SIR JOHN VANBRUGH AND ST. MARTIN’S LANE.
It is curious that most of the great London architects should have come
from Scotland. Among these the most distinguished are Chambers, the
designer of Somerset House, Campbell, Rennie, Gibbs, and the Brothers
Adam. All these have left their mark upon the great city. The Barry
family were Irish; Pugin and Vanbrugh of foreign extraction; while Inigo
Jones was a Welshman. Wren, however, outweighs the rest, and he was an
Englishman.
Vanbrugh was an interesting character, and his scattered works abound in
London and its suburbs. This brilliant man has scarcely obtained the
full credit he deserves for his numerous and versatile gifts, for he
adorned no less than five professions. He was soldier, dramatist, and
manager; an architect and a herald to boot: to say nothing of his being
a wit and a poet. His plays, “The Relapse,” “The Confederacy,” “The
Provok’d Wife,” and “The Provok’d Husband” are among the works that no
theatrical gentleman’s library should be without. His great mansions at
Blenheim and Castle Howard are monuments of his skill, and his fables
were considered by Pope to be superior to those of La Fontaine. In
soldiering and management he was not so successful, though he was
persuasive enough to obtain from the nobility and gentry £30,000 with
which to build an opera-house in the Haymarket on the exact spot where
Her Majesty’s Theatre now stands. When this theatre was finished hardly
a word could be heard, and the voices of the actors had the effect of
low undulating murmurings. The object of the designer, however, was to
furnish an interior for both music and Italian opera; and it would pass
the wit of our Phippses and Emdens to supply a building which would be
equally suited for acting and singing.
It seems to be the fate of every architect of eminence who is favoured
with a “commission” for some vast public building to suffer hardship and
sordid treatment at the hands of the authorities. It was so with Wren,
Barry, Street, and above all with Vanbrugh, who had to go to law with
the Marlboroughs to obtain his fees. He was himself sued by the
contractors and workmen, who could obtain no money from either the
family or Government. The story of this persecution is to be found in
the curious Vanbrugh papers. More curious is it to discover, as the
writer did lately, that there is still standing in London his old
mansion, the very first attempt he made, which (though dilapidated
enough) seems still hale, stout, and strong. When it became known, about
the year 1702, that the wit and dramatist had turned architect and had
actually built himself a mansion in Whitehall, it became the subject of
much ridicule; and Dr. Swift was merry on the shape and peculiarity of
the new building.
One asks the waterman hard by,
Where may the Poet’s palace lie?
At length they in the rubbish spy
A thing resembling a goose-pie--
A type of modern wit and style
The rubbish of an ancient pile.
[Illustration: STATUE OF GENERAL GORDON IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE.]
It seemed unlikely that this “goose-pie,” amid all the vicissitudes of
Whitehall, could have escaped demolition. But recently the writer of
these notes came on a rather minute description of the place, drawn up
in the year 1815. As it then appeared, it was a low, long building in
three divisions, two stories high, with arched windows, three in each
compartment. Further, the brothers Adam had taken it in hand, and added
two wings or vestibules, projecting forward and decorated with their own
peculiar “fan-like” ornamentation. This was satisfactory for
identification; though no one of our generation was likely to recall
such a structure in Whitehall. But almost at the first search it was
revealed. There it stood flanking the Banqueting Hall in the shape of
the dilapidated, gone-to-seed museum known as the United Service
Institution. This was the original Vanbrugh “goose-pie” family mansion,
answering in every point to the description, encumbered with the Adam
additions, effective and not without merit. It is, however, in rather a
squalid state; and it is safe to prophesy that in two or three years it
will have disappeared. It is curious to think of the brilliant author of
“The Relapse” living here nearly two hundred years ago.
Close as it is to Charing Cross, St. Martin’s Lane and the district
about it still retain an old-fashioned air. At its very entrance we note
one of the most effective and effectively placed buildings in London,
the fine church, St. Martin’s, with its soaring and conspicuous steeple
and stately portico. The levity of our time was never better illustrated
than by the proposal to cut away the steps to gain a few feet of
roadway, and it was actually gravely suggested and discussed whether it
would not be the best course to remove the portico wholesale, and place
it at the back of the church! From every direction, almost, the spire
can be seen, and from every quarter the church forms a pleasing point of
view. It was built by Gibbs, and its interior is in Wren’s peculiar
favourite manner--a vaulted ceiling supported on columns, which, in
their turn, support galleries, their bases being covered up by the
massive pews.
