FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIES.
Dr. Johnson in Bolt Court--His motley Household--His Life
there--Still existing--The gallant "Lumber Troop"--Reform Bill
Riots--Sir Claudius Hunter--Cobbett in Bolt Court--The Bird Boy--The
Private Soldier--In the House--Dr. Johnson in Gough Square--Busy at
the Dictionary--Goldsmith in Wine Office Court--Selling "The Vicar
of Wakefield"--Goldsmith's Troubles--Wine Office Court--The Old
"Cheshire Cheese."
Of all the nooks of London associated with the memory of that good giant
of literature, Dr. Johnson, not one is more sacred to those who love
that great and wise man than Bolt Court. To this monastic court Johnson
came in 1776, and remained till that December day in 1784, when a
procession of all the learned and worthy men who honoured him followed
his body to its grave in the Abbey, near the feet of Shakespeare and by
the side of Garrick. The great scholar, whose ways and sayings, whose
rough hide and tender heart, are so familiar to us--thanks to that
faithful parasite who secured an immortality by getting up behind his
triumphal chariot--came to Bolt Court from Johnson's Court, whither he
had flitted from Inner Temple Lane, where he was living when the young
Scotch barrister who was afterwards his biographer first knew him. His
strange household of fretful and disappointed almspeople seems as well
known as our own. At the head of these pensioners was the daughter of a
Welsh doctor, (a blind old lady named Williams), who had written some
trivial poems; Mrs. Desmoulins, an old Staffordshire lady, her daughter,
and a Miss Carmichael. The relationships of these fretful and
quarrelsome old maids Dr. Johnson has himself sketched, in a letter to
Mr. and Mrs. Thrale:--"Williams hates everybody; Levett hates
Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll
(Miss Carmichael) loves none of them." This Levett was a poor eccentric
apothecary, whom Johnson supported, and who seems to have been a
charitable man.
The annoyance of such a menagerie of angular oddities must have driven
Johnson more than ever to his clubs, where he could wrestle with the
best intellects of the day, and generally retire victorious. He had done
nearly all his best work by this time, and was sinking into the sere
and yellow leaf, not, like Macbeth, with the loss of honour, but with
love, obedience, troops of friends, and golden opinions from all sorts
of people. His Titanic labour, the Dictionary, he had achieved chiefly
in Gough Square; his "Rasselas"--that grave and wise Oriental story--he
had written in a few days, in Staple's Inn, to defray the expenses of
his mother's funeral. In Bolt Court he, however, produced his "Lives of
the Poets," a noble compendium of criticism, defaced only by the bitter
Tory depreciation of Milton, and injured by the insertion of many
worthless and the omission of several good poets.
It is pleasant to think of some of the events that happened while
Johnson lived in Bolt Court. Here he exerted himself with all the ardour
of his nature to soothe the last moments of that wretched man, Dr. Dodd,
who was hanged for forgery. From Bolt Court he made those frequent
excursions to the Thrales, at Streatham, where the rich brewer and his
brilliant wife gloried in the great London lion they had captured. To
Bolt Court came Johnson's friends Reynolds and Gibbon, and Garrick, and
Percy, and Langton; but poor Goldsmith had died before Johnson left
Johnson's Court. To Bolt Court he stalked home the night of his
memorable quarrel with Dr. Percy, no doubt regretting the violence and
boisterous rudeness with which he had attacked an amiable and gifted
man. From Bolt Court he walked to service at St. Clement's Church on the
day he rejoiced in comparing the animation of Fleet Street with the
desolation of the Hebrides. It was from Bolt Court Boswell drove Johnson
to dine with General Paoli, a drive memorable for the fact that on that
occasion Johnson uttered his first and only recorded pun.
Johnson was at Bolt Court when the Gordon Riots broke out, and he
describes them to Mrs. Thrale. Boswell gives a pleasant sketch of a
party at Bolt Court, when Mrs. Hall (a sister of Wesley) was there, and
Mr. Allen, a printer; Johnson produced his silver salvers, and it was "a
great day." It was on this occasion that the conversation fell on
apparitions, and Johnson, always superstitious to the last degree, told
the story of hearing his mother's voice call him one day at Oxford
(probably at a time when his brain was overworked). On this great
occasion also, Johnson, talked at by Mrs. Hall and Mrs. Williams at the
same moment, gaily quoted the line from the _Beggars' Opera_,--
"But two at a time there's no mortal can bear,"
and Boswell playfully compared the great man to Captain Macheath.
Imagine Mrs. Williams, old and peevish; Mrs. Hall, lean, lank, and
preachy; Johnson, rolling in his chair like Polyphemus at a debate;
Boswell, stooping forward on the perpetual listen; Mr. Levett, sour and
silent; Frank, the black servant, proud of the silver salvers--and you
have the group as in a picture.
