing his
destruction on him by two things that he most despised--the people and
Sir Harry Vane. In a word, the epitaph which Plutarch records that Sylla
wrote for himself may not be unfitly applied to him--'that no man did
ever pass him either in doing good to his friends or in doing harm to
his enemies.'"
Izaak Walton, that amiable old angler, lived for some years (1627 to
1644) of his happy and contented life in a house (No. 120) on the west
side of Chancery Lane (Fleet Street end). This was many years before he
published his "Complete Angler," which did not, indeed, appear till the
year before the Restoration. Yet we imagine that at this time the honest
citizen often sallied forth to the Lea banks with his friends, the Roes,
on those fine cool May mornings upon which he expatiates so pleasantly.
A quiet man and a lover of peace was old Izaak; and we may be sure no
jingle of money ever hurried him back from the green fields where the
lark, singing as she ascended higher and higher into the air, and nearer
to the heavens, excelled, as he says, in her simple piety "all those
little nimble musicians of the air (her fellows) who warble forth their
various ditties with which Nature has furnished them, to the shame of
art." Refreshed and exhilarated by the pure country air, we can fancy
Walton returning homeward to his Chancery Lane shop, humming to himself
that fine old song of Marlowe's which the milkmaid sung to him as he sat
under the honeysuckle-hedge out of the shower,--
"Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, or hills, or field,
Or woods, or steepy mountain, yield."
How Byron had the heart to call a man who loved such simple pleasures,
and was so guileless and pure-hearted as Walton, "a cruel old coxcomb,"
and to wish that in his gullet he had a hook, and "a strong trout to
pull it," we never could understand; but Byron was no angler, and we
suppose he thought Walton's advice about sewing up frogs' mouths, &c.,
somewhat hard-hearted.
North, in his life of that faithful courtier of Charles II., Lord Keeper
Guildford, mentions that his lordship "settled himself in the great
brick house in Serjeants' Inn, near Chancery Lane, which was formerly
the Lord Chief Justice Hyde's, and that he held it till he had the Great
Seal, and some time after. When his lordship lived in this house, before
his lady began to want her health, he was in the height of all the
felicity his nature was capable of. He had a seat in St. Dunstan's
Church appropriated to him, and constantly kept the church in the
mornings, and so his house was to his mind; and having, with leave, a
door into Serjeants' Inn garden, he passed daily with ease to his
chambers, dedicated to business and study. His friends he enjoyed at
home, and politic ones often found him out at his chambers." He rebuilt
Serjeants' Inn Hall, which had become poor and ruinous, and improved all
the dwellings in Chancery Lane from Jackanapes Alley down to Fleet
Street. He also drained the street for the first time, and had a rate
levied on the unwilling inhabitants, after which his at first reluctant
neighbours thanked him warmly. This same Lord Keeper, a time-server and
friend of arbitrary power, according to Burnet, seems to have been a
learned and studious man, for he encouraged the sale of barometers and
wrote a philosophical essay on music. It was this timid courtier that
unscrupulous Jeffreys vexed by spreading a report that he had been seen
riding on a rhinoceros, then one of the great sights of London. Jeffreys
was at the time hoping to supersede the Lord Keeper in office, and was
anxious to cover him with ridicule.
Besides the Caesars, Cecils, Throckmortons, Lincolns, Sir John Franklin,
and Edward Reeve, who, according to Mr. Noble, all resided in Chancery
Lane, when it was a fashionable legal quarter, we must not forget that
on the site of No. 115 lived Sir Richard Fanshawe, the ambassador sent
by Charles II. to arrange his marriage with the Portuguese princess.
