Stories of WILLIAM GEORGE'S SON'S LTD. BOOKSELLERS STORIES OF THE STREETS OF LONDON Stories of the Streets of London BY H. BARTON BAKER AUTHOR OF " OUR OLD ACTORS," " THE LONDON STAGE FROM 1576 TO l8 " FRENCH SOCIETY FROM THE FRONDE TO THE GREAT REVOLUTION," ETC., ETC. WITH PORTRAITS AND NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHARLES G. HARPER " Truly the universe is full of ghosts ; not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once been, can never die, though they blend and change and change again for ever." RIDER HAGGARD. SECOND EDITION LONDON CHAPMAN AND HALL, LIMITED ii HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1899 TO THE READER. THE author's endeavour in the following pages will be to present a series of pictures of the many phases of London life, of the past as well as of the present, and of the people in their habits and homes, as they lived ; to tell the stories of its historic and romantic events, of the celebrated personages who have walked its streets ; and to render the volume equally amusing to the Londoner who knows his London by heart and to the stranger who is desirous of knowing it. 2O71078 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. London from the Days of the Britons Old St. Paul's, and the Historical Events of which it was the Scene A Picture of the Cathedral in the Days of Elizabeth The Galjants at the Ordinaries Stories of St. Paul's Churchyard and Cross St. Paul's under the Puritans The Fire of London and the Burning of the Cathedral The Present Edifice and its Reminiscences - - - - - - - pages 1-20 CHAPTER II. St. Paul's School Famous Taverns, Coffee-houses and Booksellers of St. Paul's Churchyard Paternoster Row: its History, Stories, Booksellers Stationers' Hall and its Associations Ivy Lane and Dr. Johnson Doctors' Commons The Royal Wardrobe Legends of Baynard's Castle ------- . pages 21-38 CHAPTER III. Blackfriars Theatre Pictured as in the Days of Shakespeare Ludgate and its Stories La Belle Sauvage : its History The Old Bailey Strange Stories of Newgate, Ancient and Modern Christ Hospital : its History, Anecdotes of its Famous Scholars Lamb and Coleridge at the Saluta- tion and Cat Little Britain and its Memories - - pages 39-55 CHAPTER IV. The Story of St. Bartholomew the Great and the Hospital Clerkenwell in the Middle Ages ; the Tournaments and Pageants The Martyrs St. Bartholomew Fair and its Humours Wife Selling Cloth Fair The Oldest Licensed Tavern in London Clerk's Well in the Fourteenth Century The Miracle and Mystery Plays Hockley in the Hole Handel and "The Musical Small Man" Curious Musical Parties- Ancient Crypt of St. John's, Clerkenwell St. John's Gateway : its Reminiscences of Johnson and Garrick The Red Bull Theatre A Golgotha The History of the Charterhouse Its Celebrated Scholars pages 56-74 x CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. The Fleet River in the Olden Time Jonathan Wild's House Stories of the Fleet Prison and Fleet Marriages Farringdon Market Goldsmith in Green-arbour Court Anecdotes of Authors - - pages 75-86 CHAPTER VI. Holborn in Old Days Bagnigge Wells and Xell Gwynne Hatton Garden in the Days of Elizabeth Sir Christopher Hatton Ely Place St. Etheldreda Scenes of Dickens's Novels Brooke House and Shake- speare Brooke Street and the Stories of Richard Savage and Thomas Chatterton Gray's Inn and Gardens and their Associations Gray's Inn Lane and its Noted Residents Staple's Inn and its Reminiscences Thavie's Inn The Knights Templars first Temple Southampton House and Shakespeare Southampton Buildings Anecdotes of Haz- litt and George Cruickshank Barnaby Rudge and the Gordon Riots St. Andrew's Church Shoe Lane Gunpowder Alley and Lovelace and Lilly Fetter Lane and its Famous Residents A Curious Histori- cal Anecdote Mother Brownrigg .... pages 87-102 CHAPTER VII. Fleet Street in the Days of James I. The Lord of Misrule Fleet Street in the Days of Queen Anne Old Booksellers Izaak Walton " Henry the Eighth's Palace" Under St. Dunstan's Clock The Devil Tavern A Symposium there in the Days of Ben Jonson A Night with the Mohocks The Kit Kat Club The Cock Tavern and its Memories The Rainbow A Coffee-house in the Time of Charles II. Dick's The Cheshire Cheese and its Associations Bolt Court Gough Square Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson - ... pages 103-122 CHAPTER VIII. Fleet Street (continued) Salisbury Square The " Mug " Houses The Barley Mow Cogers' Hall and "The Cogers " Salisbury Court Theatre Anecdotes of Richardson the Novelist Whitefria.rs An Assassination The Temple : its Stories and Associations from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Centuries Anecdotes of Shakespeare, Fielding, Johnson, Goldsmith, Lamb, Person, etc. A Murder- Dickens and Thackeray in the Temple Curious Pictures of Old and Modern Times Fleet Street in the Days of Dr. Johnson and To-day, a Contrast --------- pages 123-142 CONTENTS. xi CHAPTER IX. Chancery Lane, Ancient and Modern The Rolls Court Clifford's Inn and its Residents Lincoln's Inn : its History A Romantic Story of Cromwell and Thurloe's Clerk ; how Royalty was Saved Lincoln's Inn Fields in the Days of Charles II. Execution of Lord William Russell L. I. F. Theatre An Extraordinary Riot and its Conse- quences The Silly Duke of Newcastle A Reminiscence of Bleak House Great Queen Street and its Residents Dr. Radcliffe and Queen Anne Clare Market, the Site of the Mansion and Gardens of the Earls of Clare Stories of Noted People associated with it "The Spiller's" Head The Ordinaries Colley Gibber, Mrs. Brace- girdle, Lord Eldon Anecdotes of Joe Miller and Jack Sheppard The Old Black Jack and George the Fourth Taverns Reminiscences of Dickens Orator Henley, a Strange Career Clare Market on a Saturday Night - ... ... pages 143-163 CHAPTER X. 1 The Joyous Neighbourhood of Covent Garden " - - pages 164-210 I. Drury Lane Drury House The Queen of Bohemia -The Olympic Famous Residents The Cockpit Theatre The First Actress Drury Lane A Performance there in the Reign of Charles II. Lewkner Lane Russell Court, another Memento