In Bolt Court we find Johnson now returning from pleasant dinners with
Wilkes and Garrick, Malone and Dr. Burney; now sitting alone over his
Greek Testament, or praying with his black servant, Frank. We like to
picture him on that Good Friday morning (1783), when he and Boswell,
returning from service at St. Clement's, rested on the stone seat at the
garden-door in Bolt Court, talking about gardens and country
hospitality.
Then, finally, we come to almost the last scene of all, when the sick
man addressed to his kind physician, Brocklesby, that pathetic passage
of Shakespeare's,--
"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased;
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?"
Round Johnson's dying bed gathered many wise and good men. To Burke he
said, "I must be in a wretched state indeed, when your company would not
be a delight to me." To another friend he remarked solemnly, but in his
old grand manner, "Sir, you cannot conceive with what acceleration I
advance towards death." Nor did his old vehemence and humour by any
means forsake him, for he described a man who sat up to watch him "as an
idiot, sir; awkward as a turnspit when first put into the wheel, and
sleepy as a dormouse." His remaining hours were spent in fervent prayer.
The last words he uttered were those of benediction upon the daughter
of a friend who came to ask his blessing.
Some years before Dr. Johnson's death, when the poet Rogers was a young
clerk of literary proclivities at his father's bank, he one day stole
surreptitiously to Bolt Court, to daringly show some of his fledgeling
poems to the great Polyphemus of literature. He and young Maltby, an
ancestor of the late Bishop of Durham, crept blushingly through the
quiet court, and on arriving at the sacred door on the west side,
ascended the steps and knocked at the door; but the awful echo of that
knocker struck terror to the young _debutants'_ hearts, and before Frank
Barber, the Doctor's old negro footman, could appear, the two lads, like
street-boys who had perpetrated a mischievous runaway knock, took to
their heels and darted back into noisy Fleet Street. Mr. Jesse, who has
collected so many excellent anecdotes, some even original, in his three
large volumes on "London's Celebrated Characters and Places," says that
the elder Mr. Disraeli, singularly enough, used in society to relate an
almost similar adventure as a youth. Eager for literary glory, but urged
towards the counter by his sober-minded relations, he enclosed some of
his best verses to the celebrated Dr. Johnson, and modestly solicited
from the terrible critic an opinion of their value. Having waited some
time in vain for a reply, the ambitious Jewish youth at last (December
13, 1784) resolved to face the lion in his den, and rapping tremblingly
(as his predecessor, Rogers), heard with dismay the knocker echo on the
metal. We may imagine the feelings of the young votary at the shrine of
learning, when the servant (probably Frank Barber), who slowly opened
the door, informed him that Dr. Johnson had breathed his last only a few
short hours before.
Mr. Timbs reminds us of another story of Dr. Johnson, which will not be
out of place here. It is an excellent illustration of the keen sagacity
and forethought of that great man's mind. One evening Dr. Johnson,
looking from his dim Bolt Court window, saw the slovenly lamp-lighter of
those days ascending a ladder (just as Hogarth has drawn him in the
"Rake's Progress"), and fill the little receptacle in the globular lamp
with detestable whale-oil. Just as he got down the ladder the dull light
wavered out. Skipping up the ladder again, the son of Prometheus lifted
the cover, thrust the torch he carried into the heated vapour rising
from the wick, and instantly the ready flame sprang restored to life.
"Ah," said the old seer, "one of these days the streets of London will
be lighted by smoke."
[Illustration: DR. JOHNSON'S HOUSE IN BOLT COURT (_see page 112_).]
Johnson's house (No. 8), according to Mr. Noble, was not destroyed by
fire in 1819, as Mr. Timbs and other writers assert. The house destroyed
was Bensley the printer's (next door to No. 8), the successor of
Johnson's friend, Allen, who in 1772 published Manning's Saxon, Gothic,
and Latin Dictionary, and died in 1780. In Bensley's destructive fire
all the plates and stock of Dallaway's "History of Sussex" were
consumed. Johnson's house, says Mr. Noble, was in 1858 purchased by the
Stationers' Company, and fitted up as a cheap school (six shillings a
quarter). In 1861 Mr. Foss, Master of the Company, initiated a fund, and
since then a university scholarship has been founded--_sicitur ad
astra_. The back room, first floor, in which the great man died, had
been pulled down by Mr. Bensley, to make way for a staircase. Bensley
was one of the first introducers of the German invention of
steam-printing.
[Illustration: A TEA PARTY AT DR. JOHNSON'S (_see page 113_).]
