CHAPTER XVIII.

BLACKFRIARS.

Three Norman Fortresses on the Thames' Bank--The Black

Parliament--The Trial of Katherine of Arragon--Shakespeare a

Blackfriars Manager--The Blackfriars Puritans--The Jesuit Sermon at

Hunsdon House--Fatal Accident--Extraordinary Escapes--Queen

Elizabeth at Lord Herbert's Marriage--Old Blackfriars

Bridge--Johnson and Mylne--Laying of the Stone--The Inscription--A

Toll Riot--Failure of the Bridge--The New Bridge--Bridge Street--Sir

Richard Phillips and his Works--Painters in Blackfriars--The King's

Printing Office--Printing House Square--The _Times_ and its

History--Walter's Enterprise--War with the _Dispatch_--- The

gigantic Swindling Scheme exposed by the _Times_--Apothecaries'

Hall--Quarrel with the College of Physicians.

On the river-side, between St. Paul's and Whitefriars, there stood, in

the Middle Ages, three Norman fortresses. Castle Baynard and the old

tower of Mountfiquet were two of them. Baynard Castle, granted to the

Earls of Clare and afterwards rebuilt by Humphrey Duke of Gloucester,

was the palace in which the Duke of Buckingham offered the crown to his

wily confederate, Richard the Crookback. In Queen Elizabeth's time it

was granted to the Earls of Pembroke, who lived there in splendour till

the Great Fire melted their gold, calcined their jewels, and drove them

into the fashionable flood that was already moving westward. Mountfiquet

Castle was pulled down in 1276, when Hubert de Berg, Earl of Kent,

transplanted a colony of Black Dominican friars from Holborn, near

Lincoln's Inn, to the river-side, south of Ludgate Hill. Yet so

conservative is even Time in England, that a recent correspondent of

_Notes and Queries_ points out a piece of mediaeval walling and the

fragment of a buttress, still standing, at the foot of the _Times_

Office, in Printing House Square, which seem to have formed part of the

stronghold of the Mountfiquets. This interesting relic is on the left

hand of Queen Victoria Street, going up from the bridge, just where

there was formerly a picturesque but dangerous descent by a flight of

break-neck stone steps. At the right-hand side of the same street stands

an old rubble chalk wall, even older. It is just past the new house of

the Bible Society, and seems to have formed part of the old City wall,

which at first ended at Baynard Castle. The rampart advanced to

Mountfiquet, and, lastly, to please and protect the Dominicans, was

pushed forward outside Ludgate to the Fleet, which served as a moat, the

Old Bailey being an advanced work.

King Edward I. and Queen Eleanor heaped many gifts on these sable

friars. Charles V. of France was lodged at their monastery when he

visited England, but his nobles resided in Henry's newly-built palace of

Bridewell, a gallery being thrown over the Fleet and driven through the

City wall, to serve as a communication between the two mansions. Henry

held the "Black Parliament" in this monastery, and here Cardinal

Campeggio presided at the trial which ended with the tyrant's divorce

from the ill-used Katherine of Arragon. In the same house the Parliament

also sat that condemned Wolsey, and sent him to beg "a little earth for

charity" of the monks of Leicester. The rapacious king laid his rough

hand on the treasures of the house in 1538, and Edward VI. sold the hall

and prior's lodgings to Sir Francis Bryan, a courtier, afterwards

granting Sir Francis Cawarden, Master of the Revels, the whole house and

precincts of the Preacher Friars, the yearly value being then valued at

nineteen pounds. The holy brothers were dispersed to beg or thieve, and

the church was pulled down, but the mischievous right of sanctuary

continued.

And now we come to the event which connects the old monastic ground with

the name of the great genius of England. James Burbage (afterwards

Shakespeare's friend and fellow actor), and other servants of the Earl

of Leicester, tormented out of the City by the angry edicts of

over-scrupulous Lord Mayors, took shelter in the Precinct, and there, in

1578, erected a playhouse (Playhouse Yard). Every attempt was in vain

made to crush the intruders. About the year 1586, according to the best

authorities, the young Shakespeare came to London and joined the company

at the Blackfriars Theatre. Only three years later we find the new

arrival--and this is one of the unsolvable mysteries of Shakespeare's

life--one of sixteen sharers in the prosperous though persecuted

theatre. It is true that Mr. Halliwell has lately discovered that he was

not exactly a proprietor, but only an actor, receiving a share of the

profits of the house, exclusive of the galleries (the boxes and dress

circle of those days), but this is, after all, only a lessening of the

difficulty; and it is almost as remarkable that a young, unknown

Warwickshire poet should receive such profits as it is that he should

have held a sixteenth of the whole property. Without the generous

patronage of such patrons as the Earl of Southampton or Lord Brooke, how

could the young actor have thriven? He was only twenty-six, and may have

written "Venus and Adonis" or "Lucrece;" yet the first of these poems

was not published till 1593. He may already, it is true, have adapted

one or two tolerably successful historical plays, and, as Mr. Collier

thinks, might have written _The Comedy of Errors_, _Love's Labour's

Lost_, or _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_. One thing is certain, that in

1587 five companies of players, including the Blackfriars Company,

performed at Stratford, and in his native town Mr. Collier thinks

Shakespeare first proved himself useful to his new comrades.

In 1589 the Lord Mayor closed two theatres for ridiculing the Puritans.

Burbage and his friends, alarmed at this, petitioned the Privy Council,

and pleaded that they had never introduced into their plays matters of

state or religion. The Blackfriars company, in 1593, began to build a

summer theatre, the Globe, in Southwark; and Mr. Collier, remembering

that this was the very year "Venus and Adonis" was published, attributes

some great gift of the Earl of Southampton to Shakespeare to have

immediately followed this poem, which was dedicated to him. By 1594 the

poet had written _King Richard II._ and _King Richard III._, and

Burbage's son Richard had made himself famous as the first

representative of the crook-backed king. In 1596 we find Shakespeare and

his partners (only eight now) petitioning the Privy Council to allow

them to repair and enlarge their theatre, which the Puritans of

Blackfriars wanted to close. The Council allowed the repairs, but

forbade the enlargement. At this time Shakespeare was living near the

Bear Garden, Southwark, to be close to the Globe. He was now evidently a

thriving, "warm" man, for in 1597 he purchased for L60 New Place, one of

the best houses in Stratford. In 1613 we find Shakespeare purchasing a

plot of ground not far from Blackfriars Theatre, and abutting on a

street leading down to Puddle Wharf, "right against the king's majesty's

wardrobe;" but he had retired to Stratford, and given up London and the

stage before this. The deed of this sale was sold in 1841 for L162 5s.

In 1608 the Lord Mayor and aldermen of London made a final attempt to

crush the Blackfriars players, but failing to prove to the Lord

Chancellor that the City had ever exercised any authority within the

precinct and liberty of Blackfriars, their cause fell to the ground. The

Corporation then opened a negotiation for purchase with Burbage,

Shakespeare, and the other (now nine) shareholders. The players asked

about L7,000, Shakespeare's four shares being valued at L1,433 6s. 8d.,

including the wardrobe and properties, estimated at L500. The poet's

income at this time Mr. Collier estimates at L400 a year. The

Blackfriars Theatre was pulled down in Cromwell's time (1655), and

houses built in its room.

Randolph, the dramatist, a pupil of Ben Jonson's, ridicules, in _The

Muses' Looking-Glass_, that strange "morality" play of his, the Puritan

feather-sellers of Blackfriars, whom Ben Jonson also taunts; Randolph's

pretty Puritan, Mrs. Flowerdew, says of the ungodly of Blackfriars:--

"Indeed, it sometimes pricks my conscience,

I come to sell 'em pins and looking-glasses."

To which her friend, Mr. Bird, replies, with the sly sanctity of

Tartuffe:--

"I have this custom, too, for my feathers;

'Tis fit that we, which are sincere professors,

Should gain by infidels."

Ben Jonson, that smiter of all such hypocrites, wrote _Volpone_ at his

house in Blackfriars, where he laid the scene of _The Alchymist_. The

Friars were fashionable, however, in spite of the players, for Vandyke

lived in the precinct for nine years (he died in 1641); and the wicked

Earl and Countess of Somerset resided in the same locality when they

poisoned their former favourite, Sir Thomas Overbury. As late as 1735,

Mr. Peter Cunningham says, there was an attempt to assert precinct

privileges, but years before sheriffs had arrested in the Friars.