of Bleak House A " Devil's Acre " A Pest House Clement's and New Inn Bow Street and its Celebrated Residents The Cock Tavern A Cavalier Frolic Stories of Fielding "Bow Street Runners" Townshend and George III. The Ne-.v and the Old Detectives The Building of Covent Garden Theatre and its Burning The Young Roscius The O. P. Riots The Beef-steak Society Anecdotes of its Customs and Members, the Duke of Norfolk, Captain Morris A Queer Story Will's Coffee-house and John Dryden Button's Coffee-house and Addison and Steele Story of the Lion's Head Davies the Bookseller and Boswell The Rose Tavern The Albion The Harp and Reminiscences of Edmund Kean ... pages 164-185 II. Covent Garden in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Cen- turies Long Acre The Piazzas: Dwellers therein, Loungers, Taverns and Stories Sir Kenelm Digby, Venetia Stanley, Sir Peter Lely, Sir Godfrey Kneller ; Beaux, Belles, Actors ; Duels Quin, Macklin, Garrick, Foote A Scene in the Bedford Coffee- house Tavistock Street The Murder of Miss Ray "Peter' Pindar" The Salutation Tavern Maiden Lane and its Dwellers xii CONTENTS. Turner's Birthplace Bedford Head and its Frequenters Voltaire, Bolingbroke The Cyder Cellars and Person Southampton, Henrietta and King Streets, and those who dwelt in them pages 186-201 III. A Covent Garden Hustings and a Westminster Election in the time of Charles James Fox and the Duchess of Devonshire Tom King's Coffee-house Stories of "The Finish" John Kemble and George Colman Carousing Evans's Supper Rooms as they were in the Days of Dickens, Thackeray, Douglass Jerrold, Tom Robertson ; Bob Ross as " Sam Hall " The Bohemians St. Paul's Churchyard and those who lie there pages 201-210 CHAPTER XI. The Leper Hospital of St. Giles's The Churchyard and its Famous Dead Jemmy Catnach and the ' ' Catchpenny " Press A Procession to Tyburn in the time of Jack Sheppard " The Rookery" A Scene at "Stunning Joe Banks's" Anecdotes of Col. Hanger, the Duke of Norfolk and the Prince Regent Seven Dials and its History pages 211-223 CHAPTER XII. How Bloomsbury Looked two hundred years ago Figg and Broughton Montagu and Bedford Houses The Field of Forty Footsteps Hunting the Fox and Hare in St. Giles's Soho Square and its Residents Madame Corneleys's Masquerades Strange Masquers The White House and " The Marquis of Steyne" A Reminiscence of De Quincey A Kingdomless King A Notorious Royal Scandal Gerard Street and John Dryden Fanny Kemble Edmund Burke " Mr. Jaggers " The Literary Club at the Turk's Head - pages 224-234 CHAPTER XIII. The Story of Leicester Square and Leicester House A Duel in the Dark Anecdotes of Frederick Prince of Wales and George II. Savile House and its Transformations Hogarth's House Sir Joshua Reynolds and his Sitters A Little Dinner at Sir Joshua's John Hunter's House Sir Isaac Newton Dr. Burney and his Guests Fanny Burney and her Novels David Garrick Anecdotes of Gamblers A Night in "The Hells" of Leicester Square pages 235-248 CONTENTS. xiii CHAPTER XIV. The Story of Temple Bar A Night Picture of the Strand The Strand in the Middle Ages Butcher's Row St. Clement Danes The Great Houses of the Strand, Essex and Arundel ; their Historical Associations Norfolk Street The Assassination of Will Mountford Anecdotes of Mrs. Bracegirdle The Roman Bath The Strand Maypole Somerset House The Funerals of Iretorn and Cromwell Cecil Street and Edmund Kean The Savoy and its Residents Exeter House Exeter 'Change The Lyceum The Strand and Ivy Bridges Durham House The New Exchange and its Freqenters pages 249-269 CHAPTER XV. The Strand (continued] David Garrick as a Wine Merchant The Adelphi and its Associations Buckingham and Villiers Streets York House and the Splendour of the Dukes of Buckingham Peter the Great The Story of Charing Cross The Hungerfords Hungerford Stairs and Charles Dickens Northumberland House and the Scenes it looked upon "The Holy Land" The Royal Mews The Murder of Sir Edmund Berrie Godfrey and his Funeral Titus Dates in the Pillory The First Punch and Judy Show The Story of Charles the First's Statue Scotland Yard and its Associations - pages 270-281 CHAPTER XVI. The Story of Whitehall from Henry III. to William III. A Court Masque in the Days of Charles I. Stories of Cromwell's Latter Days and Death Pictures of the Court of Charles II. and James II. Descrip- tion of the Palace The Horse Guards and Admiralty Spring Garden The Mulberry Garden King Street and its Celebrities pages 282-296 CHAPTER XVII. The Sanctuary at Westminster Caxton's House The Story of Westmin- ster Palace, Hall and Abbey Westminster School : its Quaint Customs and Famous Scholars The Thames : its Past and Present Glories As seen from the Bridges on an Autumn Evening A Summer's Night on the Embankment -------- pages 297-303 CHAPTER XVIII. The Haymarket The Opera House and its Reminiscences The Pas-de- Qitatre The Haymarket Theatre : its History How Foote got his xiv CONTENTS. Patent The Tailors' Riot Mother Midnight's Oratory The Calves' Head Club A Midnight Saturnalia Pall Mall Nell Gwynne Schomberg House and its Associations Anecdotes of Mrs. Abington Marlborough House : Stories of the Duke and Duchess Carlton House Reminiscences Stories of George IV. and his Associates- Why the Princess Charlotte did not marry the Prince of Orange A Duel to the Death St. James's Square in the Time of Charles II. Its Celebrated Residents The First Street lit by Gas Stories of Al- mack's The First Waltz The Macaronis The English Incroyables Follies of Fashion pages 304-326 CHAPTER XIX. St. James's Palace as a Leper Hospital A Procession of Ghosts Stories of the Kings and Queens from Henry VIII. to George II. Pictures of the Court at Different Eras The Murder of the Duke of Cumber- land's Page pages 327-340 CHAPTER XX. St. James's Street The Thatched House and Cocoa Tree and their Fre- quenters White's Club : Anecdotes of its Customs, Members and Wagers Crockford's as a Gambling-house and a Club Curious Story of Crockford's Death Hoby the Bootmaker and the Duke of Wellington A Strange Fatality St. James's Place and its People A Modern