At "Dr. Johnson's" tavern, established forty years ago (now the Albert
Club), the well-known society of the "Lumber Troop" once drained their
porter and held their solemn smokings. This gallant force of
supposititious fighting men "came out" with great force during the
Reform Riots of 1830. These useless disturbances originated in a fussy,
foolish warning letter, written by John Key, the Lord Mayor elect (he
was generally known in the City as Don Key after this), to the Duke of
Wellington, then as terribly unpopular with the English Reformers as he
had been with the French after the battle of Waterloo, urging him (the
duke) if he came with King William and Queen Adelaide to dine with the
new Lord Mayor, (his worshipful self), to come "strongly and
sufficiently guarded." This imprudent step greatly offended the people,
who were also just then much vexed with the severities of Peel's
obnoxious new police. The result was that the new king and queen (for
the not over-beloved George IV. had only died in June of that year)
thought it better to decline coming to the City festivities altogether.
Great, then, was even the Tory indignation, and the fattest alderman
trotted about, eager to discuss the grievance, the waste of half-cooked
turtle, and the general folly and enormity of the Lord Mayor elect's
conduct. Sir Claudius Hunter, who had shared in the Lord Mayor's fears,
generously marched to his aid. In a published statement that he made, he
enumerated the force available for the defence of the (in his mind)
endangered City in the following way:--
Ward Constables 400
Fellowship, Ticket, and Tackle Porters 250
Firemen 150
Corn Porters 100
Extra men hired 130
City Police or own men 54
Tradesmen with emblems in the procession 300
Some gentlemen called the Lumber Troopers 150
The Artillery Company 150
The East India Volunteers 600
Total of all comers 2,284
In the same statement Sir Claudius says:--"The Lumber Troop are a
respectable smoking club, well known to every candidate for a seat in
Parliament for London, and most famed for the quantity of tobacco they
consume and the porter they drink, which, I believe (from my own
observation, made nineteen years ago, when I was a candidate for that
office), is the only liquor allowed. They were to have had no pay, and I
am sure they would have done their best."
Along the line of procession, to oppose this civic force, the right
worshipful but foolish man reckoned there would be some 150,000 persons.
With all these aldermanic fears, and all these irritating precautions, a
riot naturally took place. On Monday, November 8th, that glib,
unsatisfactory man, Orator Hunt, the great demagogue of the day,
addressed a Reform meeting at the Rotunda, in Blackfriars Road. At
half-past eleven, when the Radical gentleman, famous for his white hat
(the lode-star of faction), retired, a man suddenly waved a tricolour
flag (it was the year, remember, of the Revolution in Paris), with the
word "Reform" painted upon it, and a preconcerted cry was raised by the
more violent of, "Now for the West End!" About one thousand men then
rushed over Blackfriars bridge, shouting, "Reform!" "Down with the
police!" "No Peel!" "No Wellington!" Hurrying along the Strand, the mob
first proceeded to Earl Bathurst's, in Downing Street. A foolish
gentleman of the house, hearing the cries, came out on the balcony,
armed with a brace of pistols, and declared he would fire on the first
man who attempted to enter the place. Another gentleman at this moment
came out, and very sensibly took the pistols from his friend, on which
the mob retired. The rioters were then making for the House of Commons,
but were stopped by a strong line of police, just arrived in time from
Scotland Yard. One hundred and forty more men soon joined the
constables, and a general fight ensued, in which many heads were quickly
broken, and the Reform flag was captured. Three of the rioters were
arrested, and taken to the watch-house in the Almonry in Westminster. A
troop of Royal Horse Guards (blue) remained during the night ready in
the court of the Horse Guards, and bands of policemen paraded the
streets.
On Tuesday the riots continued. About half-past five p.m., 300 or 400
persons, chiefly boys, came along the Strand, shouting, "No Peel!" "Down
with the raw lobsters!" (the new police); "This way, my lads; we'll give
it them!" At the back of the menageries at Charing Cross the police
rushed upon them, and after a skirmish put them to flight. At seven
o'clock the vast crowd by Temple Bar compelled every coachman and
passenger in a coach, as a passport, to pull off his hat and shout
"Huzza!" Stones were thrown, and attempts were made to close the gates
of the Bar. The City marshals, however, compelled them to be re-opened,
and opposed the passage of the mob to the Strand, but the pass was soon
forced. The rioters in Pickett Place pelted the police with stones and
pieces of wood, broken from the scaffolding of the Law Institute, then
building in Chancery Lane. Another mob of about 500 persons ran up
Piccadilly to Apsley House and hissed and hooted the stubborn,
unprogressive old Duke, Mr. Peel, and the police; the constables,
however, soon dispersed them. The same evening dangerous mobs collected
in Bethnal Green, Spitalfields, and Whitechapel, one party of them
displaying tricoloured flags. They broke a lamp and a window or two,
but did little else. Alas for poor Sir Claudius and his profound
computations! His 2,284 fighting loyal men dwindled down to 600,
including even those strange hybrids, the firemen-watermen; and as for
the gallant Lumber Troop, they were nowhere visible to the naked eye.