St. Martin’s Lane is a far more interesting street than might be
supposed, being full of strange Hogarthian memories. Bishop Horsley told
the antiquary so oddly named “Rainy-day Smith,” that he had often heard
his father describe the time when St. Martin’s Church was literally “In
the fields,” and when there was a turnpike leading into St. Martin’s
Lane. Mr. Smith wrote this over sixty years ago, and there have been
enormous changes since then. There are two curious little lanes or
passages turning out of it on the right hand as you go up, one of which
bears the name of “May’s Buildings, 1739,” in faint characters. This was
built by a gentleman of that name, whose house is still to be seen at
No. 43, a sausage shop, a striking and elegant piece of brick-work,
though unpretending. It was thus that it struck “Rainy-day Smith,” fifty
years ago, who was much praised in his day for “his attention to old
houses.” He says that Mr. May’s house “consisted of two pilasters
supporting a cornice; and it is, in my opinion, one of the _neatest
specimens of architectural brick-work in London_. The site of the White
Horse livery stables was originally a tea-garden; and south of it was a
hop-garden, which still retains that appellation. The extensive
premises, No. 60, were formerly held by Chippendale, the most famous
upholsterer and cabinet-maker of his day, to whose folio work on
household furniture the trade formerly made constant reference. It
contains in many instances specimens of the style of furniture so much
in vogue in France in the reign of Louis XIV., but which for many years
past has been discontinued in England. However, as most fashions come
round again, I should not wonder if we were to see the unmeaning scroll
and shell-work, with which the furniture of Louis’s reign was so
profusely incumbered, revive; when Chippendale’s book will again be
sought after with redoubled avidity, and, as many of the copies must
have been sold as waste paper, the few remaining will probably bear
rather a high price.”[1] Another house that always attracts attention is
the one numbered 96, and which deserves notice for its artistic
doorway--certainly one of the most effective in London for its flowing
style of carving and elegant design. It is now a cloth shop, but Mr.
Smith describes it as being in his day “one of the oldest colour-shops
in London, and has one of the very few remaining shop-fronts where the
shutters slide in grooves. The street-door frame is of the style of
Queen Anne, with a spread-eagle, foliage, and flowers, curiously and
deeply carved in wood, over the entrance, similar to those remaining in
Carey Street and in Great Ormond Street. The late Mr. Powel, the
colourman, and family inhabited it; and I have heard him say that _his
mother for many years made a pipe of wine from the grapes which grew in
their garden, which at that time was nearly one hundred feet in length_,
before the smoke of so many surrounding buildings destroyed their
growth. This house has a large staircase, curiously painted, of figures
viewing a procession, which was executed for the famous Dr. Misaubin,
about the year 1732, by a painter of the name of Clermont, a Frenchman,
who boldly charged one thousand guineas for his labour; which charge,
however, was contested, and the artist was obliged to take five hundred.
Behind the house there is a large room, the inside of which Hogarth has
given in his _Rake’s Progress_, where he has introduced portraits of the
doctor and his Irish wife.”
Passing on beyond St. Martin’s Lane, we enter that curious street
dedicated to bird and dog fanciers and frame makers, Great St. Andrew
Street, but which in truth popularly ranges itself under the designation
of “The Dials.” We stop before a mouldy shop, No. 42, whose window is
filled with as disagreeable a category of objects as was found in the
establishment of the apothecary in _Romeo and Juliet_--skulls, jaw and
thigh bones, skeletons of monkeys, stuffed birds, horns of all kinds,
prepared skins, and everything unpleasant in the anatomical line. When
Dickens was busy with his _Mutual Friend_, a _confrère_--Mr. Wilkie
Collins, I think--described to him a strange character, a
bird-stuffer--and “articulator” of bones and skeletons--and the idea so
“tickled” the writer that he at once put in “Mr. Venus,” the intimate of
Wegg. This original character excited much attention; and a friend of
the great writer, as well as of the present chronicler, Mr. C. Kent,
passing through this street, was irresistibly attracted by this shop and
its contents--kept by one J. Willis. When he next saw Mr. Dickens he
said, “I am convinced I have found the original of ‘Venus’;” on which
said Mr. Dickens, “You are right.” Anyone who visits the place will
recognize the dingy gloomy interior, the articulated skeleton in the
corner, the general air of thick grime and dirt.