Baucis and Philemon Anecdotes of Samuel Rogers and his Breakfasts The Ghosts that Haunt St. James's Street Walpole Pitt Goldsmith Anecdotes of Fox Louis Napoleon W. E. Gladstone --------- pages 341-356 CHAPTER XXI. Piccadilly in the Time of James I. Piccadilly Hall St. James's Market and its Romances How Anne Oldfield became an Actress The Story of Hannah Lightfoot and George III. The Great Houses of Piccadilly The Albany and its Famous Dwellers Macaulay St. James's Church and its Dead White Horse Cellars and the Driving and Four-in-Hand Clubs in the Regency Days^Anecdotes of the Bucks, Bloods and Whips Burlington House Devonshire House and Duchess Georgina Her Curious Marriage Anecdotes of the Gambling Mania Cam- bridge House and Stories of Lord and Lady Palmerston Stratton House; the Romantic Story of Thomas Coutts and Harriett Mellon, Lady Burdett-Coutts "Old Glory"; Stories of the Burdett Riots Wattier's Club and its Frequenters Stories of Beau Brummell, Byron, Tom Sheridan Anecdotes of ''Old Q." Lord and Lady Byron ; their Separation The Story of Old Soldier Allen and Apsley House- Anecdotes of the Duke of Wellington - pages 357-381 CONTENTS. xv CHAPTER XXII. The Story of Mayfair Mayfair Marriages The Story of the Misses Gun- ning Chesterfield House and Lord Chesterfield The True Story of Queen Caroline The Prince of Wales and Mrs. Fitzherbert The Murder of Lord William Russell Brinsley Sheridan in a New Charac- ter Anecdotes of Bulwer Lytton Lady Blessington and her Assem- blies Count D'Orsay Disraeli Tom Moore Beau Brummell The Dandies Mrs. Norton and Sidney Herbert Sidney Smith and his Little Dinners Lord Brougham Sir Robert Peel and Tom Hood Edmund Kean in his Glory The Story of the Grosvenors Lord Clive Lady Jersey Byron "The Haunted House" in Berkeley Square Lansdowne House and its Famous Gatherings The "Young England" Party " Vivian Grey" Anecdotes of Lord Beaconsfield in Youth and Age ; Curious Recollections of Sir William Eraser's and Mr. Raikes' The Misses Berry " No more Petticoats " - - - pages 382-41 1 CHAPTER XXIII. Brook Street Anecdotes of Handel Grosvenor Square Origin of the " Blue Stockings " Mrs. Montagu and her Assemblies Bond Street The Death of Sterne The "Corinthians" at Gentleman Jackson's Byron and Pugilism Lady Windham and the Prize Fighter Stories of the Wit and Humour of George Canning Hunting the Hare in Conduit Fields " Limmers' " and its Frequenters; a Picture Anec- dotes of the Marquis of Waterford and " Billy Duff" " Spring-heeled Jack" The Death of Sheridan and Stories of his Heartlessness Regent Street Stories of its Gambling Hells Thistlewood and the Cato Street Conspiracy The London of the Two Thousandth Century Conclusion - - pages 412-426 ILLUSTRATIONS. Cheshire Cheese Frontispiece PAGE Hour Bell at St. Paul's 3 The Goose and Gridiron ........ 23 Stationers' Hall . . . . . . . . . -31 The Boy in Panyer's Alley 32 Ivy Lane ........... 33 Guy, Earl of Warwick 34 The Elephant and Castle 45 Christ Church Passage ........ 50 St. Bartholomew 57 Back Court, Smithfield 64 Ye Dick Whittington 66 Farringdon Market 81 St. Etheldreda 90- St. Dunstan's-in-the-West ........ 104 St. Dunstan's Clock, from Fleet Street 109 Dr. Johnson's House, Gough Square 121 Exterior of Cogers' Hall 124 Interior of Cogers' Hall 126 Fountain Court 135 A Staircase in the Temple ........ 137 The Rolls House . . 144 Clifford's Inn . . . . . . T 146 Street Tablet, Denzil Street 155 Last of the Bulk Shops, Clare Market -; . .... 165 .\viii ILLUSTRATIONS. I'AI.I. I In I. utter-box at Button's 1*3 l'( udicll's Tomb 213 Nit Karl of Ivssex, Devereux Court ...... 257 St net Tablet, Cecil Street, Strand . .' . . . ^64 York Gate ^74 Sarah. Duchess of Marlborough 315 Princess Charlotte . . 329 Louis Napoleon . ...'... ... 354 The Albany 362 Harriet Mellon (Mrs. Coutts) . . . . . . . 372 I '<1 Brougham 402 .Lord Clive 405 The Haunted House, Berkeley Square l<>7 CHAPTER I. THE STORY OF ST. PAUL'S. How few among the millions that daily swarm in the streets of the great metropolis have any real know- ledge of this wonderful city of ours ! The crowds hurry on, bent on business or pleasure, in ignorance or obliviousness of the associations connected with those thoroughfares, among the ruins of which, if not Macaulay's New Zealander, some other race in the remote future will meditate in such awestruck wonder, as does the pilgrim of to-day over the frag- ments of the capital of the Caesars, and endeavour to fix the sites of those world-famous events of which London l has been the scene. 1 The first mention of London (Londinium) is to be found in Tacitus. Various antiquarians have given various definitions of the name : one derives it from two Celtic words Llyn-Din, the Lake City (the Thames was much broader and more lake-like at this point than it is now) ; another derives the word from Lnn-Dim, the Grove City (meaning a clearance in the forest) ; a third from Llong-Dinas, a City of Ships, for even when Caesar landed London traded with the Con- tinent ; while another group are in favour of a Norse derivation. But all the probabilities are in favour of the Celtic origin. I 2 STREETS OF LONDON. And these very Englishmen, who are so con- temptuously indifferent to our modern Babylon, will take the deepest interest in the rue or strasse or church of some petty continental town that can boast one famous man and half a dozen remarkable events. Yet it is scarcely too much to say that every stone of inner London has its stoiy, its leaf of history > its page of romance, its human document. Think how exhaustless must be the annals of a city which for eight hundred years has been the heart of this mighty empire of England ! And during that period there has been scarcely an Englishman whose name is graven upon the scrolls of fame, and few foreign celebrities, who have not at some time endowed it by their presence. But the stories of its streets are written in sympathetic ink, in characters invisible to the unknowing eye, but pregnant with meaning to those who have the secret' of making them start to light. To elucidate