To Bolt Court that scourge of King George III., William Cobbett, came
from Fleet Street to sell his Indian corn, for which no one cared, and
to print and publish his twopenny _Political Register_, for which the
London Radicals of that day hungered. Nearly opposite the office of
"this good hater," says Mr. Timbs, Wright (late Kearsley) kept shop, and
published a searching criticism on Cobbett's excellent English Grammar
as soon as it appeared. We only wonder that Cobbett did not reply to him
as Johnson did to a friend after he knocked Osborne (the grubbing
bookseller of Gray's Inn Gate) down with a blow--"Sir, he was
impertinent, and I beat him."
A short biographical sketch of Cobbett will not be inappropriate here.
This sturdy Englishman, born in the year 1762, was the son of an honest
and industrious yeoman, who kept an inn called the "Jolly Farmer," at
Farnham, in Surrey. "My first occupation," says Cobbett, "was driving
the small birds from the turnip seed and the rooks from the peas. When I
first trudged a-field with my wooden bottle and my satchel over my
shoulder, I was hardly able to climb the gates and stiles." In 1783 the
restless lad (a plant grown too high for the pot) ran away to London,
and turned lawyer's clerk. At the end of nine months he enlisted, and
sailed for Nova Scotia. Before long he became sergeant-major, over the
heads of thirty other non-commissioned officers. Frugal and diligent,
the young soldier soon educated himself. Discharged at his own request
in 1791, he married a respectable girl, to whom he had before entrusted
L150 hard-earned savings. Obtaining a trial against four officers of his
late regiment for embezzlement of stores, for some strange reason
Cobbett fled to France on the eve of the trial, but finding the king of
that country dethroned, he started at once for America. At Philadelphia
he boldly began as a high Tory bookseller, and denounced Democracy in
his virulent "Porcupine Papers." Finally, overwhelmed with actions for
libel, Cobbett in 1800 returned to England. Failing with a daily paper
and a bookseller's shop, Cobbett then started his _Weekly Register_,
which for thirty years continued to express the changes of his honest
but impulsive and vindictive mind. Gradually--it is said, owing to some
slight shown him by Pitt (more probably from real conviction)--Cobbett
grew Radical and progressive, and in 1809 was fined L500 for libels on
the Irish Government. In 1817 he was fined L1,000 and imprisoned two
years for violent remarks about some Ely militiamen who had been flogged
under a guard of fixed bayonets. This punishment he never forgave. He
followed up his _Register_ by his _Twopenny Trash_, of which he
eventually sold 100,000 a number. The Six Acts being passed--as he
boasted, to gag him--he fled, in 1817, again to America. The persecuted
man returned to England in 1819, bringing with him, much to the
amusement of the Tory lampooners, the bones of that foul man, Tom Paine,
the infidel, whom (in 1796) this changeful politician had branded as
"base, malignant, treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous." During the
Queen Caroline trial Cobbett worked heart and soul for that questionable
martyr. He went out to Shooter's Hill to welcome her to London, and
boasted of having waved a laurel bough above her head.
In 1825 he wrote a scurrilous "History of the Reformation" (by many
still attributed to a priest), in which he declared Luther, Calvin, and
Beza to be the greatest ruffians that ever disgraced the world. In his
old age, too late to be either brilliant or useful, Cobbett got into
Parliament, being returned in 1832 (thanks to the Reform Bill) member
for Oldham. He died at his house near Farnham, in 1835. Cobbett was an
egotist, it must be allowed, and a violent-tempered, vindictive man; but
his honesty, his love of truth and liberty, few who are not blinded by
party opinion can doubt. His writings are remarkable for vigorous and
racy Saxon, as full of vituperation as Rabelais's, and as terse and
simple as Swift's.
Mr. Grant, in his pleasant book, "Random Recollections of the House of
Commons," written _circa_ 1834, gives us an elaborate full-length
portrait of old Cobbett. He was, he says, not less than six feet high,
and broad and athletic in proportion. His hair was silver-white, his
complexion ruddy as a farmer's. Till his small eyes sparkled with
laughter, he looked a mere dull-pated clodpole. His dress was a light,
loose, grey tail-coat, a white waistcoat, and sandy kerseymere breeches,
and he usually walked about the House with both his hands plunged into
his breeches pockets. He had an eccentric, half-malicious way of
sometimes suddenly shifting his seat, and on one important night, big
with the fate of Peel's Administration, deliberately anchored down in
the very centre of the disgusted Tories and at the very back of Sir
Robert's bench, to the infinite annoyance of the somewhat supercilious
party.