In 1623 Blackfriars was the scene of a most fatal and extraordinary

accident. It occurred in the chief house of the Friary, then a district

declining fast in respectability. Hunsdon House derived its name from

Queen Elizabeth's favourite cousin, the Lord Chamberlain, Henry Carey,

Baron Hunsdon, and was at the time occupied by Count de Tillier, the

French ambassador. About three o'clock on Sunday, October 26th, a large

Roman Catholic congregation of about three hundred persons, worshipping

to a certain degree in stealth, not without fear from the Puritan

feather-makers of the theatrical neighbourhood, had assembled in a long

garret on the third and uppermost storey. Master Drury, a Jesuit prelate

of celebrity, had drawn together this crowd of timid people. The garret,

looking over the gateway, was approached by a passage having a door

opening into the street, and also by a corridor from the ambassador's

withdrawing-room. The garret was about seventeen feet wide and forty

feet long, with a vestry for a priest partitioned off at one end. In the

middle of the garret, and near the wall, stood a raised table and chair

for the preacher. The gentry sat on chairs and stools facing the pulpit,

the rest stood behind, crowding as far as the head of the stairs. At the

appointed hour Master Drury, the priest, came from the inner room in

white robe and scarlet stole, an attendant carrying a book and an

hour-glass, by which to measure his sermon. He knelt down at the chair

for about an Ave Maria, but uttered no audible prayer. He then took the

Jesuits' Testament, and read for the text the Gospel for the day, which

was, according to the Gregorian Calendar, the twenty-first Sunday after

Pentecost--"Therefore is the kingdom of heaven like unto a man being a

king that would make an account of his servants. And when he began to

make account there was one presented unto him that owed him ten thousand

talents." Having read the text, the Jesuit preacher sat down, and

putting on his head a red quilt cap, with a white linen one beneath it,

commenced his sermon. He had spoken for about half an hour when the

calamity happened. The great weight of the crowd in the old room

suddenly snapped the main summer beam of the floor, which instantly

crashed in and fell into the room below. The main beams there also

snapped and broke through to the ambassador's drawing-room over the

gatehouse, a distance of twenty-two feet. Only a part, however, of the

gallery floor, immediately over Father Rudgate's chamber, a small room

used for secret mass, gave way. The rest of the floor, being less

crowded, stood firm, and the people on it, having no other means of

escape, drew their knives and cut a way through a plaster wall into a

neighbouring room.

A contemporary pamphleteer, who visited the ruins and wrote fresh from

the first outburst of sympathy, says: "What ear without tingling can

bear the doleful and confused cries of such a troop of men, women, and

children, all falling suddenly in the same pit, and apprehending with

one horror the same ruin? What eye can behold without inundation of

tears such a spectacle of men overwhelmed with breaches of mighty

timber, buried in rubbish and smothered with dust? What heart without

evaporating in sighs can ponder the burden of deepest sorrows and

lamentations of parents, children, husbands, wives, kinsmen, friends,

for their dearest pledges and chiefest comforts? This world all bereft

and swept away with one blast of the same dismal tempest."

The news of the accident fast echoing through London, Serjeant Finch,

the Recorder, and the Lord Mayor and aldermen at once provided for the

safety of the ambassador's family, who were naturally shaking in their

shoes, and shutting up the gates to keep off the curious and thievish

crowd, set guards at all the Blackfriars passages. Workmen were employed

to remove the _debris_ and rescue the sufferers who were still alive.

The pamphleteer, again rousing himself to the occasion, and turning on

his tears, says:--"At the opening hereof what a chaos! what fearful

objects! what lamentable representations! Here some buried, some

dismembered, some only parts of men; here some wounded and weltering in

their own and others' blood; others putting forth their fainting hands

and crying out for help. Here some gasping and panting for breath;

others stifled for want of air. So the most of them being thus covered

with dust, their death was a kind of burial." All that night and part of

the next day the workmen spent in removing the bodies, and the inquest

was then held. It was found that the main beams were only ten inches

square, and had two mortise-holes, where the girders were inserted,

facing each other, so that only three inches of solid timber were left.

The main beam of the lower room, about thirteen inches square, without

mortise-holes, broke obliquely near the end. No wall gave way, and the

roof and ceiling of the garret remained entire. Father Drury perished,

as did also Father Rudgate, who was in his own apartment, underneath.

Lady Webb, of Southwark, Lady Blackstone's daughter, from Scroope's

Court, Mr. Fowell, a Warwickshire gentleman, and many tradesmen,

servants, and artisans--ninety-five in all--perished. Some of the

escapes seemed almost miraculous. Mistress Lucie Penruddock fell between

Lady Webb and a servant, who were both killed, yet was saved by her

chair falling over her head. Lady Webb's daughter was found alive near

her dead mother, and a girl named Elizabeth Sanders was also saved by

the dead who fell and covered her. A Protestant scholar, though one of

the very undermost, escaped by the timbers arching over him and some of

them slanting against the wall. He tore a way out through the laths of

the ceiling by main strength, then crept between two joists to a hole

where he saw light, and was drawn through a door by one of the

ambassador's family. He at once returned to rescue others. There was a

girl of ten who cried to him, "Oh, my mother!--oh, my sister!--they are

down under the timber." He told her to be patient, and by God's grace

they would be quickly got forth. The child replied, "This will be a

great scandal to our religion." One of the men that fell said to a

fellow-sufferer, "Oh, what advantage our adversaries will take at this!"

The other replied, "If it be God's will this should befall us, what can

we say to it?" One gentleman was saved by keeping near the stairs, while

his friend, who had pushed near the pulpit, perished.

Many of those who were saved died in a few hours after their

extrication. The bodies of Lady Webb, Mistress Udall, and Lady

Blackstone's daughter, were carried to Ely House, Holborn, and there

buried in the back courtyard. In the fore courtyard, by the French

ambassador's house, a huge grave, eighteen feet long and twelve feet

broad, was dug, and forty-four corpses piled within it. In another pit,

twelve feet long and eight feet broad, in the ambassador's garden, they

buried fifteen more. Others were interred in St. Andrew's, St. Bride's,

and Blackfriars churches. The list of the killed and wounded is curious,

from its topographical allusions. Amongst other entries, we find "John

Halifax, a water-bearer" (in the old times of street conduits the

water-bearer was an important person); "a son of Mr. Flood, the

scrivener, in Holborn; a man of Sir Ives Pemberton; Thomas Brisket, his

wife, son, and maid, in Montague Close; Richard Fitzgarret, of Gray's

Inn, gentleman; Davie, an Irishman, in Angell Alley, Gray's Inn,

gentleman; Sarah Watson, daughter of Master Watson, chirurgeon; Master

Grimes, near the 'Horse Shoe' tavern, in Drury Lane; John Bevan, at the

'Seven Stars', in Drury Lane; Francis Man, Thieving Lane, Westminster,"

&c. As might have been expected, the fanatics of both parties had much

to say about this terrible accident. The Catholics declared that the

Protestants, knowing this to be a chief place of meeting for men of

their faith, had secretly drawn out the pins, or sawn the supporting

timbers partly asunder. The Protestants, on the other hand, lustily

declared that the planks would not bear such a weight of Romish sin, and

that God was displeased with their pulpits and altars, their doctrine

and sacrifice. One zealot remembered that, at the return of Prince

Charles from the madcap expedition to Spain, a Catholic had lamented, or

was said to have lamented, the street bonfires, as there would be never

a fagot left to burn the heretics. "If it had been a Protestant chapel,"

the Puritans cried, "the Jesuits would have called the calamity an omen

of the speedy downfall of heresy." A Catholic writer replied "with a

word of comfort," and pronounced the accident to be a presage of good

fortune to Catholics and of the overthrow of error and heresy. This

zealous, but not well-informed, writer compared Father Drury's death

with that of Zuinglius, who fell in battle, and with that of Calvin,

"who, being in despair, and calling upon the devil, gave up his wicked

soul, swearing, cursing, and blaspheming." So intolerance, we see, is

neither specially Protestant nor Catholic, but of every party. "The

Fatal Vespers," as that terrible day at Blackfriars was afterwards

called, were long remembered with a shudder by Catholic England.

In a curious old pamphlet entitled "Something Written by Occasion of

that Fatall and Memorable Accident in the Blacke-friers, on Sonday,

being the 26th October, 1623, _stilo antiquo_, and the 5th November,

_stilo novo_, or _Romano_" the author relates a singular escape of one

of the listeners. "When all things were ready," he says, "and the prayer

finished, the Jesuite tooke for his text the gospell of the day, being

(as I take it) the 22nd Sunday after Trinity, and extracted out of the

18th of Matthew, beginning at the 21st verse, to the end. The story

concerns forgiveness of sinnes, and describeth the wicked cruelty of the

unjust steward, whom his maister remitted, though he owed him 10,000

talents, but he would not forgive his fellow a 100 pence, whereupon he

was called to a new reckoning, and cast into prison, and then the

particular words are, which he insisted upon, the 34th verse: 'So his

master was wroth, and delivered him to the jaylor, till he should pay

all that was due to him.' For the generall, he urged many good doctrines

and cases; for the particular, he modelled out that fantasie of

purgatory, which he followed with a full crie of pennance, satisfaction,

paying of money, and such like.