this vast cryptogram within the limits of a modest volume would be impossible, therefore I must confine myself to the more ancient and historic neighbou rhoods. As my object is to endeavour to present a living picture of London and its people as it appeared to contemporaries at different periods of the city's history, I shall put aside all dry-as-dust disquisitions in favour of the more romantic aspects, so that these stories may be acceptable to all who are interested in our grand metropolis. HOUR BELL AT ST. PAUL'S. 4 STREETS OF LONDON. What better spot could I start from than the summit of that hill upon which rises Sir Christopher Wren's stately edifice? Century after century the life-blood of England's mighty heart has flowed and reflowed through this central artery. The glories of war, the triumphs of peace, the pageants of death, the pomps of civic state have been celebrated here. It is identified with religion, state-craft, scholarship, with art and science and glorious deeds, and with the great dead who repose within its walls. St. Paul's dominates the metropolis. Approaching it from the heights of Hampstead or Highgate, looking down upon it from Kent or Surrey hills, entering it by the Thames, still through the murky atmosphere looms the dome of the great cathedral, glittering and sceptred. It is to London what the Acropolis was to Athens, the Capitol to Rome. St. Paul's is a ghostly place upon a dark winter's night, when the great human hive has swarmed away from shop and warehouse and the city is deserted. Wheels rattle along frequently enough, but there are few pedestrians ; the electric lamps cast a cold glare of light, but they are powerless to dispel the awful shadow of the great temple, black with cen- turies of London smoke, brooding in eternal silence over the past. And what a past ! When Csesar landed in Britain there was a town, probably no more than a collection of huts, on the north bank of the Thames, of which the spot now r dedicated to St. Paul was the centre, all to the north THE STORY OF ST. PAUL'S. 5 of it being a dense forest. Here, says tradition, the Romans built a temple to Diana or to Jupiter ; scalps of kine and oxen which were sacrificed to the Olympian godhead dug up in the fourteenth century, pointing rather to the latter deity. Ethelbert, in 610, soon after his conversion, erected upon this ground a wooden church, which was burned down in 961 and rebuilt the same year. In 1087 the second church was destroyed by fire. " Maricius, the bishop," says Stow, " began there- fore the foundation of a new church of St. Paul, a work which men of that time judged would never be finished, it was so wonderful to them for length and breadth ; also the same was built upon arches or vaults of stone, for defence of fire, which was a manner of work before that time unknown to the people of this nation, and the stone was fetched from Caen in Normandy." So densely populated was this part of London even then that Maricius' successor, Richard Beamor, had to buy up large streets and lanes of houses to make room for the great building and the churchyard, which was surrounded by a wall. And still Finsbury and Moorfields were desolate swamps, and the wolves howled and attacked travel- lers on the slopes of Highgate. Not until the latter part of the reign of Henry III. was the colossal edifice completed. Its length was 596 feet, its breadth 130, its height from the ground to the top of the spire 52O. 1 1 The dimensions of the present cathedral are 630 feet in length, 440 in breadth, width of nave 220, height 437. 6 STREETS OF LONDON. In the new cathedral, as yet unfinished, assembled the barons and prelates to discuss the stipulations of the great charter, afterwards signed by tyrant John at Runnymede. In the dark days of Edward II. a bloody and sacrilegious deed was enacted on the threshold of St. Paul's. The Bishop of Exeter and lord high treasurer of England held London for the king ; but Queen Isabella's party was paramount in the city, and after sacking his palace they dragged the prelate from his horse at the north door of the cathedral, to which he had fled for sanctuary, and be- headed him close by. Hither was brought Wycliffe, the first of the Protestants, to answer for his heretical doctrines, but so strong were his supporters, number- ing among them John of Gaunt, the king's son, that they threatened to drag proud Bishop Courtenay, who had cited him, out of the cathedral by the hair of his head. And here "time-honoured Lancaster" was laid in a splendid tomb. In the nave of St. Paul's was exhibited for three days the shrunken, murdered body of Richard II. Many a turbulent scene was enacted within the walls of the sacred edifice during the Wars of the Roses ; hither was brought the naked corpse of Warwick, the kingmaker, from the field of St. Albans, and ex- posed for days to strike terror to his adherents ; and a month afterwards the remains of the unhappy Henry VI. to lie in state. Both Richard III. and his conqueror, Henry of Lancaster, gave thanks for their accession at the high altar, before which, there- THE STORY OF ST. PAUL'S. 7 after, Prince Arthur was wedded to Catherine of Arragon. Here Henry VIII. celebrated the thanks- giving for the peace between England, France and Spain ; the king habited in purple velvet, pow- dered, with pearls, rubies, sapphires and diamonds, and Wolsey wearing a collar studded with carbuncles as big as walnuts. Charles V. was proclaimed em- peror in front of St. Paul's. The defeat of Francis I. at the battle of Pavia was celebrated by a bonfire before the western entrance and a Te Deum within. Confusion worse confounded reigned here during the early Reformation days : now crucifixes were pulled down, then Protestants were tried there before being sent to the stake at Smithfield. Hither at the re- ception of Cardinal Pole came Philip of Spain with his splendid retinue English, German and Spanish as his father, Charles V., had before him. On St. Paul's day a fine buck was brought up the steps of the high altar ; the dean and chapter, ap- parelled