We next penetrate into Gough Square, in search of the great
lexicographer.
As far as can be ascertained from Boswell, Dr. Johnson resided at Gough
Square from 1748 to 1758, an eventful period of his life, and one of
struggle, pain, and difficulty. In this gloomy side square near Fleet
Street, he achieved many results and abandoned many hopes. Here he
nursed his hypochondria--the nightmare of his life--and sought the only
true relief in hard work. Here he toiled over books, drudging for Cave
and Dodsley. Here he commenced both the _Rambler_ and the _Idler_, and
formed his acquaintance with Bennet Langton. Here his wife died, and
left him more than ever a prey to his natural melancholy; and here he
toiled on his great work, the Dictionary, in which he and six amanuenses
effected what it took all the French Academicians to perform for their
language.
A short epitome of what this great man accomplished while in Gough
Square will clearly recall to our readers his way of life while in that
locality. In 1749, Johnson formed a quiet club in Ivy Lane, wrote that
fine paraphrase of Juvenal, "The Vanity of Human Wishes," and brought
out, with dubious success, under Garrick's auspices, his tragedy of
_Irene_. In 1750, he commenced the _Rambler_. In 1752, the year his wife
died, he laboured on at the Dictionary. In 1753, he became acquainted
with Bennet Langton. In 1754 he wrote the life of his early patron,
Cave, who died that year. In 1755, the great Dictionary, begun in 1747,
was at last published, and Johnson wrote that scathing letter to the
Earl of Chesterfield, who, too late, thrust upon him the patronage the
poor scholar had once sought in vain. In 1756, the still struggling man
was arrested for a paltry debt of L5 18_s._, from which Richardson the
worthy relieved him. In 1758, when he began the _Idler_, Johnson is
described as "being in as easy and pleasant a state of existence as
constitutional unhappiness ever permitted him to enjoy."
While the Dictionary was going forward, "Johnson," says Boswell, "lived
part of the time in Holborn, part in Gough Square (Fleet Street); and he
had an upper room fitted up like a counting-house for the purpose, in
which he gave to the copyists their several tasks. The words, partly
taken from other dictionaries and partly supplied by himself, having
been first written down with space left between them, he delivered in
writing their etymologies, definitions, and various significations. The
authorities were copied from the books themselves, in which he had
marked the passages with a black-lead pencil, the traces of which could
be easily effaced. I have seen several of them in which that trouble had
not been taken, so that they were just as when used by the copyists. It
is remarkable that he was so attentive to the choice of the passages in
which words were authorised, that one may read page after page of his
Dictionary with improvement and pleasure; and it should not pass
unobserved, that he has quoted no author whose writings had a tendency
to hurt sound religion and morality."
To this account Bishop Percy adds a note of great value for its lucid
exactitude. "Boswell's account of the manner in which Johnson compiled
his Dictionary," he says, "is confused and erroneous. He began his task
(as he himself expressly described to me) by devoting his first care to
a diligent perusal of all such English writers as were most correct in
their language, and under every sentence which he meant to quote he drew
a line, and noted in the margin the first letter of the word under which
it was to occur. He then delivered these books to his clerks, who
transcribed each sentence on a separate slip of paper and arranged the
same under the word referred to. By these means he collected the several
words, and their different significations, and when the whole
arrangement was alphabetically formed, he gave the definitions of their
meanings, and collected their etymologies from Skinner, and other
writers on the subject." To these accounts, Hawkins adds his usual
carping, pompous testimony. "Dr. Johnson," he says, "who, before this
time, together with his wife, had lived in obscurity, lodging at
different houses in the courts and alleys in and about the Strand and
Fleet Street, had, for the purpose of carrying on this arduous work, and
being near the printers employed in it, taken a handsome house in Gough
Square, and fitted up a room in it with books and other accommodations
for amanuenses, who, to the number of five or six, he kept constantly
under his eye. An interleaved copy of "Bailey's Dictionary," in folio,
he made the repository of the several articles, and these he collected
by incessantly reading the best authors in our language, in the practice
whereof his method was to score with a black-lead pencil the words by
him selected. The books he used for this purpose were what he had in his
own collection, a copious but a miserably ragged one, and all such as he
could borrow; which latter, if ever they came back to those that lent
them, were so defaced as to be scarce worth owning, and yet some of his
friends were glad to receive and entertain them as curiosities."