This accomplished man, who translated Guarini's "Pastor Fido," and the
"Lusiad" of Camoens, died at Madrid in 1666. His brave yet gentle wife,
who wrote some interesting memoirs, gives a graphic account of herself
and her husband taking leave of his royal master, Charles I., at Hampton
Court. At parting, the king saluted her, and she prayed God to preserve
his majesty with long life and happy years. The king stroked her on the
cheek, and said, "Child, if God pleaseth, it shall be so; but both you
and I must submit to God's will, for you know whose hands I am in." Then
turning to Sir Richard, Charles said, "Be sure, Dick, to tell my son all
that I have said, and deliver these letters to my wife. Pray God bless
her; and I hope I shall do well." Then, embracing Sir Richard, the king
added, "Thou hast ever been an honest man, and I hope God will bless
thee, and make thee a happy servant to my son, whom I have charged in my
letter to continue his love and trust to you; and I do promise you, if I
am ever restored to my dignity, I will bountifully reward you both for
your services and sufferings." "Thus," says the noble Royalist lady,
enthusiastically, "did we part from that glorious sun that within a few
months after was extinguished, to the grief of all Christians who are
not forsaken of their God."
No. 45 (east side) is the "Hole in the Wall" Tavern, kept early in the
century by Jack Randal, _alias_ "Nonpareil," a fighting man, whom Tom
Moore visited, says Mr. Noble, to get materials for his "Tom Cribb's
Memorial to Congress," "Randal's Diary," and other satirical poems.
Hazlitt, when living in Southampton Buildings, describes going to this
haunt of the fancy the night before the great fight between Neate, the
Bristol butcher, and Hickman, the gas-man, to find out where the
encounter was to take place, although Randal had once rather too
forcibly expelled him for some trifling complaint about a chop. Hazlitt
went down to the fight with Thurtell, the betting man, who afterwards
murdered Mr. Weare, a gambler and bill-discounter of Lyon's Inn. In
Byron's early days taverns like Randal's were frequented by all the men
about town, who considered that to wear bird's-eye handkerchiefs and
heavy-caped box coats was the height of manliness and fashion.
Chichester Rents, a sorry place now, preserves a memory of the site of
the town-house of the Bishops of Chichester. It was originally built in
a garden belonging to one John Herberton, granted the bishops by Henry
III., who excepted it out of the charter of the Jew converts' house, now
the Rolls Chapel.
Serjeants' Inn, originally designed for serjeants alone, is now open to
all students, though it still more especially affects the Freres
Serjens, or Fratres Servientes, who derived their name originally from
being the lower grade or servitors of the Knights Templars. Serjeants
still address each other as "brother," and indeed, as far as Cain and
Abel go, the brotherhood of lawyers cannot be disputed. The old formula
at Westminster, when a new serjeant approached the judges, was, "I think
I see a brother."
One of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims was a "serjeant of law." This inn
dates back as early as the reign of Henry IV., when it was held under a
lease from the Bishop of Ely. In 1442 a William Antrobus, citizen and
taylor of London, held it at the rent of ten marks a year. In the hall
windows are emblazoned the arms of Lord Keeper Guildford (1684). The
inn was rebuilt, all but the old dining-hall, by Sir Robert Smirke, in
the years 1837-38.
[Illustration: OLD SERJEANTS' INN (_see page 83_).]
The humours of Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, have been admirably
described by Hazlitt, and are well condensed by a contemporaneous
writer, of whose labours we gratefully avail ourselves.
"In 1820 a ray of light strikes the Buildings, for one of the least
popular, but by no means the least remarkable, of the Charles Lamb set
came to lodge at No. 9, half-way down on the right-hand side as you come
from Holborn. There for four years lived, taught, wrote, and suffered
that admirable essayist, fine-art and theatrical critic, thoughtful
metaphysician, and miserable man, William Hazlitt. He lodged at the
house of Mr. Walker, a tailor, who was blessed with two fair daughters,
with one of whom (Sarah) Hazlitt, then a married man, fell madly in
love. He declared she was like the Madonna (she seems really to have
been a cold, calculating flirt, rather afraid of her wild lover). To his
'Liber Amoris,' a most stultifying series of dialogues between himself
and the lodging-house keeper's daughter, the author appended a drawing