in copes and vestments embroidered with bucks and garlands of roses on their heads, then forming in procession, the head of the buck was borne upon a pole before the cross, and so marching to the west door where the keeper who brought it blowed the death of the buck, and the homers of the city answered him in like manner. So Stow sets forth, and further informs us that the presentation of a buck and doe to St. Paul's was the tenure by which a certain nobleman held certain lands. But these are antique cameos, and it is not until we 8 STREETS OF LONDON. arrive at the glorious reign of Elizabeth that the drama- tists and pamphleteers give us the means of peopling St. Paul's with men of flesh and blood. Can we not picture that truly regal sovereign seated in a coach, the first ever seen in England, drawn by four white horses, and attended by her gorgeous court, coming here to celebrate the victory over the Spanish Armada, with the tattered banners of Spain waving on the towers ? Fine as was our recent pageant, it must pale before that ; for how can we compare our hideous, gloomy, modern dress with the splendour and artistic beauty which marked the costumes of that period ? St. Paul's, however, in the days of Elizabeth was no edifying spectacle, and rather resembled that temple from which the usurers were driven than a temple of Christ. The Reformation by abolishing forms and ceremonies destroyed all reverence for sacred things, for the pagan spirit of the Renaissance had taken the place of the old religion. In the reign of Edward VI. Protector Somerset had ordered all images to be torn down, the walls white- washed to obliterate the paintings, and the priceless plate to be carried away for his personal enrichment. And although Mary reinvested the cathedral with something of its old beauty, under her sister it went from bad to worse. The chantry was converted into a lumber room ; the chapels were used as a school, as a glazier shop, and for other unworthy purposes ; while a trunkmaker plied his craft in the cloisters ; a baker set an oven in one of the buttresses ; and in the vaults THE STORY OF ST. PAUL'S. 9 were a carpenter's shop and wine stores. Upon Sundays and all festival days, as late as 1631, the children of the two neighbouring parishes came into the church after dinner and played and shouted and screamed until dark, so that the voice of the preacher could not be heard in the choir. Let me attempt to picture the middle aisle of St. Paul's and its frequenters as they appeared to the looker on in the reigns of " Gloriana" and her successor. It is a public thoroughfare : porters carrying their burdens, women with baskets of fruit and fish poised upon their heads, even mules and donkeys laden with goods, pass through it from east to west and west to east ; costers are crying their wares and selling them to the loungers who chaffer and bargain as in a market- place ; on the pillars of the aisles are stuck printed bills, advertising for servants or puffing the goods of some enterprising tradesman there is nothing new under the sun, not even puffing or setting forth how the professors of the new art of tobacco smoking will instruct pupils in the most fashionable way of " drink- ing tobacco," as the phrase goes. Here struts the young gallant, resplendent in velvet and gold, beside the sober citizen in woollen stockings and shining shoes ; the sour-faced Puritan, gloomy as his dress; the soldier fresh from the wars, scarred and travel-stained, clanking his ponderous sword and garnishing his talk with oaths in English, Italian and Spanish, ready to be hired by any one who will pay for his blade did not Falstaff "buy" Bardolph "in Paul's "? hungry io STREETS OF LONDON. gamesters, who having lost their last coin have come to dine with Duke Humphrey, 1 which is the proverb for going dinnerless ; serving-men aping the airs and insolence of their masters ; and pickpockets plying their avocation few people troubling even to doff their hats. That gaily-dressed, devil-may-care young gentle- man, from whom Shakespeare might have drawn Mercutio or Gratiano, is arranging with that cunning- faced scrivener, who carries pen and inkhorn in his belt, for a post obit, on his gouty father, who lives penuriously down in the country ; while a fiery Tybalt, in deedy converse with that truculent-looking ruffian from Alsatia, is plotting an attack upon a success- ful rival, who may be killed outright or only drubbed within an inch of his life. Behind one of the pillars a courtesan and her gallant are toying ; merchants are discussing the price of goods and making bargains ; through the babel of ribald and profane tongues breaks at times the chant of the choir from one of the chapels. Suddenly the clamour takes a fiercer tone : a Cassio and a Montano, having partaken too freely of the wine cup, have fallen into a quarrel. It is a word and a blow: there is a clash of swords and the two are at cut 1 This has always been the common phrase, but Stow tells us that it is incorrect, that the tomb so called was that of John Beauchamp, constable of the Tower, and a younger son of the Earl of Warwick, who was buried in the body of the church on the south side, 1358, " where a proper chapel and fair monument remaineth of him. He is by ignorant people misnamed to be Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who lieth honourably buried at St. Albans." THE STORY OF ST. PAUL'S. 11 and thrust. Friends try to part them, but there is a general stampede of the idlers, for the civic guard is coming, and they fear to be implicated in a sacrilege which is punished by exposure in the pillory and the cropping of ears. Indeed all these things that I have described are penalised by laws that are daily broken. 