"Mr. Burney," says Boswell, "during a visit to the capital, had an
interview with Johnson in Gough Square, where he dined and drank tea
with him, and was introduced to the acquaintance of Mrs. Williams. After
dinner Mr. Johnson proposed to Mr. Burney to go up with him into his
garret, which being accepted, he found there about five or six Greek
folios, a poor writing-desk, and a chair and a half. Johnson, giving to
his guest the entire seat, balanced himself on one with only three legs
and one arm. Here he gave Mr. Burney Mrs. Williams's history, and showed
him some notes on Shakespeare already printed, to prove that he was in
earnest. Upon Mr. Burney's opening the first volume at the _Merchant of
Venice_ he observed to him that he seemed to be more severe on Warburton
than on Theobald. 'Oh, poor Tib!' said Johnson, 'he was nearly knocked
down to my hands; Warburton stands between me and him.' 'But, sir,' said
Mr. Burney, 'You'll have Warburton on your bones, won't you? 'No, sir;'
he'll not come out; he'll only growl in his den.' 'But do you think,
sir, Warburton is a superior critic to Theobald?' 'Oh, sir, he'll make
two-and-fifty Theobalds cut into slices! The worst of Warburton is that
he has a rage for saying something when there's nothing to be said.' Mr.
Burney then asked him whether he had seen the letter Warburton had
written in answer to a pamphlet addressed 'to the most impudent man
alive.' He answered in the negative. Mr. Burney told him it was supposed
to be written by Mallet. A controversy now raged between the friends of
Pope and Bolingbroke, and Warburton and Mallet were the leaders of the
several parties. Mr. Burney asked him then if he had seen Warburton's
book against Bolingbroke's philosophy!'No, sir; I have never read
Bolingbroke's impiety, and therefore am not interested about its
refutation.'"
Goldsmith appears to have resided at No. 6, Wine Office Court from 1760
to 1762, during which period he earned a precarious livelihood by
writing for the booksellers.
They still point out Johnson and Goldsmith's favourite seats in the
north-east corner of the window of that cozy though utterly
unpretentious tavern, the "Cheshire Cheese," in this court.
It was while living in Wine Office Court that Goldsmith is supposed to
have partly written that delightful novel "The Vicar of Wakefield,"
which he had begun at Canonbury Tower. We like to think that, seated at
the "Cheese," he perhaps espied and listened to the worthy but credulous
vicar and his gosling son attending to the profound theories of the
learned and philosophic but shifty Mr. Jenkinson. We think now by the
window, with a cross light upon his coarse Irish features, and his round
prominent brow, we see the watchful poet sit eyeing his prey, secretly
enjoying the grandiloquence of the swindler and the admiration of the
honest country parson.
"One day," says Mrs. Piozzi, "Johnson was called abruptly from our house
at Southwark, after dinner, and, returning in about three hours, said he
had been with an enraged author, whose landlady pressed him within doors
while the bailiffs beset him without; that he was drinking himself drunk
with Madeira to drown care, and fretting over a novel which, when
finished, was to be his whole fortune; but he could not get it done for
distraction, nor dared he stir out of doors to offer it for sale. Mr.
Johnson, therefore," she continues, "sent away the bottle and went to
the bookseller, recommending the performance, and devising some
immediate relief; which, when he brought back to the writer, the latter
called the woman of the house directly to partake of punch and pass
their time in merriment. It was not," she concludes, "till ten years
after, I dare say, that something in Dr. Goldsmith's behaviour struck me
with an idea that he was the very man; and then Johnson confessed that
he was so."
"A more scrupulous and patient writer," says the admirable biographer of
the poet, Mr. John Forster, "corrects some inaccuracies of the lively
little lady, and professes to give the anecdote authentically from
Johnson's own exact narration. 'I received one morning,' Boswell
represents Johnson to have said, 'a message from poor Goldsmith, that he
was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me,
begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a
guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon
as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his
rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had
already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass
before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm,
and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated.
He then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he
produced to me. I looked into it and saw its merits, told the landlady I
should soon return, and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for L60. I
brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without
rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill.'"
[Illustration: GOUGH SQUARE (_see page 118_).]
The arrest is plainly connected with Newbery's reluctance to make
further advances, and of all Mrs. Fleming's accounts found among
Goldsmith's papers, the only one unsettled is that for the summer months
preceding the arrest. The manuscript of the novel seems by both
statements (in which the discrepancies are not so great but that Johnson
himself may be held accountable for them) to have been produced
reluctantly, as a last resource; and it is possible, as Mrs. Piozzi
intimates, that it was still regarded as unfinished. But if strong
adverse reasons had not existed, Johnson would surely have carried it
to the elder Newbery. He did not do this. He went with it to Francis
Newbery, the nephew; does not seem to have given a very brilliant
account of the "merit" he had perceived in it--four years after its
author's death he told Reynolds that he did not think it would have had
much success--and rather with regard to Goldsmith's immediate want than
to any confident sense of the value of the copy, asked and obtained the
L60. "And, sir," he said afterwards, "a sufficient price, too, when it
was sold, for then the fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated, as it
afterwards was, by his 'Traveller,' and the bookseller had faint hopes
of profit by his bargain. After 'The Traveller,' to be sure, it was
accidentally worth more money."