of an antique gem (Lucretia), which he declared to be the very image of
the obdurate tailor's daughter. This untoward but remarkably gifted man,
whom Lamb admired, if he did not love, and whom Leigh Hunt regarded as
a spirit highly endowed, usually spent his evenings at the
'Southampton;' as we take it, that coffee-house on the left hand, next
the Patent Office, as you enter the Buildings from Chancery Lane. It is
an unpretending public-house now, with the quiet, bald-looking
coffee-room altered, but still one likes to wander past the place and
think that Hazlitt, his hand still warm with the grip of Lamb's, has
entered it often. In an essay on 'Coffee-House Politicians,' in the
second volume of his 'Table Talk,' Hazlitt has sketched the coterie at
the 'Southampton,' in a manner not unworthy of Steele. The picture wants
Sir Richard's mellow, Jan Steen colour, but it possesses much of
Wilkie's dainty touch and keen appreciation of character. Let us call
up, he says, the old customers at the 'Southampton' from the dead, and
take a glass with them. First of all comes Mr. George Kirkpatrick, who
was admired by William, the sleek, neat waiter (who had a music-master
to teach him the flageolet two hours every morning before the maids were
up), for his temper in managing an argument. Mr. Kirkpatrick was one of
those bland, simpering, self-complacent men, who, unshakable from the
high tower of their own self-satisfaction, look down upon your arguments
from their magnificent elevation. 'I will explain,' was his
condescending phrase. If you corrected the intolerable magnifico, he
corrected your correction; if you hinted at an obvious blunder, he was
always aware what your mistaken objection would be. He and his clique
would spend a whole evening on a wager as to whether the first edition
of Dr. Johnson's 'Dictionary' was quarto or folio. The confident
assertions, the cautious ventures, the length of time demanded to
ascertain the fact, the precise terms of the forfeit, the provisoes for
getting out of paying it at last, led to a long and inextricable
discussion. Kirkpatrick's vanity, however, one night led him into a
terrible pitfall. He recklessly ventured money on the fact that _The
Mourning Bride_ was written by Shakespeare; headlong he fell, and
ruefully he partook of the bowl of punch for which he had to pay. As a
rule his nightly outlay seldom exceeded sevenpence. Four hours' good
conversation for sevenpence made the 'Southampton' the cheapest of
London clubs.
[Illustration: HAZLITT (_see page 87_).]
"Kirkpatrick's brother Roger was the Mercutio to his Shallow. Roger was
a rare fellow, 'of the driest humour and the nicest tact, of infinite
sleights and evasions, of a picked phraseology, and the very soul of
mimicry.' He had the mind of a harlequin; his wit was acrobatic, and
threw somersaults. He took in a character at a glance, and threw a pun
at you as dexterously as a fly-fisher casts his fly over a trout's nose.
'How finely,' says Hazlitt, in his best and heartiest mood; 'how finely,
how truly, how gaily he took off the company at the "Southampton!" Poor
and faint are my sketches compared to his! It was like looking into a
camera-obscura--you saw faces shining and speaking. The smoke curled,
the lights dazzled, the oak wainscoting took a higher polish. There was
old S., tall and gaunt, with his couplet from Pope and case at Nisi
Prius; Mudford, eyeing the ventilator and lying perdu for a moral; and
H. and A. taking another friendly finishing glass. These and many more
windfalls of character he gave us in thought, word, and action. I
remember his once describing three different persons together to myself
and Martin Burney [a bibulous nephew of Madame d'Arblay's and a great
friend of Charles Lamb's], namely, the manager of a country theatre, a
tragic and a comic performer, till we were ready to tumble on the floor
with laughing at the oddity of their humours, and at Roger's
extraordinary powers of ventriloquism, bodily and mental; and Burney
said (such was the vividness of the scene) that when he awoke the next
morning he wondered what three amusing characters he had been in company
with the evening before.' He was fond also of imitating old Mudford, of
the _Courier_, a fat, pert, dull man, who had left the _Morning
Chronicle_ in 1814, just as Hazlitt joined it, and was renowned for
having written a reply to 'Coelebs.' He would enter a room, fold up his
great-coat, take out a little pocket volume, lay it down to think,
rubbing all the time the fleshy calf of his leg with dull gravity and
intense and stolid self-complacency, and start out of his reveries when
addressed with the same inimitable vapid exclamation of 'Eh!' Dr.