1 May we not detect among the crowd the gentle face of Shakespeare, rugged Ben Jonson, handsome Beau- mont, and hisjidus Achates, Fletcher ; or those swash- bucklers of genius, Robert Greene, George Peele, Kit Marlowe, Tom Nash, debauched, unprincipled, thrift- less, poverty-stricken, but with the divine afflatus burning beneath their threadbare and tarnished finery, the most pregnant group of Lucianic wits that ever flourished at one period ? Soon after eleven o'clock the loungers in Paul's, save those who "dine with Duke Humphrey," repair to the ordinaries, of which there are several in the vicinity to suit all pockets, ranging from three pence to twelve pence ; all are humble in accommodation, with rushes or sand upon the floors, the plainest of substantial furniture, wooden benches and trenchers : but then the fare is of the best joints, poultry, 1 Even in the last century the jingling of spurs in the cathedral often drowned the voice of the preacher. As the disturbance could not be put a stop to, the dean and chapter resolved to inflict fines upon all who wore spurs within the precincts of the cathedral, and the beadles and choristers were commissioned to collect them. So the moment the sharp ring fell upon the ears of the boys they crowded round the offender, who would throw some silver among them, for which they would scramble even while the service was proceeding. There was a similar custom .in the Chapel Royal, St. James's. 12 STREETS OE LONDON. game. All is animation, for the spirit of youth is over all, youth with its virtues and vices, all in excess ; youth in its ebullience, its roseate visions of futurity ; there is no cynicism, no pessimism, it knows not the eternal sneer ; yet it values not life at a pin's fee ; it will fight to the death for a straw. There is a Benvolio who has just given his cloak and sword to his page, but is quite ready to try the passado upon any man in the room who " hath a hair more or less in his beard " than he has ; there is Osric, in his lace- like shirt, exquisitely wrought by the needle in patterns of fruits and flowers, and even historical scenes ; his yellow satin doublet richly laced, and shoes with yellow roses on them ; l or perhaps Spanish leather boots, ruffled with costly lace, and wrinkled low to show off his silk stockings ; loose-plaited breeches of enormous size, over which the shirt is bulged, in panes or partitions of different colours, and fastened to the vest by tags and loops, and girdle embroidered with gold and pearl and precious stones ; a gilt-edged ruff bristles round his neck ; his French murrey or beaver hat, the brim plaited with gold twist and spangles, and encircled by a gold cable band, from beneath which hangs down upon his shoulder a long love-lock, 1 " Garters and roses, four-score pounds a pair," says Satan in Jonson's The Devil Is an Ass. Yellow was the fashionable colour. On his bridal night it was customary for the bridegroom, instead of unfastening his costly togs, to tear them off and throw them on the floor, and his friends to scramble for them. For curiosities of costume and tobacco smoking, I refer the reader to the comedies of Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Rowley, Marston, Dekker, Middleton, Chap- man, etc. THE STORY OF ST. PAUL'S. 13 either worn shaggy or wreathed with silken twist ; maybe his hair falls upon his forehead in spaniel-like curls, or is thrust up to a toupet, and a knot or rose of ribbons is set jauntily against his left ear ; then his beard may be fashioned like a spade or a bodkin, or like an alley, or a quick set hedge, or the letter T. Nor must we overlook the gorgeous cloak of plush which has cost three pounds ten shillings the yard. He is discussing the last new fashion. Fastidious Brisk is discoursing pedantically upon " drinking," tobacco, the " whiffe, the ring, the euripus, the Cuban ebolition," and such like jargon of the day. Here is another with arms crossed, and posing in the melan- choly attitude, much affected by young gentlemen, as Shakespeare tells us, now and again complacently view- ing his face in the small mirror he carries in his hat. Near at hand is Bobadil in big boots of untanned leather, scarlet doublet, much frayed and stained, buff jerkin, Spanish beaver with ragged feather, a huge iron- hilted sword clanking at his heels, fiercely twirling his moustache as he brags of his deeds of " derring-do," and looking out for a gull to pay for his repast. In the background is a party intent upon Gleek or Primero, two highly scientific games at cards, while another group of gallants is eagerly discussing the last new play at the Blackfriars or the Fortune, or the last new poem or satire. After dinner most of the company return to the cathedral, where they will lounge until it is time for the theatres. The ancient churchyard of St. Paul's was of much 14 STREETS OF LONDON. greater circumference than the present. On the north side was the famous Cross, which was almost as im- portant as the cathedral itself. There in mediaeval days the citizens assembled to elect magistrates, to discuss public affairs, and sometimes to try criminals. When these functions ceased to be performed there the Cross was used for all royal and civic proclama- tions ; a pulpit was erected, also covered galleries for the mayor and aldermen, used occasionally by the king and court, who came to hear the preachings delivered by some of the greatest divines of the age. Here penitents were exposed to the gaze of the mob. Hither, barefooted, wrapped in a white sheet, a taper in her hand, came Jane Shore, the unhappy favourite of Edward IV., whom Richard of Gloucester, as all readers of Shakespeare will remember, accused of plotting with Lord Hastings to destroy him by the powers of witchcraft. " In her penance," writes Holinshed, "she went in countenance so womanly, that albeit she were out of all array, save her kirtle only, yet she went so fair and lovely that . . . many folks that hated her living (and glad were to see sin corrected) yet pitied they more her penance than rejoiced therein, when they considered that the Pro- tector procured it more of a corrupt intent than any virtuous affection." The story of Jane Shore perish- ing of starvation is apocryphal, as Sir Thomas More, in his Life of Richard III., describes her in her old age, and they tell you at Eton that she died within the precincts of the college. THE STORY