"While this exercise was in hand, a gentleman brought up his friend to

see the place, and bee partaker of the sermon, who all the time he was

going up stairs cried out, 'Whither doe I goe? I protest my heart

trembles;' and when he came into the roome, the priest being very loud,

he whispered his friend in the eare that he was afraid, for, as he

supposed, the room did shake under him; at which his friend, between

smiling and anger, left him, and went close to the wall behind the

preacher's chaire. The gentleman durst not stirre from the staires, and

came not full two yards in the roome, when on a sudden there was a kinde

of murmuring amongst the people, and some were heard to say, 'The roome

shakes;' which words being taken up one of another, the whole company

rose up with a strong suddainnesse, and some of the women screeched. I

cannot compare it better than to many passengers in a boat in a tempest,

who are commanded to sit still and let the waterman alone with managing

the oares, but some unruly people rising overthrowes them all. So was

this company served; for the people thus affrighted started up with

extraordinary quicknesse, and at an instant the maine summer beame broke

in sunder, being mortised in the wall some five foot from the same; and

so the whole roofe or floore fell at once, with all the people that

stood thronging on it, and with the violent impetuosity drove downe the

nether roome quite to the ground, so that they fell twenty-four foot

high, and were most of them buried and bruised betweene the rubbish and

the timber; and though some were questionlesse smothered, yet for the

most part they were hurt and bled, and being taken forth the next day,

and laid all along in the gallery, presented to the lookers-on a wofull

spectacle of fourscore and seventeen dead persons, besides eight or nine

which perished since, unable to recover themselves."

[Illustration: RICHARD BURBAGE, FROM THE ORIGINAL PORTRAIT IN DULWICH

COLLEGE (_see page 201_).]

"They that kept themselves close to the walls, or remained by the

windows, or held by the rafters, or settled themselves by the stayres,

or were driven away by fear and suspition, sauved themselves without

further hurt; but such as seemed more devoute, and thronged neere the

preacher, perished in a moment with himselfe and other priests and

Jesuites; and this was the summe of that unhappy disaster."

In earlier days Blackfriars had been a locality much inhabited by

fashionable people, especially about the time of Queen Elizabeth.

Pennant quotes from the _Sydney Papers_ a curious account of a grand

festivity at the house of Lord Herbert, which the Queen honoured by her

attendance. The account is worth inserting, if only for the sake of a

characteristic bit of temper which the Queen exhibited on the occasion.

"Lord Herbert, son of William, fourth Earl of Worcester," says Pennant,

"had a house in Blackfriars, which Queen Elizabeth, in 1600, honoured

with her presence, on occasion of his nuptials with the daughter and

heiress of John, Lord Russell, son of Francis, Earl of Bedford. The

queen was met at the waterside by the bride, and carried to her house in

a _lectica_ by six knights. Her majesty dined there, and supped in the

same neighbourhood with Lord Cobham, where there was 'a memorable maske

of eight ladies, and a strange dawnce new invented. Their attire is

this: each hath a skirt of cloth of silver, a mantell of coruscian

taffete, cast under the arme, and their haire loose about their

shoulders, curiously knotted and interlaced. Mrs. Fitton leade. These

eight ladys maskers choose eight ladies more to dawnce the measures.

Mrs. Fitton went to the queen and woed her dawnce. Her majesty (the love

of Essex rankling in her heart) asked what she was? "_Affection_," she

said. "_Affection!_" said the queen; "_affection_ is false"; yet her

majestie rose up and dawnced. At this time the queen was sixty. Surely,

as Mr. Walpole observed, it was at that period as natural for her as to

be in love! I must not forget that in her passage from the bride's to

Lord Cobham's she went through the house of Dr. Puddin, and was

presented by the doctor with a fan."

[Illustration: LAYING THE FOUNDATION-STONE OF BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE, 1760,

FROM A CONTEMPORARY PRINT (_see page 206_).]

Old Blackfriars Bridge, pulled down a few years since, was begun in

1760, and first opened on Sunday, November 19, 1769. It was built from

the design of Robert Mylne, a clever young Scotch engineer, whose family

had been master masons to the kings of Scotland for five hundred years.

Mylne had just returned from a professional tour in Italy, where he had

followed in the footsteps of Vitruvius, and gained the first prize at

the Academy of St. Luke. He arrived in London friendless and unknown,

and at once entered into competition with twenty other architects for

the new bridge. Among these rivals was Smeaton, the great engineer (a

_protege_ of Lord Bute's), and Dr. Johnson's friend, Gwynn, well known

for his admirable work on London improvements. The committee were,

however, just enough to be unanimous in favouring the young unknown

Scotchman, and he carried off the prize. Directly it was known that

Mylne's arches were to be elliptical, every one unacquainted with the

subject began to write in favour of the semi-circular arch. Among the

champions Dr. Johnson was, if not the most ignorant, the most rash. He

wrote three letters to the printer of the _Gazetteer_, praising Gwynn's

plans and denouncing the Scotch conqueror. Gwynn had "coached" the

learned Doctor in a very unsatisfactory way. In his early days the giant

of Bolt Court had been accustomed to get up subjects rapidly, but the

science of architecture was not so easily digested. The Doctor contended

"that the first excellence of a bridge built for commerce over a large

river is strength." So far so good; but he then went on to try and show

that the pointed arch is necessarily weak, and here he himself broke

down. He allowed that there was an elliptical bridge at Florence, but he

said carts were not allowed to go over it, which proved its fragility.

He also condemned a proposed cast-iron parapet, in imitation of one at

Rome, as too poor and trifling for a great design. He allowed that a

certain arch of Perault's was elliptical, but then he contended that it

had to be held together by iron clamps. He allowed that Mr. Mylne had

gained the prize at Rome, but the competitors, the arrogant despot of

London clubs asserted, were only boys; and, moreover, architecture had

sunk so low at Rome, that even the Pantheon had been deformed by petty

decorations. In his third letter the Doctor grew more scientific, and

even more confused. He was very angry with Mr. Mylne's friends for

asserting that though a semi-ellipse might be weaker than a semicircle,

it had quite strength enough to support a bridge. "I again venture to

declare," he wrote--"I again venture to declare, in defiance of all this

contemptuous superiority" (how arrogant men hate other people's

arrogance!), "that a straight line will bear no weight. Not even the

science of Vasari will make that form strong which the laws of nature

have condemned to weakness. By the position that a straight line will

bear nothing is meant that it receives no strength from straightness;

for that many bodies laid in straight lines will support weight by the

cohesion of their parts, every one has found who has seen dishes on a

shelf, or a thief upon the gallows. It is not denied that stones may be

so crushed together by enormous pressure on each side, that a heavy mass

may be safely laid upon them; but the strength must be derived merely

from the lateral resistance, and the line so loaded will be itself part

of the load. The semi-elliptical arch has one recommendation yet

unexamined. We are told that it is difficult of execution."

In the face of this noisy newspaper thunder, Mylne went on, and produced

one of the most beautiful bridges in England for L152,640 3s. 10d.,

actually L163 less than the original estimate--an admirable example for

all architects, present and to come. The bridge, which had eight arches,

and was 995 yards from wharf to wharf, was erected in ten years and

three quarters. Mylne received L500 a year and ten per cent. on the

expenditure. His claims, however, were disputed, and not allowed by the

grateful City till 1776. The bridge-tolls were bought by Government in

1785, and the passage then became free. It was afterwards lowered, and

the open parapet, condemned by Johnson, removed. It was supposed that

Mylne's mode of centreing was a secret, but in contempt of all quackery

he deposited exact models of his system in the British Museum. He was

afterwards made surveyor of St. Paul's Cathedral, and in 1811 was

interred near the tomb of Wren. He was a despot amongst his workmen, and

ruled them with a rod of iron. However, the foundations of this bridge

were never safely built, and latterly the piers began visibly to

subside. The semi-circular arches would have been far stronger.

The foundation-stone of Blackfriars Bridge was laid by Sir Thomas

Chitty, Lord Mayor, on the 31st of October, 1760. Horace Walpole, always

Whiggish, describing the event, says:--"The Lord Mayor laid the first

stone of the new bridge yesterday. There is an inscription on it in

honour of Mr. Pitt, which has a very Roman air, though very

unclassically expressed. They talk of the contagion of his public

spirit; I believe they had not got rid of their panic about mad dogs."

Several gold, silver, and copper coins of the reign of George II. (just

dead) were placed under the stone, with a silver medal presented to Mr.

Mylne by the Academy of St. Luke's, and upon two plates of tin--Bonnel

Thornton said they should have been lead--was engraved a very shaky

Latin inscription, thus rendered into English:--

On the last day of October, in the year 1760,

And in the beginning of the most auspicious reign of

GEORGE the Third,

Sir THOMAS CHITTY, Knight, Lord Mayor,

laid the first stone of this Bridge,

undertaken by the Common Council of London

(amidst the rage of an extensive war)

for the public accommodation

and ornament of the City;

ROBERT MYLNE being the architect.

And that there might remain to posterity

a monument of this city's affection to the man

who, by the strength of his genius,

the steadiness of his mind,

and a certain kind of happy contagion of his

Probity and Spirit

(under the Divine favour

and fortunate auspices of GEORGE the Second)

recovered, augmented, and secured

the British Empire

in Asia, Africa, and America,

and restored the ancient reputation

and influence of his country

amongst the nations of Europe;

the citizens of London have unanimously voted this

Bridge to be inscribed with the name of

WILLIAM PITT.