Whittle, a large, plain-faced Moravian preacher, who had turned
physician, was another of his chosen impersonations. Roger represented
the honest, vain, empty man purchasing an ounce of tea by stratagem to
astonish a favoured guest; he portrayed him on the summit of a narrow,
winding, and very steep staircase, contemplating in airy security the
imaginary approach of duns. This worthy doctor on one occasion, when
watching Sarratt, the great chess-player, turned suddenly to Hazlitt,
and said, 'I think I could dance. I'm sure I could; aye, I could dance
like Vestris.' Such were the odd people Roger caricatured on the
memorable night he pulled off his coat to eat beefsteaks on equal terms
with Martin Burney.
"Then there was C., who, from his slender neck, shrillness of voice, and
his ever-ready quibble and laugh at himself, was for some time taken for
a lawyer, with which folk the Buildings were then, as now, much
infested. But on careful inquiry he turned out to be a patent-medicine
seller, who at leisure moments had studied Blackstone and the statutes
at large from mere sympathy with the neighbourhood. E. came next, a rich
tradesman, Tory in grain, and an everlasting babbler on the strong side
of politics; querulous, dictatorial, and with a peevish whine in his
voice like a beaten schoolboy. He was a stout advocate for the Bourbons
and the National Debt, and was duly disliked by Hazlitt, we may feel
assured. The Bourbons he affirmed to be the choice of the French people,
the Debt necessary to the salvation of these kingdoms. To a little
inoffensive man, 'of a saturnine aspect but simple conceptions,' Hazlitt
once heard him say grandly, 'I will tell you, sir. I will make my
proposition so clear that you will be convinced of the truth of my
observation in a moment. Consider, sir, the number of trades that would
be thrown out of employ if the Debt were done away with. What would
become of the porcelain manufacture without it?' He would then show the
company a flower, the production of his own garden, calling it a unique
and curious exotic, and hold forth on his carnations, his country-house,
and his old English hospitality, though he never invited a friend to
come down to a Sunday's dinner. Mean and ostentatious, insolent and
servile, he did not know whether to treat those he conversed with as if
they were his porters or his customers. The 'prentice boy was not yet
ground out of him, and his imagination hovered between his grand new
country mansion and the workhouse. Opposed to him and every one else was
K., a Radical reformer and tedious logician, who wanted to make short
work of the taxes and National Debt, reconstruct the Government from
first principles, and shatter the Holy Alliance at a blow. He was for
crushing out the future prospects of society as with a machine, and for
starting where the French Revolution had begun five-and-twenty years
before. He was a born disturber, and never agreed to more than half a
proposition at a time. Being very stingy, he generally brought a bunch
of radishes with him for economy, and would give a penny to a band of
musicians at the door, observing that he liked their performance better
than all the opera-squalling. His objections to the National Debt arose
from motives of personal economy; and he objected to Mr. Canning's
pension because it took a farthing a year out of his own pocket.
"Another great sachem at the 'Southampton' was Mr. George Mouncey, of
the firm of Mouncey & Gray, solicitors, Staple's Inn. 'He was,' says
Hazlitt, 'the oldest frequenter of the place and the latest sitter-up;
well-informed, unobtrusive, and that sturdy old English character, a
lover of truth and justice. Mouncey never approved of anything unfair or
illiberal, and, though good-natured and gentleman-like, never let an
absurd or unjust proposition pass him without expressing dissent.' He
was much liked by Hazlitt, for they had mutual friends, and Mouncey had
been intimate with most of the wits and men about town for twenty years
before. 'He had in his time known Tobin, Wordsworth, Porson, Wilson,
Paley, and Erskine. He would speak of Paley's pleasantry and unassuming
manners, and describe Porson's deep potations and long quotations at the
"Cider Cellars."' Warming with his theme, Hazlitt goes on in his essay
to etch one memorable evening at the 'Southampton.' A few only were
left, 'like stars at break of day,' the discourse and the ale were
growing sweeter; but Mouncey, Hazlitt, and a man named Wells, alone
remained. The conversation turned on the frail beauties of Charles II.'s
Court, and from thence passed to Count Grammont, their gallant, gay, and
not over-scrupulous historian. Each one cited his favourite passage in
turn; from Jacob Hall, the rope-dancer, they progressed by pleasant
stages of talk to pale Miss Churchill and her fortunate fall from her
horse. Wells then spoke of 'Apuleius and his Golden Ass,' 'Cupid and
Psyche,' and the romance of 'Heliodorus, Theogenes, and Chariclea,'
which, as he affirmed, opened with a pastoral landscape equal to one of
Claude's. 'The night waned,' says the delightful essayist, 'but our
glasses brightened, enriched with the pearls of Grecian story. Our
cup-bearer slept in a corner of the room, like another Endymion, in the
pale rays of a half-extinguished lamp, and, starting up at a fresh
summons for a further supply, he swore it was too late, and was
inexorable to entreaty. Mouncey sat with his hat on and a hectic flush
in his face while any hope remained, but as soon as we rose to go, he
dashed out of the room as quick as lightning, determined not to be the
last. I said some time after to the waiter that "Mr. Mouncey was no
flincher." "Oh, sir!" says he, "you should have known him formerly. Now
he is quite another man: he seldom stays later than one or two; then he
used to help sing catches, and all sorts."