OF ST. PAUL'S. 15 There were stormy doings at the Cross during the struggles of the Reformation, and preachers alternately denounced, upheld, and again denounced the Pope and the Romish Church, and burned each other's sermons and missals and images, and sometimes tried to assassinate one another. The Cross was finally demolished by the Puritans, and upon the ground on which were enacted centuries of English history only crowds of women now gaze in at shop windows upon mantles and bonnets ! London House Yard marks the site of the bishop's residence, where Edward III. and Philippa were lodged during a great tournament in Smithfield, and Ed\vard V. remained previous to the mockery of his corona- tion. The Chapter House now occupies a portion of the site. On the north-east side of the churchyard stood a belfry, or campanile, which contained the great bell that summoned the citizens when their presence was required at the Cross. On the south- west of the thoroughfare was a parish church dedi- cated to St. Gregory, and above it a prison, in which heretics were confined up to the end of the sixteenth century. Until the cathedral was enlarged, in the time of Henry III. Edward I., the church of St. Faith was a distinct building, standing on the eastern side of the edifice; it was taken down between 1256 and 1312, after which a portion of the vaults was given up to the parishioners and called St. Faith in the Crypts. After the fire the parish was joined to that 1 6 STREETS OF LONDON. of St. Augustine ; but the parishioners of St. Faith still hold certain privileges in the cathedral. During the reign of the first Stuart the grand old Gothic temple fell into sad decay. James made some movement to obtain funds for its restoration, but it came to nothing, until his son and successor and Arch- bishop Laud took up the matter in earnest, and that great architect, Inigo Jones, was commissioned to do the work ; sheds and houses that obstructed the western entrance were cleared away, and it was pro- posed that all the shops in Cheapside and Lombard Street, except goldsmiths, should be done away with, so that a grander approach might be formed from the east. But the great Puritan rising swept away all these plans, and the church was plundered of its plate the unco guid always look to the siller the monu- ments were destroyed, the graves desecrated, the choir was turned into a cavalry barracks, shops were put up in the aisles, where the soldiers played at ninepins ; and a saw-pit was opened in the body of the building. Melancholy indeed was the aspect of the venerable pile when Sir Christopher Wren was commissioned to undertake the work of restoration. The scaffolding is erected, all is ready for a com- mencement. On the night of the 2nd of September, 1666, the watchman who is on guard, while dozing away the dark hours, becomes conscious of a red glare in the eastern sky, denoting a fire some little distance off; but conflagrations are so common among the wooden houses of old London that he thinks nothing THE STORY OF ST. PAUL'S. 17 of it and falls asleep again. But by-and-by he is roused by a strange hurtling in the air, wailing voices and great clattering of feet, as though the stragglers of a routed army are sweeping by. Again he starts up and sees that citywards the sky is like molten brass, shot with tongues of flame and lurid spirals of smoke. He runs down and questions some ofthe sobbing, affrighted people hurrying past ; but when he learns that the fire is away in Eastcheap he comforts himself with the reflection that it must certainly be stopped before it reaches Paul's, and goes to breakfast with the philoso- phical calm of selfishness. Each moment the fugitives increase and their cries grow more terrible : " Woe, woe to this wicked city, for the judgment-day has come ! " is shrieked by a hundred voices. The air is hot and becoming almost unbreathable, it is so thick with the pungent odour of burning ; and the roar and swirl of the flames, the thunderous fall of build- ings can be heard coming nearer and nearer. Filled with horror he once more ascends the tower. Perhaps not since Nero gazed upon burning Rome has such a sight met human eyes ; the sun is shining, but the awful glow, the billowy clouds of smoke ob- scure the day ; beneath this canopy, that might be the roof of hell, blazes the city ; it is a second Gomorrah ; fire rains down upon it, fire surges up from it ; streets, churches, houses are a red-hot mass ; London Bridge is a cascade of flame, the river beneath a burning lake. Dense showers of glittering spangles borne on the east wind come nearer and nearer until they burn 2 1 8 STREETS OF LONDON. the watchman's clothes ; people in the houses round about are wildly dragging out their furniture ; tre- mendous explosions they are endeavouring to stop the conflagration by olowing up houses add a new horror to the hurly-burly ; but all in vain, walls of flame, like the sand clouds of the desert, come whirling onwards, driving shrieking wretches before them. Almost paralysed by terror the watchman descends and rushes into the stream of panic-stricken people fleeing down Ludgate Hill. When he turns to look he sees the flames like fiery pythons twisting round the scaffolding, and soon the old cathedral is a moun- tain of fire, while with redoubled vigour, like the blast of a sirocco, the winged flames still speed onwards. Had Sir Christopher Wren been allowed to have his own way in the rebuilding of London by making St. Paul's the centre, and running from it broad, noble streets, east and west and north, what a grand city it would be ! But when did Englishmen show any reverence for beauty of design if it were opposed to utility ? Even the cathedral itself suffered from our insular crassness, and until within these few years, and then only after much owlish opposition, remained a mere husk, cold, lifeless, and unmeaning. Commenced in the June of 1675, without any ceremonial, new St. Paul's 1 was inaugurated on 2nd December, 1697, to celebrate the Peace of Ryswick ; but the king, much against his will, was not present, 1 The cost of the building was under 800,000. The carvings in the choir were executed by Grinling Gibbons for the sum of ,1337 78. 