In full view of St. Martin’s Lane, and next to where the old
Northumberland House stood, stood the house that was remarkable as
having been the first that was numbered in London. Readers of old
letters will notice with surprise how readily a person’s residence was
found by the post; “To Mr. Sterne, in ye Pall Mall,” was sufficient.
This seems almost a mystery.
[Illustration:
St. Anne’s
Church
Soho.
]
In the London churchyards there is plenty to interest the explorer, but
it may be doubted if anything could be more tragically romantic than is
offered by two memorials, found in two old churchyards--separated by one
easy half-hour’s walk. The moralist will find profit, and a curious
meditation over the instability of things, in his visit to these two
interesting spots. Standing on that ill-shaped open _place_, the former
Regent’s Circus, and looking along the bend of the new Shaftesbury
Avenue, we can see the blackened and ungainly steeple of old St. Anne’s
Church in Soho, now unexpectedly revealed by the clearances and
“demolitions.” This clumsy, eccentric object seems to take the shape of
a vintner’s cask perched airily on a spire, and must be pardoned to the
memory of Wren, as one of those architectural freaks in which he
occasionally indulged when invention failed him. To the same class
belonged those extraordinary obelisks and other devices which he has
placed on some of his towers. The church is a very old and interesting
one, dating from 1686, and looks out on Dean Street. It has attained a
sort of celebrity from its musical services; and the Princess of Wales
and other distinguished persons are often found in the congregation. The
old rectory, where, up to the present incumbency of Dr. Wade, the rector
used to reside, stands where it did, beside the church, its rows of
ancient windows having a cheerful prospect of the churchyard; but the
actual rectory is in the quaint Soho Square. The churchyard is a very
large forlorn piece of ground opening upon Wardour Street, and it was
taken in hand some years ago by the improvers and spoilers. The
tombstones were all collected together and laid down neatly as a sort of
pavement, the rest planted with grass. It is now given over to a large
colony of fowls, which pick up a livelihood and enjoy a sort of _rus in
urbe_ there. One would have thought these measures were preparatory to
throwing open the place as a recreation ground; but the gates remain
fast locked, and the public may not enter now.
On the outside wall of the church are seen two tablets, which arrest the
attention; one to the memory of Hazlitt, of an extraordinary kind,
setting forth his peculiar opinions; the other to an actual genuine
king, who, after his abdication, died in England. The king’s coffin was
placed in the vaults beneath, where the clerk recollects seeing it many
years ago. But among the other bizarre proceedings which marked the
course of the “improvements,” the vaults were completely filled up with
sand, and the contents, as it were, obliterated. The inscription, which
is the work of Horace Walpole, runs:--
Near this place is interred THEODORE, KING OF CORSICA, who died in
this parish, Dec. 11, 1756, immediately after leaving the King’s
Bench Prison, by the benefit of the Act of Insolvency, in
conveyance of which he registered his kingdom of Corsica, for the
benefit of his creditors.
The grave, great teacher, to a level brings
Heroes and beggars, galley-slaves and kings;
But Theodore this moral learned ere dead--
Fate poured its lessons o’er his living head,
Bestowed a kingdom and denied him bread.
His story is sad, romantic, and perfectly true; for he was a real
crowned king and adventurer. His name was Newhoff, and he had figured in
many capitals in many countries, making himself useful to the smaller
potentates, and had finally succeeded in impressing the Corsican
insurgents with the idea that he was a personage of power, and could
find them assistance. They were tempted by his offers to lead them. One
morning he arrived in a ship laden with cannon and other stores, and
landed arrayed in Eastern dress and attended by black servants. Received
with acclamations, he was duly crowned, lived in a palace, put himself
at the head of an army, and fought battles.
Soon, however, his supplies failing him, he went away to raise money in
Holland, but did not succeed. He then came to London, was arrested by
his many creditors, and thrown into the King’s Bench. He took advantage
of “the Act,” and registered his crown for the benefit of his creditors.
On his liberation he did not know where to go, and went in a chair to
the Portuguese Minister’s, whom he did not find at home. The fallen
king, literally not possessing a sixpence in the world, was charitably
taken in by a Soho tailor, fell ill the next day, and died; his coffin
and interment were paid for by this worthy tradesman, who said he wished
for once to have the credit of burying a king.