"It was at the 'Southampton' that George Cruikshank, Hazlitt, and Hone
used to often meet, to discuss subjects for Hone's squibs on the Queen's
trial (1820). Cruikshank would sometimes dip his finger in ale and
sketch a suggestion on the table.
"While living in that state of half-assumed love frenzy at No. 9,
Southampton Buildings, Hazlitt produced some of his best work. His noble
lectures on the age of Elizabeth had just been delivered, and he was
writing for the _Edinburgh Review_, the _New Monthly_, and the London
_Magazine_, in conjunction with Charles Lamb, Reynolds, Barry Cornwall,
De Quincey, and Wainwright ('Janus Weathercock') the poisoner. In 1821
he published his volume of 'Dramatic Criticisms,' and his subtle 'Table
Talk;' in 1823, his foolish 'Liber Amoris;' and in 1824, his fine
'Sketches of the Principal English Picture Galleries.'
"Hazlitt, who was born in 1778 and died in 1830, was the son of a
Unitarian minister of Irish descent. Hazlitt was at first intended for
an artist, but, coming to London, soon drifted into literature. He
became a parliamentary reporter to the _Morning Chronicle_ in 1813, and
in that wearing occupation injured his naturally weak digestion. In 1814
he succeeded Mudford as theatrical critic on Perry's paper. In 1815 he
joined the _Champion_, and in 1818 wrote for the _Yellow Dwarf_.
Hazlitt's habits at No. 9 were enough to have killed a rhinoceros. He
sat up half the night, and rose about one or two. He then remained
drinking the strongest black tea, nibbling a roll, and reading (no
appetite, of course) till about five p.m. At supper at the
'Southampton,' his jaded stomach then rousing, he ate a heavy meal of
steak or game, frequently drinking during his long and suicidal vigils
three or four quarts of water. Wine and spirits he latterly never
touched. Morbidly self-conscious, touchy, morose, he believed that his
aspect and manner were strange and disagreeable to his friends, and that
every one was perpetually insulting him. He had a magnificent forehead,
regular features, pale as marble, and a profusion of curly black hair,
but his eyes were shy and suspicious. His manner when not at his ease
Mr. P.G. Patmore describes as worthy of Apemantus himself. He would
enter a room as if he had been brought in in custody. He shuffled
sidelong to the nearest chair, sat down on the extreme corner of it,
dropped his hat on the floor, buried his chin in his stock, vented his
usual pet phrase on such occasions, 'It's a fine day,' and resigned
himself moodily to social misery. If the talk did not suit him, he bore
it a certain time, silent, self-absorbed, as a man condemned to death,
then suddenly, with a brusque 'Well, good morning,' shuffled to the door
and blundered his way out, audibly cursing himself for his folly in
voluntarily making himself the laughing-stock of an idiot's critical
servants. It must have been hard to bear with such a man, whatever might
be his talent; and yet his dying words were, 'I've led a happy life.'"