On this pretentious and unlucky inscription, that reckless wit, Bonnel

Thornton, instantly wrote a squib, under the obvious pseudonym of the

"Rev. Busby Birch." In these critical and political remarks (which he

entitled "City Latin") the gay scoffer professed in his preface to prove

"almost every word and every letter to be erroneous and contrary to the

practice of both ancients and moderns in this kind of writing," and

appended a plan or pattern for a new inscription. The clever little

lampoon soon ran to three editions. The ordinary of Newgate, my lord's

chaplain, or the masters of Merchant Taylors', Paul's, or Charterhouse

schools, who produced the wonderful pontine inscription, must have

winced under the blows of this jester's bladderful of peas. Thornton

laughed most at the awkward phrase implying that Mr. Pitt had caught the

happy contagion of his own probity and spirit. He said that "Gulielmi

Pitt" should have been "Gulielmi Fossae." Lastly, he proposed, for a more

curt and suitable inscription, the simple words--

"GUIL. FOSSAE,

Patri Patriae D.D.D. (_i.e._, Datur, Dicatur, Dedicatur)."

Party feeling, as usual at those times, was rife. Mylne was a friend of

Paterson, the City solicitor, an apt scribbler and a friend of Lord

Bute, who no doubt favoured his young countryman. For, being a

Scotchman, Johnson no doubt took pleasure in opposing him, and for the

same reason Churchill, in his bitter poem on the Cock Lane ghost, after

ridiculing Johnson's credulity, goes out of his way to sneer at Mylne:--

"What of that bridge which, void of sense,

But well supplied with impudence,

Englishmen, knowing not the Guild,

Thought they might have the claim to build;

Till Paterson, as white as milk,

As smooth as oil, as soft as silk,

In solemn manner had decreed

That, on the other side the Tweed,

Art, born and bred and fully grown,

Was with one Mylne, a man unknown?

But grace, preferment, and renown

Deserving, just arrived in town;

One Mylne, an artist, perfect quite,

Both in his own and country's right,

As fit to make a bridge as he,

With glorious Patavinity,

To build inscriptions, worthy found

To lie for ever underground."

In 1766 it was opened for foot passengers, the completed portion being

connected with the shore by a temporary wooden structure; two years

later it was made passable for horses, and in 1769 it was fully opened.

An unpopular toll of one halfpenny on week-days for every person, and of

one penny on Sundays, was exacted. The result of this was that while the

Gordon Riots were raging, in 1780, the too zealous Protestants,

forgetting for a time the poor tormented Papists, attacked and burned

down the toll-gates, stole the money, and destroyed all the

account-books. Several rascals' lives were lost, and one rioter, being

struck with a bullet, ran howling for thirty or forty yards, and then

dropped down dead. Nevertheless, the iniquitous toll continued until

1785, when it was redeemed by Government.

The bridge, according to the order of Common Council, was first named

Pitt Bridge, and the adjacent streets (in honour of the great earl)

Chatham Place, William Street, and Earl Street. But the first name of

the bridge soon dropped off, and the monastic locality asserted its

prior right. This is the more remarkable (as Mr. Timbs judiciously

observes), because with another Thames bridge the reverse change took

place. Waterloo Bridge was first called Strand Bridge, but it was soon

dedicated by the people to the memory of the most famous of British

victories.

The L152,640 that the bridge cost does not include the L5,830 spent in

altering and filling up the Fleet Ditch, or the L2,167 the cost of the

temporary wooden bridge. The piers, of bad Portland stone, were

decorated by some columns of unequal sizes, and the line of parapet was

low and curved. The approaches to the bridge were also designed by

Mylne, who built himself a house at the corner of Little Bridge Street.

The walls of the rooms were adorned with classical medallions, and on

the exterior was the date (1780), with Mylne's crest, and the initials

"R.M." Dr. Johnson became a friend of Mylne's, and dined with him at

this residence at least on one occasion. The house afterwards became the

"York Hotel," and, according to Mr. Timbs, was taken down in 1863.

The Bridge repairs (between 1833 and 1840), by Walker and Burgess,

engineers, at an expense of L74,000, produced a loss to the contractors;

and the removal of the cornice and balustrade spoiled the bridge, from

whence old Richard Wilson, the landscape-painter, used to come and

admire the grand view of St. Paul's. The bridge seemed to be as unlucky

as if it had incurred Dr. Johnson's curse. In 1843 the Chamberlain

reported to the Common Council that the sum of L100,960 had been already

expended in repairing Mylne's faulty work, besides the L800 spent in

procuring a local Act (4 William IV.). According to a subsequent report,

L10,200 had been spent in six years in repairing one arch alone. From

1851 to 1859 the expenditure had been at the rate of L600 a year.

Boswell, indeed, with all his zealous partiality for the Scotch

architect, had allowed that the best Portland stone belonged to

Government quarries, and from this Parliamentary interest had debarred

Mylne.

The tardy Common Council was at last forced, in common decency, to build

a new bridge. The architect began by building a temporary structure of

great strength. It consisted of two storeys--the lower for carriages,

the upper for pedestrians--and stretching 990 feet from wharf to wharf.

The lower piles were driven ten feet into the bed of the river, and

braced with horizontal and diagonal bracings. The demolition began with

vigour in 1864. In four months only, the navigators' brawny arms had

removed twenty thousand tons of earth, stone, and rubble above the

turning of the arches, and the pulling down those enemies of Dr. Johnson

commenced by the removal of the keystone of the second arch on the

Surrey side. The masonry of the arches proved to be rather thinner than

it appeared to be, and was stuffed with river ballast, mixed with bones

and small old-fashioned pipes. The bridge had taken nearly ten years to

build; it was entirely demolished in less than a year, and rebuilt in

two. In some cases the work of removal and re-construction went on

harmoniously and simultaneously side by side. Ingenious steam cranes

travelled upon rails laid on the upper scaffold beams, and lifted the

blocks of stone with playful ease and speed. In December, 1864, the men

worked in the evenings, by the aid of naphtha lamps.

According to a report printed in the _Times_, Blackfriars Bridge had

suffered from the removal of London Bridge, which served as a mill-dam,

to restrain the speed and scour of the river.

Twelve designs had been sent in at the competition, and, singularly

enough, among the competitors was a Mr. Mylne, grandson of Johnson's

foe. The design of Mr. Page was first selected, as the handsomest and

cheapest. It consisted of only three arches. Ultimately Mr. Joseph

Cubitt won the prize. Cubitt's bridge has five arches, the centre one

eighty-nine feet span; the style, Venetian Gothic; the cost, L265,000.

The piers are grey, the columns red, granite; the bases and capitals are

of carved Portland stone; the bases, balustrades, and roads of somewhat

over-ornamented iron.

The _Quarterly Review_, of April, 1872, contains the following bitter

criticisms of the new double bridge:--"With Blackfriars Bridge," says

the writer, "we find the public thoroughly well pleased, though the

design is really a wonder of depravity. Polished granite columns of

amazing thickness, with carved capitals of stupendous weight, all made

to give shop-room for an apple-woman, or a convenient platform for a

suicide. The parapet is a fiddle-faddle of pretty cast-iron arcading,

out of scale with the columns, incongruous with the capitals, and quite

unsuited for a work that should be simply grand in its usefulness; and

at each corner of the bridge is a huge block of masonry, _apropos_ of

nothing, a well-known evidence of desperate imbecility."

Bridge Street is too new for many traditions. Its chief hero is that

active-minded and somewhat shallow speculator, Sir Richard Phillips, the

bookseller and projector. An interesting memoir by Mr. Timbs, his

intimate friend, furnishes us with many curious facts, and shows how the

publisher of Bridge Street impinged on many of the most illustrious of

his contemporaries, and how in a way he pushed forward the good work

which afterwards owed so much to Mr. Charles Knight. Phillips, born in

London in 1767, was educated in Soho Square, and afterwards at Chiswick,

where he remembered often seeing Hogarth's widow and Dr. Griffith, of

the _Monthly Review_ (Goldsmith's tyrant), attending church. He was

brought up to be a brewer, but in 1788 settled as a schoolmaster, first

at Chester and afterwards at Leicester. At Leicester he opened a

bookseller's shop, started a newspaper (the _Leicester Herald_), and

established a philosophical society. Obnoxious as a Radical, he was at

last entrapped for selling Tom Paine's "Rights of Man," and was sent to

gaol for eighteen months, where he was visited by Lord Moira, the Duke

of Norfolk, and other advanced men of the day. His house being burned

down, he removed to London, and projected a Sunday newspaper, but

eventually Mr. Bell stole the idea and started the _Messenger_. In 1795

this restless and energetic man commenced the _Monthly Magazine_. Before

this he had already been a hosier, a tutor, and a speculator in canals.