[Illustration: WINE OFFICE COURT AND THE "CHESHIRE CHEESE" (_see page
122_).]
On the poem, meanwhile, the elder Newbery _had_ consented to speculate,
and this circumstance may have made it hopeless to appeal to him with a
second work of fancy. For, on that very day of the arrest, "The
Traveller" lay completed in the poet's desk. The dream of eight years,
the solace and sustainment of his exile and poverty, verged at last to
fulfilment or extinction, and the hopes and fears which centred in it
doubtless mingled on that miserable day with the fumes of the Madeira.
In the excitement of putting it to press, which followed immediately
after, the nameless novel recedes altogether from the view, but will
reappear in due time. Johnson approved the verses more than the novel;
read the proof-sheets for his friend; substituted here and there, in
more emphatic testimony of general approval, a line of his own; prepared
a brief but hearty notice for the _Critical Review_, which was to appear
simultaneously with the poem, and, as the day of publication drew near,
bade Goldsmith be of good heart.
Oliver Goldsmith came first to London in 1756, a raw Irish student,
aged twenty-eight. He was just fresh from Italy and Switzerland. He had
heard Voltaire talk, had won a degree at Louvaine or Padua, had been
"bear leader" to the stingy nephew of a rich pawnbroker, and had played
the flute at the door of Flemish peasants for a draught of beer and a
crust of bread. No city of golden pavement did London prove to those
worn and dusty feet. Almost a beggar had Oliver been, then an
apothecary's journeyman and quack doctor, next a reader of proofs for
Richardson, the novelist and printer; after that a tormented and jaded
usher at a Peckham school; last, and worst of all, a hack writer of
articles for Griffith's _Monthly Review_, then being opposed by Smollett
in a rival publication. In Green Arbour Court Goldsmith spent the
roughest part of the toilsome years before he became known to the world.
There he formed an acquaintance with Johnson and his set, and wrote
essays for Smollett's _British Magazine_.
Wine Office Court is supposed to have derived its name from an office
where licenses to sell wine were formerly issued. "In this court," says
Mr. Noble, "once flourished a fig tree, planted a century ago by the
Vicar of St. Bride's, who resided, with an absence of pride suitable, if
not common, to Christianity, at No. 12. It was a slip from another exile
of a tree, formerly flourishing, in a sooty kind of grandeur, at the
sign of the 'Fig Tree,' in Fleet Street. This tree was struck by
lightning in 1820, but slips from the growing stump were planted in
1822, in various parts of England."
The old-fashioned and changeless character of the "Cheese," in whose
low-roofed and sanded rooms Goldsmith and Johnson have so often hung up
their cocked hats and sat down facing each other to a snug dinner, not
unattended with punch, has been capitally sketched by a modern essayist,
who possesses a thorough knowledge of the physiology of London. In an
admirable paper entitled "Brain Street," Mr. George Augustus Sala thus
describes Wine Office Court and the "Cheshire Cheese":--
"The vast establishments," says Mr. Sala, "of Messrs. Pewter & Antimony,
typefounders (Alderman Antimony was Lord Mayor in the year '46); of
Messrs. Quoin, Case, & Chappell, printers to the Board of Blue Cloth; of
Messrs. Cutedge & Treecalf, bookbinders; with the smaller industries of
Scawper & Tinttool, wood-engravers; and Treacle, Gluepot, & Lampblack,
printing-roller makers, are packed together in the upper part of the
court as closely as herrings in a cask. The 'Cheese' is at the Brain
Street end. It is a little lop-sided, wedged-up house, that always
reminds you, structurally, of a high-shouldered man with his hands in
his pockets. It is full of holes and corners and cupboards and sharp
turnings; and in ascending the stairs to the tiny smoking-room you must
tread cautiously, if you would not wish to be tripped up by plates and
dishes, momentarily deposited there by furious waiters. The waiters at
the 'Cheese' are always furious. Old customers abound in the comfortable
old tavern, in whose sanded-floored eating-rooms a new face is a rarity;
and the guests and the waiters are the oldest of familiars. Yet the
waiter seldom fails to bite your nose off as a preliminary measure when
you proceed to pay him. How should it be otherwise when on that waiter's
soul there lies heavy a perpetual sense of injury caused by the savoury
odour of steaks, and 'muts' to follow; of cheese-bubbling in tiny
tins--the 'specialty' of the house; of floury potatoes and fragrant
green peas; of cool salads, and cooler tankards of bitter beer; of
extra-creaming stout and 'goes' of Cork and 'rack,' by which is meant
gin; and, in the winter-time, of Irish stew and rump-steak pudding,
glorious and grateful to every sense? To be compelled to run to and fro
with these succulent viands from noon to late at night, without being
able to spare time to consume them in comfort--where do waiters dine,
and when, and how?--to be continually taking other people's money only
for the purpose of handing it to other people--are not these grievances
sufficient to cross-grain the temper of the mildest-mannered waiter?