That delightful humorist, Lamb, lived in Southampton Buildings, in 1800,
coming from Pentonville, and moving to Mitre Court Buildings, Fleet
Street. Here, then, must have taken place some of those enjoyable
evenings which have been so pleasantly sketched by Hazlitt, one of the
most favoured of Lamb's guests:--
"At Lamb's we used to have lively skirmishes, at the Thursday evening
parties. I doubt whether the small-coal man's musical parties could
exceed them. Oh, for the pen of John Buncle to consecrate a _petit
souvenir_ to their memory! There was Lamb himself, the most delightful,
the most provoking, the most witty, and the most sensible of men. He
always made the best pun and the best remark in the course of the
evening. His serious conversation, like his serious writing, is the
best. No one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent
things, in half-a-dozen sentences, as he does. His jests scald like
tears, and he probes a question with a play upon words. What a
keen-laughing, hair-brained vein of home-felt truth! What choice venom!
How often did we cut into the haunch of letters! how we skimmed the
cream of criticism! How we picked out the marrow of authors! Need I go
over the names? They were but the old, everlasting set--Milton and
Shakespeare, Pope and Dryden, Steele and Addison, Swift and Gay,
Fielding, Smollet, Sterne, Richardson, Hogarth's prints, Claude's
landscapes, the Cartoons at Hampton Court, and all those things that,
having once been, must ever be. The Scotch novels had not then been
heard of, so we said nothing about them. In general we were hard upon
the moderns. The author of the _Rambler_ was only tolerated in Boswell's
life of him; and it was as much as anyone could do to edge in a word for
Junius. Lamb could not bear 'Gil Blas;' this was a fault. I remember the
greatest triumph I ever had was in persuading him, after some years'
difficulty, that Fielding was better than Smollett. On one occasion he
was for making out a list of persons famous in history that one would
wish to see again, at the head of whom were Pontius Pilate, Sir Thomas
Browne, and Dr. Faustus; but we black-balled most of his list. But with
what a gusto he would describe his favourite authors, Donne or Sir
Philip Sidney, and call their most crabbed passages _delicious_. He
tried them on his palate, as epicures taste olives, and his observations
had a smack in them like a roughness on the tongue. With what
discrimination he hinted a defect in what he admired most, as in saying
the display of the sumptuous banquet in 'Paradise Regained' was not in
true keeping, as the simplest fare was all that was necessary to tempt
the extremity of hunger, and stating that Adam and Eve, in 'Paradise
Lost,' were too much like married people. He has furnished many a text
for Coleridge to preach upon. There was no fuss or cant about him; nor
were his sweets or sours ever diluted with one particle of affectation."
Towards the unhappy close of Sheridan's life, when weighed down by
illness and debt (he had just lost the election at Stafford, and felt
clouds and darkness gathering closer round him), he was thrown for
several days (about 1814) into a sponging-house in Tooke's Court,
Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane. Tom Moore describes meeting him shortly
before with Lord Byron, at the table of Rogers, and some days after
Sheridan burst into tears on hearing that Byron had said that he
(Sheridan) had written the best comedy, the best operetta, the best
farce, the best address, and delivered the best oration ever produced in
England. Sheridan's books and pictures had been sold; and from his
sordid prison he wrote a piteous letter to his kind but severely
business-like friend, Whitbread, the brewer. "I have done everything,"
he says, "to obtain my release, but in vain; and, Whitbread, putting all
false professions of friendship and feeling out of the question, you
have no right to keep me here, for it is in truth your act; if you had
not forcibly withheld from me the L12,000, in consequence of a letter
from a miserable swindler, whose claim you in particular know to be a
lie, I should at least have been out of the reach of this miserable
insult; for that, and that only, lost me my seat in Parliament."
Even in the depths of this den, however, Sheridan still remained
sanguine; and when Whitbread came to release him, he found him
confidently calculating on the representation of Westminster, then about
to become vacant by the unjust disgrace of Lord Cochrane. On his return
home to his wife, fortified perhaps by wine, Sheridan burst into a long
and passionate fit of weeping, at the profanation, as he termed it,
which his person had suffered.
In Lord Eldon's youth, when he was simply plain John Scott, of the
Northern Circuit, he lived with the pretty little wife with whom he had
run away, in very frugal and humble lodgings in Cursitor Street, just
opposite No. 2, the chained and barred door of Sloman's sponging-house
(now the Imperial Club). Here, in after life he used to boast, although
his struggles had really been very few, that he used to run out into
Clare Market for sixpennyworth of sprats.