The politico-literary magazine was advertised by circulars sent to

eminent men of the opposition in commercial parcels, to save the

enormous postage of those unregenerate days. Dr. Aiken, the literary

editor, afterwards started a rival magazine, called the _Athenaeum_. The

_Gentleman's Magazine_ never rose to a circulation above 10,000, which

soon sank to 3,000. Phillips's magazine sold about 3,750. With all these

multifarious pursuits, Phillips was an antiquary--purchasing Wolsey's

skull for a shilling, a portion of his stone coffin, that had been

turned into a horse-trough at the "White Horse" inn, Leicester; and

Rufus's stirrup, from a descendant of the charcoal-burner who drove the

body of the slain king to Winchester.

As a pushing publisher Phillips soon distinguished himself, for the

Liberals came to him, and he had quite enough sense to discover if a

book was good. He produced many capital volumes of Ana, on the French

system, and memoirs of Foote, Monk, Lewes, Wilkes, and Lady Mary Wortley

Montagu. He published Holcroft's "Travels," Godwin's best novels, and

Miss Owenson's (Lady Morgan's) first work, "The Novice of St. Dominick."

In 1807, when he removed to New Bridge Street, he served the office of

sheriff; was knighted on presenting an address, and effected many

reforms in the prisons and lock-up houses. In his useful "Letter to the

Livery of London" he computes the number of writs then annually issued

at 24,000; the sheriffs' expenses at L2,000. He also did his best to

repress the cruelties of the mob to poor wretches in the pillory. He was

a steady friend of Alderman Waithman, and was with him in the carriage

at the funeral of Queen Caroline, in 1821, when a bullet from a

soldier's carbine passed through the carriage window near Hyde Park. In

1809 Phillips had some reverses, and breaking up his publishing-office

in Bridge Street, devoted himself to the profitable reform of

school-books, publishing them under the names of Goldsmith, Mavor, and

Blair.

This active-minded man was the first to assert that Dr. Wilmot wrote

"Junius," and to start the celebrated scandal about George III. and the

young Quakeress, Hannah Lightfoot, daughter of a linendraper, at the

corner of Market Street, St. James's. She afterwards, it is said,

married a grocer, named Axford, on Ludgate Hill, was then carried off by

the prince, and bore him three sons, who in time became generals. The

story is perhaps traceable to Dr. Wilmot, whose daughter married the

Duke of Cumberland. Phillips found time to attack the Newtonian theory

of gravitation, to advocate a memorial to Shakespeare, to compile a book

containing a million of facts, to write on Divine philosophy, and to

suggest (as he asserted) to Mr. Brougham, in 1825, the first idea of the

Society for Useful Knowledge. Almost ruined by the failures during the

panic in 1826, he retired to Brighton, and there pushed forward his

books and his interrogative system of education. Sir Richard's greatest

mistakes, he used to say, had been the rejection of Byron's early poems,

of "Waverley," of Bloomfield's "Farmer's Boy," and O'Meara's "Napoleon

in Exile." He always stoutly maintained his claim to the suggestion of

the "Percy Anecdotes." Phillips died in 1840. Superficial as he was, and

commercial as were his literary aims, we nevertheless cannot refuse him

the praise awarded in his epitaph:--"He advocated civil liberty, general

benevolence, ascendancy of justice, and the improvement of the human

race."

The old monastic ground of the Black Friars seems to have been beloved

by painters, for, as we have seen, Vandyke lived luxuriously here, and

was frequently visited by Charles I. and his Court. Cornelius Jansen,

the great portrait-painter of James's Court, arranged his black

draperies and ground his fine carnations in the same locality; and at

the same time Isaac Oliver, the exquisite Court miniature-painter, dwelt

in the same place. It was to him Lady Ayres, to the rage of her jealous

husband, came for a portrait of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, an imprudence

that very nearly led to the assassination of the poet-lord, who believed

himself so specially favoured of Heaven.

The king's printing-office for proclamations, &c., used to be in

Printing-house Square, but was removed in 1770; and we must not forget

that where a Norman fortress once rose to oppress the weak, to guard the

spoils of robbers, and to protect the oppressor, the _Times_

printing-office now stands, to diffuse its ceaseless floods of

knowledge, to spread its resistless aegis over the poor and the

oppressed, and ever to use its vast power to extend liberty and crush

injustice, whatever shape the Proteus assumes, whether it sits upon a

throne or lurks in a swindler's office.

[Illustration: PRINTING HOUSE SQUARE AND THE "TIMES" OFFICE (_see page

209_).]

This great paper was started in the year 1785, by Mr. John Walter, under

the name of the _Daily Universal Register_. It was first called the

_Times_, January 1, 1788, when the following prospectus appeared:--

"The _Universal Register_ has been a name as injurious to the

logographic newspaper as Tristram was to Mr. Shandy's son; but old

Shandy forgot he might have rectified by confirmation the mistake of the

parson at baptism, and with the touch of a bishop changed Tristram into

Trismegistus. The _Universal Register_, from the day of its first

appearance to the day of its confirmation, had, like Tristram, suffered

from innumerable casualties, both laughable and serious, arising from

its name, which in its introduction was immediately curtailed of its

fair proportions by all who called for it, the word 'Universal' being

universally omitted, and the word 'Register' only retained. 'Boy, bring

me the _Register_.' The waiter answers, 'Sir, we have no library; but

you may see it in the "New Exchange" coffee-house.' 'Then I will see it

there,' answers the disappointed politician; and he goes to the 'New

Exchange' coffee-house, and calls for the _Register_, upon which the

waiter tells him he cannot have it, as he is not a subscriber, or

presents him with the _Court and City Register_, the _Old Annual

Register_, or the _New Annual Register_, or, if the house be within the

purlieus of Covent Garden or the hundreds of Drury, slips into the

politician's hand _Harris's Register of Ladies_.

"For these and other reasons the printer of the _Universal Register_ has

added to its original name that of the _Times_, which, being a

monosyllable, bids defiance to the corruptions and mutilations of the

language.

[Illustration: BLACKFRIARS OLD BRIDGE DURING ITS CONSTRUCTION, SHOWING

THE TEMPORARY FOOT BRIDGE, FROM A PRINT OF 1775 (_see page 207_).]

"The _Times!_ what a monstrous name! Granted--for the Times is a

many-headed monster, that speaks with a hundred tongues, and displays a

thousand characters; and in the course of its transitions in life,

assumes innumerable shapes and humours.

"The critical reader will observe, we personify our new name; but as we

give it no distinction of sex, and though it will be active in its

vocation, yet we apply to it the neuter gender.

"The _Times_, being formed of and possessing qualities of opposite and

heterogeneous natures, cannot be classed either in the animal or

vegetable genus, but, like the polypus, is doubtful; and in the

discussion, description, and illustration, will employ the pens of the

most celebrated _literati_.

"The heads of the _Times_, as has already been said, are many; these

will, however, not always appear at the same time, but casually, as

public or private affairs may call them forth.

"The principal or leading heads are--the literary, political,

commercial, philosophical, critical, theatrical, fashionable, humorous,

witty, &c., each of which is supplied with a competent share of

intellect for the pursuit of their several functions, an endowment which

is not in all cases to be found, even in the heads of the State, the

heads of the Church, the heads of the law, the heads of the navy, the

heads of the army, and, though last not least, the great heads of the

universities.

"The political head of the _Times_--like that of Janus, the Roman

deity--is double-faced. With one countenance it will smile continually

on the friends of Old England, and with the other will frown incessantly

on her enemies.

"The alteration we have made in our paper is not without precedents. The

_World_ has parted with half its _caput mortuum_ and a moiety of its

brains; the _Herald_ has cutoff one half of its head and has lost its

original humour; the _Post_, it is true, retains its whole head and its

old features; and as to the other public prints, they appear as having

neither heads nor tails.

"On the Parliamentary head, every communication that ability and

industry can produce may be expected. To this great national object the

_Times_ will be most sedulously attentive, most accurately correct, and

strictly impartial in its reports."

Both the _Times_ and its predecessor were printed "logographically," Mr.

Walter having obtained a patent for his peculiar system. The plan

consisted in abridging the compositors' labour by casting all the more

frequently recurring words in metal. It was, in fact, a system of

partial stereotyping. The English language, said the sanguine inventor,

contained above 90,000 words. This number Walter had reduced to about

5,000. The projector was assailed by the wits, who declared that his

orders to the typefounders ran,--"Send me a hundredweight, in separate

pounds, of _heat_, _cold_, _wet_, _dry_, _murder_, _fire_, _dreadful

robbery_, _atrocious outrage_, _fearful calamity_, and _alarming

explosion_." But nothing could daunt or stop Walter. One eccentricity of

the _Daily Register_ was that on red-letter days the title was printed

in red ink, and the character of the day stated under the date-line. For

instance, on Friday, August 11, 1786, there is a red heading, and

underneath the words--

"Princess of Brunswick born.

Holiday at the Bank, Excise offices, and the Exchequer."

The first number of the _Times_ is not so large as the _Morning Herald_

or _Morning Chronicle_ of the same date, but larger than the _London

Chronicle_, and of the same size as the _Public Advertiser_. (Knight

Hunt.)