Another strange being was laid in the vaults, but only temporarily, in
the year 1804. This was the eccentric Lord Camelford, whose adventures
and intemperance were always exciting attention. He was shot in a duel
by Captain Best, reputed the best shot in England, which was the odd
reason given by his antagonist for meeting him. “Six quarts of blood,”
we are told, were found in the cavity of his chest. All the denizens of
Soho crowded round Mr. Dawes’s shop in Dean Street to see the
crimson-velvet coffin, adorned with cherubim of silver and “wrought
gripes,” as it lay in the St. Anne’s vaults, until the strange provision
of his will could be carried out. It seems he had once passed many hours
at a romantic spot by a lake in the Canton of Berne, where there were
three trees. A sum of £1,000 was left to the proprietor, and he directed
that his body should be transported thither and placed under one of the
trees. There was to be no monument; he only wished “the surrounding
scenery to smile upon my remains.”
Here also rests the beautiful maid of honour, Mary Bellenden, to whom
the Prince of Wales showed his devotion, which was of an extravagant
kind, by taking out his purse and counting his money. “If you go on
counting your money,” said she, “I will run out of the room.” This
beauty was secured by Colonel Campbell, later Duke of Argyll. Her royal
admirer had made her promise that she would let him know whenever she
made her selection; but she forgot, or omitted purposely, to do this.
She thus incurred his bitter dislike; and whenever her duties compelled
her to attend at Court, which she did with some alarm, this gracious
person always took care to whisper some ill-natured speech. She did not
live to share her husband’s honours, and now sleeps in the well-sanded
vaults of the old Soho church.
Now taking flight across London to “the Marble Arch” and to the Queen’s
Road, we reach the old Bayswater burying-ground, where it is assumed
that one of our great humorists lies buried. It is not, however,
generally known that there are well-founded doubts as to whether
Yorick’s “dust” is to be found beneath his headstone, and whether the
“mortal coil” he shuffled off in Bond Street has not been sacrilegiously
transported away.
Sterne the _recherché_, the friend of wits and nobles in Paris as well
as London, died on March 18, 1768, in mean lodgings, No. 41 Old Bond
Street, a silk bag maker’s. Mr. Loftie, however, believes that the house
was No. 39B, now Messrs. Agnew’s. The Shandean gave up the ghost
piteously enough, abandoned by his family, and by a strange chance a
footman, sent by a convivial party to inquire “how Mr. Sterne was,”
arrived almost exactly at the moment of dissolution, and saw him pass
away. This person was one James Macdonald, “own man” to Mr. “Fish” (so
nicknamed) Crauford, a person of fashion; and he has recorded this
curious incident in his valet-memoirs.
Now, this departure of poor Yorick was disastrous enough. His whole
career, indeed, was one of eccentric gambadoes on his hobby-horse; but
he never reckoned that after his death, yet another grimly grotesque
chapter was to be added to his Shandy record. It was hard enough that so
jocund a person should die so miserably--or, as he might have thought
it, die at all; and there was a hideous contrast between the crowd which
the _viveur_ was always secure of, and this sad desertion.
But the funeral was in keeping. It might have been expected that a Canon
of York, one holding the curacy of Coxwold, would have had many
mourners; but the English humorist was attended to the grave by--how
many will it be supposed?--two mourners! One was Becket, who published
the defunct’s works; the other, old Sam Salt, one of Elia’s Benchers, a
Shandean in his way, though why he attended seems as mysterious as why
the others stayed away. This humble _cortège_ took its way to the old
burying-ground near Tyburn, and there, on the west side, poor Yorick’s
remains were duly consigned to the earth.
More than a year passed away, when, in July, 1769, a strange report got
into the papers: “It is rumoured that the body of Mr. Sterne, the
ingenious author of _Tristram Shandy_, which was buried at Marylebone,
has been taken up and anatomized by a surgeon at Oxford.” This must
have astounded Hall-Stevenson and other jovial Shandeans. It was likely
enough to be true. The meanness of his burial, the beggarly account of
mourners, was a plain hint to the resurrection-men that here was a
subject not likely to be watched or inquired after. The remains were
certainly “lifted” and disposed of, like the late Mr. Gamp’s, “for the
benefit of science.”