Mr. Disraeli, in "Henrietta Temple," an early novel written in the
Theodore Hook manner, has sketched Sloman's with a remarkable _verve_
and intimate knowledge of the place:--
"In pursuance of this suggestion, Captain Armine was ushered into the
best drawing-room with barred windows and treated in the most
aristocratic manner. It was evidently the chamber reserved only for
unfortunate gentlemen of the utmost distinction; it was simply furnished
with a mirror, a loo-table, and a very hard sofa. The walls were hung
with old-fashioned caricatures by Bunbury; the fire-irons were of
polished brass; over the mantelpiece was the portrait of the master of
the house, which was evidently a speaking likeness, and in which Captain
Armine fancied he traced no slight resemblance to his friend Mr.
Levison; and there were also some sources of literary amusement in the
room, in the shape of a Hebrew Bible and the Racing Calendar.
"After walking up and down the room for an hour, meditating over the
past--for it seemed hopeless to trouble himself any further with the
future--Ferdinand began to feel very faint, for it may be recollected
that he had not even breakfasted. So, pulling the bell-rope with such
force that it fell to the ground, a funny little waiter immediately
appeared, awed by the sovereign ring, and having indeed received private
intelligence from the bailiff that the gentleman in the drawing-room was
a regular nob.
"And here, perhaps, I should remind the reader that of all the great
distinctions in life none, perhaps, is more important than that which
divides mankind into the two great sections of _nobs_ and _snobs_. It
might seem at the first glance that if there were a place in the world
which should level all distinctions, it would be a debtors' prison; but
this would be quite an error. Almost at the very moment that Captain
Armine arrived at his sorrowful hotel, a poor devil of a tradesman, who
had been arrested for fifty pounds and torn from his wife and family,
had been forced to retire to the same asylum. He was introduced into
what is styled the coffee-room, being a long, low, unfurnished, sanded
chamber, with a table and benches; and being very anxious to communicate
with some friend, in order, if possible, to effect his release, and
prevent himself from being a bankrupt, he had continued meekly to ring
at intervals for the last half-hour, in order that he might write and
forward his letter. The waiter heard the coffee-room bell ring, but
never dreamed of noticing it; though the moment the signal of the
private room sounded, and sounded with so much emphasis, he rushed
upstairs three steps at a time, and instantly appeared before our hero;
and all this difference was occasioned by the simple circumstance that
Captain Armine was a _nob_, and the poor tradesman a _snob_.
"'I am hungry,' said Ferdinand. 'Can I get anything to eat at this
place?'
"'What would you like, sir? Anything you choose, sir--mutton chop, rump
steak, weal cutlet? Do you a fowl in a quarter of an hour--roast or
boiled, sir?'
"'I have not breakfasted yet; bring me some breakfast.'
"'Yes, sir,' said the waiter. 'Tea, sir? coffee, eggs, toast, buttered
toast, sir? Like any meat, sir? ham, sir? tongue, sir? Like a devil,
sir?'
"'Anything--everything; only be quick.'
"'Yes, sir,' responded the waiter. 'Beg pardon, sir. No offence, I hope;
but custom to pay here, sir. Shall be happy to accommodate you, sir.
Know what a gentleman is.'
"'Thank you, I will not trouble you,' said Ferdinand. 'Get me that note
changed.'
"'Yes, sir,' replied the little waiter, bowing very low, as he
disappeared.
"'Gentleman in best drawing-room wants breakfast. Gentleman in best
drawing-room wants change for a ten-pound note. Breakfast immediately
for gentleman in best drawing-room. Tea, coffee, toast, ham, tongue, and
a devil. A regular nob!'"
[Illustration: CLIFFORD'S INN (_see page 92_).]
Sloman's has been sketched both by Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Thackeray. In
"Vanity Fair" we find it described as the temporary abode of the
impecunious Colonel Crawley, and Moss describes his uncomfortable past
and present guests in a manner worthy of Fielding himself. There is the
"Honourable Capting Famish, of the Fiftieth Dragoons, whose 'mar' had
just taken him out after a fortnight, jest to punish him, who punished
the champagne, and had a party every night of regular tip-top swells
down from the clubs at the West End; and Capting Ragg and the
Honourable Deuceace, who lived, when at home, in the Temple. There's a
doctor of divinity upstairs, and five gents in the coffee-room who know
a good glass of wine when they see it. There is a tably d'hote at
half-past five in the front parlour, and cards and music afterwards."