The first Walter lived in rough times, and suffered from the political

storms that then prevailed. He was several times imprisoned for articles

against great people, and it has been asserted that he stood in the

pillory in 1790 for a libel against the Duke of York. This is not,

however, true; but it is a fact that he was sentenced to such a

punishment, and remained sixteen months in Newgate, till released at the

intercession of the Prince of Wales. The first Walter died in 1812. The

second Mr. Walter, who came to the helm in 1803, was the real founder of

the future greatness of the _Times_; and he, too, had his rubs. In 1804

he offended the Government by denouncing the foolish Catamaran

expedition. For this the Government meanly deprived his family of the

printing for the Customs, and also withdrew their advertisements. During

the war of 1805 the Government stopped all the foreign papers sent to

the _Times_. Walter, stopped by no obstacle, at once contrived other

means to secure early news, and had the triumph of announcing the

capitulation of Flushing forty-eight hours before the intelligence had

arrived through any other channel.

There were no reviews of books in the _Times_ till long after it was

started, but it paid great attention to the drama from its commencement.

There were no leading articles for several years, yet in the very first

year the _Times_ displays threefold as many advertisements as its

contemporaries. For many years Mr. Walter, with his usual sagacity and

energy, endeavoured to mature some plan for printing the _Times_ by

steam. As early as 1804 a compositor named Martyn had invented a machine

for the purpose of superseding the hand-press, which took hours

struggling over the three or four thousand copies of the _Times_. The

pressmen threatened destruction to the new machine, and it had to be

smuggled piecemeal into the premises, while Martyn sheltered himself

under various disguises to escape the vengeance of the workmen. On the

eve of success, however, Walter's father lost courage, stopped the

supplies, and the project was for the time abandoned. In 1814 Walter,

however, returned to the charge. Koenig and Barnes put their machinery

in premises adjoining the _Times_ office, to avoid the violence of the

pressmen. At one time the two inventors are said to have abandoned their

machinery in despair, but a clerical friend of Walter examined the

difficulty and removed it. The night came at last when the great

experiment was to be made. The unconscious pressmen were kept waiting in

the next office for news from the Continent. At six o'clock in the

morning Mr. Walter entered the press-room, with a wet paper in his hand,

and astonished the men by telling them that the _Times_ had just been

printed by steam. If they attempted violence, he said, there was a force

ready to suppress it; but if they were peaceable their wages should be

continued until employment was found for them. He could now print 1,100

sheets an hour. By-and-by Koenig's machine proved too complicated, and

Messrs. Applegarth and Cowper invented a cylindrical one, that printed

8,000 an hour. Then came Hoe's process, which is now said to print at

the rate of from 18,000 to 22,000 copies an hour (Grant). The various

improvements in steam-printing have altogether cost the _Times_,

according to general report, not less than L80,000.

About 1813 Dr. Stoddart, the brother-in-law of Hazlitt (afterwards Sir

John Stoddart, a judge in Malta), edited the _Times_ with ability, till

his almost insane hatred of Bonaparte, "the Corsican fiend," as he

called him, led to his secession in 1815 or 1816. Stoddart was the

"Doctor Slop" whom Tom Moore derided in his gay little Whig lampoons.

The next editor was Thomas Barnes, a better scholar and a far abler man.

He had been a contemporary of Lamb at Christ's Hospital, and a rival of

Blomfield, afterwards Bishop of London. While a student in the Temple he

wrote the _Times_ a series of political letters in the manner of

"Junius," and was at once placed as a reporter in the gallery of the

House. Under his editorship Walter secured some of his ablest

contributors, including that Captain Stirling, "The Thunderer," whom

Carlyle has sketched so happily. Stirling was an Irishman, who had

fought with the Royal troops at Vinegar Hill, then joined the line, and

afterwards turned gentleman farmer in the Isle of Bute. He began writing

for the _Times_ about 1815, and, it is said, eventually received L2,000

a year as a writer of dashing and effective leaders. Lord Brougham

also, it is said, wrote occasional articles. Tom Moore was even offered

L100 a month if he would contribute, and Southey declined an offer of

L2,000 a year for editing the _Times_. Macaulay in his day wrote many

brilliant squibs in the _Times_; amongst them one containing the line:

"Ye diners out, from whom we guard our spoons,"

and another on the subject of Wat Banks's candidateship for Cambridge.

Barnes died in 1841. Horace Twiss, the biographer of Lord Eldon and

nephew of Mrs. Siddons, also helped the _Times_ forward by his admirable

Parliamentary summaries, the first the _Times_ had attempted. This able

man died suddenly in 1848, while speaking at a meeting of the Rock

Assurance Society at Radley's Hotel, Bridge Street.

One of the longest wars the _Times_ ever carried on was that against

Alderman Harmer. It was Harmer's turn, in due order of rotation, to

become Lord Mayor. A strong feeling had arisen against Harmer because,

as the avowed proprietor of the _Weekly Dispatch_, he inserted certain

letters of the late Mr. Williams ("Publicola"), which were said to have

had the effect of preventing Mr. Walter's return for Southwark (see page

59). The _Times_ upon this wrote twelve powerful leaders against Harmer,

which at once decided the question. This was a great assertion of power,

and raised the _Times_ in the estimation of all England. For these

twelve articles, originally intended for letters, the writer (says Mr.

Grant) received L200. But in 1841 the extraordinary social influence of

this giant paper was even still more shown. Mr. O'Reilly, their Paris

correspondent, obtained a clue to a vast scheme of fraud concocting in

Paris by a gang of fourteen accomplished swindlers, who had already

netted L10,700 of the million for which they had planned. At the risk of

assassination, O'Reilly exposed the scheme in the _Times_, dating the

_expose_ Brussels, in order to throw the swindlers on the wrong scent.

At a public meeting of merchants, bankers, and others held in the

Egyptian Hall, Mansion House, October 1, 1841, the Lord Mayor (Thomas

Johnson) in the chair, it was unanimously resolved to thank the

proprietors of the _Times_ for the services they had rendered in having

exposed the most remarkable and extensively fraudulent conspiracy (the

famous "Bogle" swindle) ever brought to light in the mercantile world,

and to record in some substantial manner the sense of obligation

conferred by the proprietors of the _Times_ on the commercial world.

The proprietors of the _Times_ declining to receive the L2,625

subscribed by the London merchants to recompense them for doing their

duty, it was resolved, in 1842, to set apart the funds for the endowment

of two scholarships, one at Christ's Hospital, and one at the City of

London School. In both schools a commemorative tablet was put up, as

well as one at the Royal Exchange and the _Times_ printing-office.

At various periods the _Times_ has had to endure violent attacks in the

House of Commons, and many strenuous efforts to restrain its vast

powers. In 1819 John Payne Collier, one of their Parliamentary

reporters, and better known as one of the greatest of Shakesperian

critics, was committed into the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms for a

report in which he had attacked Canning. The _Times_, however, had some

powerful friends in the House; and in 1821 we find Mr. Hume complaining

that the Government advertisements were systematically withheld from the

_Times_. In 1831 Sir R.H. Inglis complained that the _Times_ had been

guilty of a breach of privilege, in asserting that there were borough

nominees and lackeys in the House. Sir Charles Wetherell, that titled,

incomparable old Tory, joined in the attack, which Burdett chivalrously

cantered forward to repel. Sir Henry Hardinge wanted the paper

prosecuted, but Lord John Russell, Orator Hunt, and O'Connell, however,

moved the previous question, and the great debate on the Reform Bill

then proceeded. The same year the House of Lords flew at the great

paper. The Earl of Limerick had been called "an absentee, and a thing

with human pretensions." The Marquis of Londonderry joined in the

attack. The next day Mr. Lawson, printer of the _Times_, was examined

and worried by the House; and Lord Wynford moved that Mr. Lawson, as

printer of a scandalous libel, should be fined L100, and committed to

Newgate till the fine be paid. The next day Mr. Lawson handed in an

apology, but Lord Brougham generously rose and denied the power of the

House to imprison and fine without a trial by jury. The Tory lords spoke

angrily; the Earl of Limerick called the press a tyrant that ruled all

things, and crushed everything under its feet; and the Marquis of

Londonderry complained of the coarse and virulent libels against Queen

Adelaide, for her supposed opposition to Reform.

In 1833 O'Connell attributed dishonest motives to the London reporter

who had suppressed his speeches, and the reporters in the _Times_

expressed their resolution not to report any more of his speeches unless

he retracted. O'Connell then moved in the House that the printer of the

_Times_ be summoned to the bar for printing their resolution, but his

motion was rejected. In 1838 Mr. Lawson was fined L200 for accusing Sir

John Conroy, treasurer of the household of the Duchess of Kent, of

peculation. In 1840 an angry member brought a breach of privilege motion

against the _Times_, and advised every one who was attacked in that

paper to horsewhip the editor.

In January, 1829, the _Times_ came out with a double sheet, consisting

of eight pages, or forty-eight columns. In 1830 it paid L70,000

advertisement duty. In 1800 its sale had been below that of the _Morning

Chronicle_, _Post_, _Herald_, and _Advertiser_.