Mr. Edmund Malone, who had much of his friend Boswell’s taste for small
gossip, tells us that he had heard that the body was sent to Cambridge,
and sold to a surgeon there for dissection. He adds, that a friend of
Sterne’s, coming in during the operations, told him that he at once
recognized the features. This was the last outrage that poor Yorick
could have dreamed of--worse than what befell his own Slawkenbergius, or
the sufferers by the famous Tagliacotian operation. Yet there seems
little reason for doubting Malone’s account.
There is a third version, which supplies even the name of the
anatomist--one Mr. Charles Collignon, B.M. of Trinity, who died in 1785,
and who on this occasion had invited some amateur anatomists to see him
operate on “a subject” just received from London. After the recognition
it was too late to suspend the dissection, which had nearly been
completed. It is added that the friend of Mr. Sterne fainted away.
So far the tale seems supported. But there is a further bit of evidence,
such as it is. In a copy of the _Sentimental Journey_ the owner has
written a curious note to the effect that “the Rev. Mr. Green told me
that, being at Cambridge a short time after, he saw the skeleton, and
had the story confirmed to him by the Professor himself.” Yorick,
therefore, besides suffering the original indignity, would seem to have
been regularly anatomized or “articulated,” according to the science of
Mr. Venus. It might be worth inquiring whether any such skeleton is
preserved in the Cambridge museums, private or public.
The ghastly story is further supported by the fact that at the time the
rifling of graves was a regular practice, and the Tyburn burying-ground
was a favourite _locale_ for such depredations; so much so that only a
few months before it had been guarded by watchers and a stout
mastiff-dog. “This burial-ground,” says Mr. Hutton, in his useful
_Literary Landmarks_, “is situated between Albion and Stanhope Streets.
Sterne’s memorial, a high but plain flat stone, stands next the centre
of the west wall, under a spreading, flourishing old tree, whose lower
branches and leaves almost touch it.” The explorer will find in the
burying-ground a headstone and flourishing inscription set up by
strangers--for the widow and daughter were left in extreme poverty, and
had to be relieved by a subscription made on the York racecourse. Two
Freemasons, signing themselves “W. and S.” furnished this tribute:
NEAR THIS PLACE LIES THE BODY OF
THE REVEREND LAURENCE STERNE, A.M.
DIED SEPTEMBER 13, 1768,
Aged 53 years.
_Ah! molliter ossa quiescant._
* * * * *
If a sound head, warm heart, and breast humane,
Unsullied worth and soul without a stain;
If mental powers could ever justly claim
The well-known tribute of immortal fame,
Sterne was _the man_ who with gigantic stride
Mowed down luxuriant follies far and wide, &c.
And they added at foot, that although he “did not live to be a member of
their society, yet, as all his incomparable performances evidently prove
him to have acted by rule and square, they rejoice in this opportunity
of perpetuating his high and irreproachable character to after ages.”
Nearly every portion of this effusion is inaccurate or untrue. His body
did not lie there; he was fifty-seven, not fifty-three; he died in
March, not September, and on the 18th, not on the 13th. His head was not
“sound”; his worth _was_ “sullied”; and acting “by rule and square” was
about the last thing we would give our Shandean credit for. It will be
noted that the words are “near this place,” so that it does not mark the
spot of interment.
Under these circumstances there would be a certain hollowness and
uncertainty attending any form of memorial in this particular spot. On
the other hand, it must be said that the existing stone--a wretched
thing, with its wretched inscription--would not have been set up by the
two Freemasons if such painful rumours were abroad. The very preparation
of the stone would have occupied some weeks or months.
Many years ago the writer suggested that a memorial should be placed in
York Minster, of which cathedral Sterne was prebendary. The Dean was
favourable to the project, as also was his Grace of York. A few
subscriptions were obtained, notably from the late Mr. Carlyle and Lord
Houghton, but beyond this there was little encouragement. This project
might now be revived, as there is a taste or craze for recording
monuments. It may be added that Sterne’s “Eliza” is entombed with all
the honours in Bristol Cathedral, a “very elegant piece of statuary”
(_vide_ local guide books) marking the place. It says that in this lady
“genius and benevolence were united.” So they were in her less fortunate
admirer, for whose cenotaph might be prepared a simple medallion on the
minster wall, with the short inscription, “Alas, poor Yorick!”