Somebody is always in a passion at the 'Cheese:' either a customer,
because there is not fat enough on his 'point'-steak, or because there
is too much bone in his mutton-chop; or else the waiter is wrath with
the cook; or the landlord with the waiter, or the barmaid with all. Yes,
there is a barmaid at the 'Cheese,' mewed up in a box not much bigger
than a birdcage, surrounded by groves of lemons, 'ones' of cheese,
punch-bowls, and cruets of mushroom-catsup. I should not care to dispute
with her, lest she should quoit me over the head with a punch-ladle,
having a William-the-Third guinea soldered in the bowl.
"Let it be noted in candour that Law finds its way to the 'Cheese' as
well as Literature; but the Law is, as a rule, of the non-combatant and,
consequently, harmless order. Literary men who have been called to the
bar, but do not practise; briefless young barristers, who do not object
to mingling with newspaper men; with a sprinkling of retired solicitors
(amazing dogs these for old port-wine; the landlord has some of the same
bin which served as Hippocrene to Judge Blackstone when he wrote his
'Commentaries')--these make up the legal element of the 'Cheese.' Sharp
attorneys in practice are not popular there. There is a legend that a
process-server once came in at a back door to serve a writ; but being
detected by a waiter, was skilfully edged by that wary retainer into
Wine Bottle Court, right past the person on whom he was desirous to
inflict the 'Victoria, by the grace, &c.' Once in the court, he was set
upon by a mob of inky-faced boys just released from the works of Messrs.
Ball, Roller, & Scraper, machine printers, and by the skin of his teeth
only escaped being converted into 'pie.'"
Mr. William Sawyer has also written a very admirable sketch of the
"Cheese" and its old-fashioned, conservative ways, which we cannot
resist quoting:--
"We are a close, conservative, inflexible body--we, the regular
frequenters of the 'Cheddar,'" says Mr. Sawyer. "No new-fangled notions,
new usages, new customs, or new customers for us. We have our history,
our traditions, and our observances, all sacred and inviolable. Look
around! There is nothing new, gaudy, flippant, or effeminately luxurious
here. A small room with heavily-timbered windows. A low planked ceiling.
A huge, projecting fire-place, with a great copper boiler always on the
simmer, the sight of which might have roused even old John Willett, of
the 'Maypole,' to admiration. High, stiff-backed, inflexible 'settles,'
hard and grainy in texture, box off the guests, half-a-dozen each to a
table. Sawdust covers the floor, giving forth that peculiar faint odour
which the French avoid by the use of the vine sawdust with its pleasant
aroma. The only ornament in which we indulge is a solitary picture over
the mantelpiece, a full-length of a now departed waiter, whom in the
long past we caused to be painted, by subscription of the whole room, to
commemorate his virtues and our esteem. He is depicted in the scene of
his triumphs--in the act of giving change to a customer. We sit bolt
upright round our tables, waiting, but not impatient. A time-honoured
solemnity is about to be observed, and we, the old stagers, is it for us
to precipitate it? There are men in this room who have dined here every
day for a quarter of a century--aye, the whisper goes that one man did
it even on his wedding-day! In all that time the more staid and
well-regulated among us have observed a steady regularity of feeding.
Five days in the week we have our 'Rotherham steak'--that mystery of
mysteries--or our 'chop and chop to follow,' with the indispensable
wedge of Cheddar--unless it is preferred stewed or toasted--and on
Saturday decorous variety is afforded in a plate of the world-renowned
'Cheddar' pudding. It is of this latter luxury that we are now assembled
to partake, and that with all fitting ceremony and observance. As we
sit, like pensioners in hall, the silence is broken only by a strange
sound, as of a hardly human voice, muttering cabalistic words, 'Ullo mul
lum de loodle wumble jum!' it cries, and we know that chops and potatoes
are being ordered for some benighted outsider, ignorant of the fact that
it is pudding-day."