The _Times_, according to Mr. Grant, in one day of 1870, received no

less than L1,500 for advertisements. On June 22, 1862, it produced a

paper containing no less than twenty-four pages, or 144 columns. In 1854

the _Times_ had a circulation of 51,000 copies; in 1860, 60,000. For

special numbers its sale is enormous. The biography of Prince Albert

sold 90,000 copies; the marriage of the Prince of Wales, 110,000 copies.

The income of the _Times_ from advertisements alone has been calculated

at L260,000. A writer in a Philadelphia paper of 1867 estimates the

paper consumed weekly by the _Times_ at seventy tons; the ink at two

tons. There are employed in the office ten stereotypers, sixteen firemen

and engineers, ninety machine-men, six men who prepare the paper for

printing, and seven to transfer the papers to the news-agents. The new

Walter press prints 22,000 to 24,000 impressions an hour, or 12,000

perfect sheets printed on both sides. It prints from a roll of paper

three-quarters of a mile long, and cuts the sheets and piles them

without help. It is a self-feeder, and requires only a man and two boys

to guide its operations. A copy of the _Times_ has been known to contain

4,000 advertisements; and for every daily copy it is computed that the

compositors mass together not less than 2,500,000 separate types.

The number of persons engaged in daily working for the _Times_ is put at

nearly 350.

In the annals of this paper we must not forget the energy that, in 1834,

established a system of home expresses, that enabled them to give the

earliest intelligence before any other paper; and at an expense of L200

brought a report of Lord Durham's speech at Glasgow to London at the

then unprecedented rate of fifteen miles an hour; nor should we forget

their noble disinterestedness during the railway mania of 1845, when,

although they were receiving more than L3,000 a week for railway

advertisements, they warned the country unceasingly of the misery and

ruin that must inevitably follow. The _Times_ proprietors are known to

pay the highest sums for articles, and to be uniformly generous in

pensioning men who have spent their lives in its service.

The late Mr. Walter, even when M.P. for Berkshire and Nottingham, never

forgot Printing-house Square when the debate, however late, had closed.

One afternoon, says Mr. Grant, he came to the office and found the

compositors gone to dinner. Just at that moment a parcel, marked

"immediate and important," arrived. It was news of vast importance. He

at once slipped off his coat, and set up the news with his own hands; a

pressman was at his post, and by the time the men returned a second

edition was actually printed and published. But his foresight and energy

was most conspicuously shown in 1845, when the jealousy of the French

Government had thrown obstacles in the way of the _Times'_ couriers, who

brought their Indian despatches from Marseilles. What were seas and

deserts to Walter? He at once took counsel with Lieutenant Waghorn, who

had opened up the overland route to India, and proposed to try a new

route by Trieste. The result was that Waghorn reached London two days

before the regular mail--the usual mail aided by the French Government.

The _Morning Herald_ was at first forty-eight hours before the _Times_,

but after that the _Times_ got a fortnight ahead; and although the

Trieste route was abandoned, the _Times_, eventually, was left alone as

a troublesome and invincible adversary.

Apothecaries' Hall, the grave stone and brick building, in Water Lane,

Blackfriars, was erected in 1670 (Charles II.), as the dispensary and

hall of the Company of Apothecaries, incorporated by a charter of James

I., at the suit of Gideon Delaune, the king's own apothecary. Drugs in

the Middle Ages were sold by grocers and pepperers, or by the doctors

themselves, who, early in James's reign, formed one company with the

apothecaries; but the ill-assorted union lasted only eleven years, for

the apothecaries were then fast becoming doctors themselves.

Garth, in his "Dispensary," describes, in the Hogarthian manner, the

topographical position of Apothecaries' Hall:--

"Nigh where Fleet Ditch descends in sable streams,

To wash the sooty Naiads in the Thames,

There stands a structure on a rising hill,

Where tyros take their freedom out to kill."

Gradually the apothecaries, refusing to be merely "the doctors' tools,"

began to encroach more and more on the doctors' province, and to

prescribe for and even cure the poor. In 1687 (James II.) open war broke

out. First Dryden, then Pope, fought on the side of the doctors against

the humbler men, whom they were taught to consider as mere greedy

mechanics and empirics. Dryden first let fly his mighty shaft:--

"The apothecary tribe is wholly blind;

From files a random recipe they take,

And many deaths from one prescription make.

Garth, generous as his muse, prescribes and gives;

The shopman sells, and by destruction lives."

Pope followed with a smaller but keener arrow:--

"So modern 'pothecaries, taught the art

By doctors' bills to play the doctor's part,

Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,

Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools."

The origin of the memorable affray between the College of Physicians and

the Company of Apothecaries is admirably told by Mr. Jeaffreson, in his

"Book of Doctors." The younger physicians, impatient at beholding the

increasing prosperity and influence of the apothecaries, and the older

ones indignant at seeing a class of men they had despised creeping into

their quarters, and craftily laying hold of a portion of their monopoly,

concocted a scheme to reinstate themselves in public favour. Without a

doubt, many of the physicians who countenanced this scheme gave it their

support from purely charitable motives; but it cannot be questioned

that, as a body, the dispensarians were only actuated in their

humanitarian exertions by a desire to lower the apothecaries and raise

themselves in the eyes of the world. In 1687 the physicians, at a

college meeting, voted "that all members of the college, whether

fellows, candidates, or licentiates, should give their advice gratis to

all their sick neighbouring poor, when desired, within the city of

London, or seven miles round." The poor folk carried their prescriptions

to the apothecaries, to learn that the trade charge for dispensing them

was beyond their means. The physicians asserted that the demands of the

drug-vendors were extortionate, and were not reduced to meet the

finances of the applicants, to the end that the undertakings of

benevolence might prove abortive. This was, of course, absurd. The

apothecaries knew their own interests better than to oppose a system

which at least rendered drug-consuming fashionable with the lower

orders. Perhaps they regarded the poor as their peculiar property as a

field of practice, and felt insulted at having the same humble people

for whom they had pompously prescribed, and put up boluses at twopence

apiece, now entering their shops with papers dictating what the twopenny

bolus was to be composed of. But the charge preferred against them was

groundless. Indeed, a numerous body of the apothecaries expressly

offered to sell medicines "to the poor within their respective parishes

at such rates as the committee of physicians should think reasonable."

[Illustration: THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, WARWICK LANE (_see page

216_).]

But this would not suit the game of the physicians. "A proposal was

started by a committee of the college that the college should furnish

the medicines of the poor, and perfect alone that charity which the

apothecaries refused to concur in; and, after divers methods

ineffectually tried, and much time wasted in endeavouring to bring the

apothecaries to terms of reason in relation to the poor, an instrument

was subscribed by divers charitably-disposed members of the college, now

in numbers about fifty, wherein they obliged themselves to pay ten

pounds apiece towards the preparing and delivering medicines at their

intrinsic value."

Such was the version of the affair given by the college apologists. The

plan was acted upon, and a dispensary was eventually established (some

nine years after the vote of 1687) at the College of Physicians, Warwick

Lane, where medicines were vended to the poor at cost price. This

measure of the college was impolitic and unjustifiable. It was unjust to

that important division of the trade who were ready to vend the

medicines at rates to be paid by the college authorities, for it took

altogether out of their hands the small amount of profit which they, as

_dealers_, could have realised on those terms. It was also an eminently

unwise course. The College sank to the level of the Apothecaries' Hall,

becoming an emporium for the sale of medicines. It was all very well to

say that no profit was made on such sale, the censorious world would not

believe it. The apothecaries and their friends denied that such was the

fact, and vowed that the benevolent dispensarians were bent only on

underselling and ruining them.

[Illustration: OUTER COURT OF LA BELLE SAUVAGE IN 1828, FROM AN ORIGINAL

DRAWING IN MR. GARDNER'S COLLECTION (_see page 221_).]

Again, the movement introduced dissensions within the walls of the

college. Many of the first physicians, with the conservatism of success,

did not care to offend the apothecaries, who were continually calling

them in and paying them fees. They therefore joined in the cry against

the dispensary. The profession was split up into two parties--Dispensarians

and Anti-Dispensarians. The apothecaries combined, and agreed not to

recommend the Dispensarians. The Anti-Dispensarians repaid this ill

service by refusing to meet Dispensarians in consultation. Sir Thomas

Millington, the President of the College, Hans Sloane, John Woodward,

Sir Edmund King, and Sir Samuel Garth, were amongst the latter. Of

these the last named was the man who rendered the most efficient

service to his party. For a time Garth's great poem, "The Dispensary,"

covered the apothecaries and Anti-Dispensarians with ridicule. It

rapidly passed through numerous editions. To say that of all the books,

pamphlets, and broadsheets thrown out by the combatants on both sides,

it is by far the one of the greatest merit, would be scant justice,

when it might almost be said that it is the only one of them that can

now be read by a gentleman without a sense of annoyance and disgust.

There is no point of view from which the medical profession appears

in a more humiliating and contemptible light than that which the

literature of this memorable squabble presents to the student. Charges

of ignorance, dishonesty, and extortion were preferred on both sides.