Moss's house of durance the great novelist describes as splendid with
dirty huge old gilt cornices, dingy yellow satin hangings, while the
barred-up windows contrasted with "vast and oddly-gilt picture-frames
surrounding pieces sporting and sacred, all of which works were by the
greatest masters, and fetched the greatest prices, too, in the bill
transactions, in the course of which they were sold and bought over and
over again. A quick-eyed Jew boy locks and unlocks the door for
visitors, and a dark-eyed maid in curling-papers brings in the tea."
[Illustration: EXECUTION OF TOMKINS AND CHALLONER (_see page 95_).]
The Law Institute, that Grecian temple that has wedged itself into the
south-west end of Chancery Lane, was built in the stormy year of 1830.
On the Lord Mayor's day that year there was a riot; the Reform Bill was
still pending, and it was feared might not pass, for the Lords were
foaming at the mouth. The Iron Duke was detested as an opposer of all
change, good or bad; the new police were distasteful to the people;
above all, there was no Lord Mayor's show, and no man in brass armour to
look at. The rioters assembled outside No. 62, Fleet Street, were there
harangued by some dirty-faced demagogue, and then marched westward. At
Temple Bar the zealous new "Peelers" slammed the old muddy gates, to
stop the threatening mob; but the City Marshal, red in the face at this
breach of City privilege, re-opened them, and the mob roared approval
from a thousand distorted mouths. The more pugnacious reformers now
broke the scaffolding at the Law Institute into dangerous cudgels, and
some 300 of the unwashed patriots dashed through the Bar towards
Somerset House, full of vague notions of riot, and perhaps (delicious
thought!) plunder. But at St. Mary's, Commissioner Mayne and his men in
the blue tail-coats received the roughs in battle array, and at the
first charge the coward mob broke and fled.
In 1815, No. 68, Chancery Lane, not far from the north-east corner, was
the scene of an event which terminated in the legal murder of a young
and innocent girl. It was here, at Olibar Turner's, a law stationer's,
that Eliza Fenning lived, whom we have already mentioned when we entered
Hone's shop, in Fleet Street. This poor girl, on the eve of a happy
marriage, was hanged at Newgate, on the 26th of July, 1815, for
attempting to poison her master and mistress. The trial took place at
the Old Bailey on April 11th of the same year, and Mr. Gurney conducted
the prosecution before that rough, violent, unfeeling man, Sir John
Sylvester (_alias_ Black Jack), Recorder of London, who, it is said,
used to call the calendar "a bill of fare." The arsenic for rats, kept
in a drawer by Mr. Turner, had been mixed with the dough of some yeast
dumplings, of which all the family, including the poor servant, freely
partook. There was no evidence of malice, no suspicion of any ill-will,
except that Mrs. Turner had once scolded the girl for being free with
one of the clerks. It was, moreover, remembered that the girl had
particularly pressed her mistress to let her make some yeast dumplings
on the day in question. The defence was shamefully conducted. No one
pressed the fact of the girl having left the dough in the kitchen for
some time untended; nor was weight laid on the fact of Eliza Fenning's
own danger and sufferings. All the poor, half-paralysed, Irish girl
could say was, "I am truly innocent of the whole charge--indeed I am. I
liked my place. I was very comfortable." And there was pathos in those
simple, stammering words, more than in half the self-conscious
diffuseness of tragic poetry. In her white bridal dress (the cap she had
joyfully worked for herself) she went to her cruel death, still
repeating the words, "I am innocent." The funeral, at St. George the
Martyr, was attended by 10,000 people. Curran used to declaim eloquently
on her unhappy fate, and Mr. Charles Phillips wrote a glowing rhapsody
on this victim of legal dulness. But such mistakes not even Justice
herself can correct. A city mourned over her early grave; but the life
was taken, and there was no redress. Gadsden, the clerk, whom she had
warned not to eat any dumpling, as it was heavy (this was thought
suspicious), afterwards became a wealthy solicitor in Bedford Row.