And the Dispensarian physicians did not hesitate to taunt their brethren

of the opposite camp with playing corruptly into the hands of the

apothecaries--prescribing enormous and unnecessary quantities of

medicine, so that the drug-vendors might make heavy bills, and, as a

consequence, recommend in all directions such complacent superiors to be

called in. Garth's, unfair and violent though it is, nowhere offends

against decency. As a work of art it cannot be ranked high, and is now

deservedly forgotten, although it has many good lines and some

felicitous satire. Garth lived to see the apothecaries gradually

emancipate themselves from the ignominious regulations to which they

consented when their vocation was first separated from the grocery

trade. Four years after his death they obtained legal acknowledgment of

their right to dispense and sell medicines without the prescription of a

physician; and six years later the law again decided in their favour

with regard to the physicians' right of examining and condemning their

drugs. In 1721, Mr. Rose, an apothecary, on being prosecuted by the

college for prescribing as well as compounding medicines, carried the

matter into the House of Lords, and obtained a favourable decision; and

from 1727, in which year Mr. Goodwin, an apothecary, obtained in a court

of law a considerable sum for an illegal seizure of his wares (by Drs.

Arbuthnot, Bale, and Levit), the physicians may be said to have

discontinued to exercise their privileges of inspection.

In his elaborate poem Garth cruelly caricatures the apothecaries of his

day:--

"Long has he been of that amphibious fry,

Bold to prescribe, and busy to apply;

His shop the gazing vulgar's eyes employs,

With foreign trinkets and domestic toys.

Here mummies lay, most reverently stale,

And there the tortoise hung her coat of mail;

Not far from some huge shark's devouring head

The flying-fish their finny pinions spread.

Aloft in rows large poppy-heads were strung,

And near, a scaly alligator hung.

In this place drugs in musty heaps decay'd,

In that dried bladders and false teeth were laid.

"An inner room receives the num'rous shoals

Of such as pay to be reputed fools;

Globes stand by globes, volumes on volumes lie,

And planetary schemes amuse the eye.

The sage in velvet chair here lolls at ease,

To promise future health for present fees;

Then, as from tripod, solemn shams reveals,

And what the stars know nothing of foretells.

Our manufactures now they merely sell,

And their true value treacherously tell;

Nay, they discover, too, their spite is such,

That health, than crowns more valued, cost not much;

Whilst we must steer our conduct by these rules,

To cheat as tradesmen, or to starve as fools."

Before finally leaving Blackfriars, let us gather up a few reminiscences

of the King's and Queen's printers who here first worked their inky

presses.

Queen Anne, by patent in 1713, constituted Benjamin Tooke, of Fleet

Street, and John Barber (afterwards Alderman Barber), Queen's printers

for thirty years. This Barber, a high Tory and suspected Jacobite, was

Swift's printer and warm friend. A remarkable story is told of Barber's

dexterity in his profession. Being threatened with a prosecution by the

House of Lords, for an offensive paragraph in a pamphlet which he had

printed, and being warned of his danger by Lord Bolingbroke, he called

in all the copies from the publishers, cancelled the leaf which

contained the obnoxious passage, and returned them to the booksellers

with a new paragraph supplied by Lord Bolingbroke; so that when the

pamphlet was produced before the House, and the passage referred to, it

was found unexceptionable. He added greatly to his wealth by the South

Sea Scheme, which he had prudence enough to secure in time, and

purchased an estate at East Sheen with part of his gain. In principles

he was a Jacobite; and in his travels to Italy, whither he went for the

recovery of his health, he was introduced to the Pretender, which

exposed him to some danger on his return to England; for, immediately on

his arrival, he was taken into custody by a King's messenger, but was

released without punishment. After his success in the South Sea Scheme,

he was elected Alderman of Castle Baynard Ward, 1722; sheriff, 1730;

and, in 1732-3, Lord Mayor of London.

John Baskett subsequently purchased both shares of the patent, but his

printing-offices in Blackfriars (now Printing House Square) were soon

afterwards destroyed by fire. In 1739 George II. granted a fresh patent

to Baskett for sixty years, with the privilege of supplying Parliament

with stationery. Half this lease Baskett sold to Charles Eyre, who

eventually appointed William Strahan his printer. Strahan soon after

brought in Mr. Eyre, and in 1770 erected extensive premises in Printer

Street, New Street Square, between Gough Square and Fetter Lane, near

the present offices of Mr. Spottiswoode, one of whose family married Mr.

Strahan's daughter. Strahan died a year after his old friend, Dr.

Johnson, at his house in New Street, leaving L1,000 to the Stationers'

Company, which his son Andrew augmented with L2,000 more. This son died

in 1831, aged eighty-three.

William Strahan, the son of a Scotch Customhouse officer, had come up to

London a poor printers' boy, and worked his way to wealth and social

distinction. He was associated with Cadell in the purchase of

copyrights, on the death of Cadell's partner and former master, Andrew

Millar, who died _circa_ 1768. The names of Strahan and Cadell appeared

on the title-pages of the great works of Gibbon, Robertson, Adam Smith,

and Blackstone. In 1776 Hume wrote to Strahan, "There will be no books

of reputation now to be printed in London, but through your hands and

Mr. Cadell's." Gibbon's history was a vast success. The first edition of

1,000 went off in a few days. This produced L490, of which Gibbon

received L326 13s. 4d. The great history was finished in 1788, by the

publication of the fourth quarto volume. It appeared on the author's

fifty-first birthday, and the double festival was celebrated by a dinner

at Mr. Cadell's, when complimentary verses from that wretched poet,

Hayley, made the great man with the button-hole mouth blush or feign to

blush. That was a proud day for Gibbon, and a proud day for Messrs.

Cadell and Strahan.

The first Strahan, Johnson's friend, was M.P. for Malmesbury and Wootton

Bassett (1775-84), and his taking to a carriage was the subject of a

recorded conversation between Boswell and Johnson, who gloried in his

friend's success. It was Strahan who, with Johnston and Dodsley,

purchased, in 1759, for L100, the first edition of Johnson's "Rasselas,

Prince of Abyssinia," that sententious story, which Johnson wrote in a

week, to defray the expenses of his mother's funeral.

Boswell has recorded several conversations between Dr. Johnson and

Strahan. Strahan, at the doctor's return from the Hebrides, asked him,

with a firm tone of voice, what he thought of his country. "That it is a

very vile country, to be sure, sir," returned for answer Dr. Johnson.

"Well, sir," replied the other, somewhat mortified, "God made it."

"Certainly he did," answered Dr. Johnson again; "but we must always

remember that he made it for Scotchmen, and--comparisons are odious, Mr.

Strahan--but God made hell."

Boswell has also a pretty anecdote relating to one of the doctor's

visits to Strahan's printing-office, which shows the "Great Bear" in a

very amiable light, and the scene altogether is not unworthy of the

artist's pencil.

"Mr. Strahan," says Boswell, "had taken a poor boy from the country as

an apprentice, upon Johnson's recommendation. Johnson having inquired

after him, said, 'Mr. Strahan, let me have five guineas on account, and

I'll give this boy one. Nay, if a man recommends a boy, and does nothing

for him, it is a sad work. Call him down.' I followed him into the

courtyard, behind Mr. Strahan's house, and there I had a proof of what I

heard him profess--that he talked alike to all. 'Some people will tell

you that they let themselves down to the capacity of their hearers. I

never do that. I speak uniformly in as intelligible a manner as I can.'

'Well, my boy, how do you go on?' 'Pretty well, sir; but they are afraid

I'm not strong enough for some parts of the business.' Johnson: 'Why, I

shall be sorry for it; for when you consider with how little mental

power and corporal labour a printer can get a guinea a week, it is a

very desirable occupation for you. Do you hear? Take all the pains you

can; and if this does not do, we must think of some other way of life

for you. There's a guinea.' Here was one of the many instances of his

active benevolence. At the same time the slow and sonorous solemnity

with which, while he bent himself down, he addressed a little thick,

short-legged boy, contrasted with the boy's awkwardness and awe, could

not but excite some ludicrous emotions."

In Ireland Yard, on the west side of St. Andrew's Hill, and in the

parish of St. Anne, Blackfriars, stood the house which Shakespeare

bought, in the year 1612, and which he bequeathed by will to his

daughter, Susanna Hall. In the deed of conveyance to the poet, the house

is described as "abutting upon a street leading down to Puddle Wharf,

and now or late in the tenure or occupation of one William Ireland"

(hence, we suppose, Ireland Yard), "part of which said tenement is

erected over a great gate leading to a capital messuage, which some time

was in the tenure of William Blackwell, Esq., deceased, and since that

in the tenure or occupation of the Right Honourable Henry, now Earl of

Northumberland." The original deed of conveyance is shown in the City of

London Library, at Guildhall, under a handsome glass case.

The street leading down to Puddle Wharf is called St. Andrew's Hill,

from the Church of St. Andrew's-in-the-Wardrobe. The proper name (says

Cunningham) is Puddle Dock Hill.