5d. THE STORY OF ST. PAUL'S. 19 as a Jacobite rising was feared. During Anne's reign there were no fewer than seven thanksgivings for vic- tories, all of which were attended by the queen. It was in 1713, at the Peace of Utrecht celebration, that the charity children first attended. The great archi- tect received the usual reward meted out to English men of genius that is to say, he was snubbed, harassed, and treated with contumely, and at eighty-six years of age, when the glorious House of Hanover came to the throne, he was dismissed from his post of Sur- veyor of Public Works simply because he had been a servant of the Stuarts, and an imbecile, named Benson, put in his place ; and though Benson's conduct of affairs was so infamous that he had to be dismissed, the king consoled him with some profitable places. When Sir Christopher became too feeble to walk the grand old man was carried once every year into the cathedral to gaze upon his glorious work ; and when at last he passed away at the age of ninety-one, in 1733, he was the first to be laid to rest within its walls. Was not that some consolation for the petty malice of an ignorant German boor, whose sceptred hands were not worthy to tie his shoe strings ? And what an epitaph he has : " Si monumentum requiris, cir- cumspice ". " Kings for such a one might wish to die." It is suggestive that from the day on which George I. went to St. Paul's to celebrate his accession, 1715, no king of the House of Hanover entered the national cathedral until 1789, when George III. went to offer up a thanksgiving for his recovery from dementia. 2o STREETS OF LONDON. The four greatest events connected with St. Paul's during the present century have been the burials of Nelson and Wellington, the thanksgiving for the recovery of the Prince of Wales, and the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria. Thirteen hundred years of history had rolled over the hill, and five different races of men had been masters there when the great Gothic cathedral was completed the woad-stained Celts, the splendid legionaries and togad patricians of the Caesars, the savage Saxons, the fierce Vikings, and the mail-clad Normans. There the white-robed priestesses of Diana, or the gorgeously arrayed flamens of Jupiter had offered up sacrifices to the deities of Olympus ; there, perhaps, had been worshipped the bloody gods of Walhalla, and there St. Augustin raised the cross of Christ. All had played their parts in the inscrutable drama of life and made their exeunt into eternity. Since that time another six centuries have passed away ; centuries of storm and stress that have carried with them the pomp of papal Rome, the mighty Plan- tagenets, the masterful Tudors, the doomed Stuarts, and alien governors and strange religions and a new order of things have taken their places ; yet still the glory of the historic hill is undimmed, still it is the centre of the greatest city of the modern world, the symbol of our splendid empire of eternal sunlight. CHAPTER II. ROUND ABOUT ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD AND PATERNOSTER ROW. AFTER the cathedral and its belongings, the great O O ' O school, dedicated to its patron saint, now removed far away, claims first attention. Many of us can still remember that dark - cloistered recreation ground, enclosed above and on both sides and barred in from the pavement, like a prison, on the eastern side of the churchyard ; the ground is now covered by huge warehouses. "Paul's School," says Stow, "in place of an old ruined house " (seemingly a religious establishment) " was built in a most handsome manner by John Colet, Doctor of Divinity, Dean of St. Paul's, for one hundred and fifty-three poor men's children." It has been the nursery of many good and some illustrious citizens, chief among them John Leland, one of the earliest of our Greek scholars, John Churchill, the great Duke of Marlborough, John Milton, Camden, Pepys, and Sir Philip Francis. Education was free in those days : each boy paid fourpence at admission, and found his own candles only wax were allowed and that was all. 1 1 St. Paul's was very severe in its discipline, even well into the present century. Serjeant Ballantyne, in ftis Experiences, gave a (21) 22 STREETS OF LONDON. The scholars pay enough now. Verily the Charity Commission is a thing to be thankful for (?). Dean Colet's house perished in the great fire and was rebuilt by the Mercers' Company in 1670. In the old days taverns and coffee-houses were numerous in the churchyard. There was the Mitre famous for its musical entertainments and museums of curiosities thereafter the Goose and Gridiron, 1 gruesome description of the tyranny practised there in his boyhood's days. The three instructors under the head master, Bean. Edwards, and Durham, he says, " were all tyrants cruel, cold-blooded, un- sympathetic tyrants. Armed with a cane, and surrounded by a halo of terror, they sat at their respective desks. Under Durham the smaller boys trembled. Edwards took the next in age. Each flogged continuously. The former, a somewhat obese personage, with a face as if cut out of suet pudding, was solemn in the performance of this, his favourite occupation. The Rev. Mr. Edwards, on the contrary, though a cadaverous-looking object, was quite funny over the tortures he inflicted. . . . One of the favourite modes of inflict- ing pain adopted by these tyrants was, when the boys came in on winter mornings, shivering and gloveless, to strike them violently with the cane over the tips of the fingers. . . . Bean was a short, podgy, pompous man, with insignificant features. His mode of correction was different in form, and I can see him now, with flushed, angry face, lashing some little culprit over the back and shoulders until his own arm gave way under the exertion." 1 Larwood, in his History of Signboards, tells us that the Swan and Harp was a common sign for the early music houses. A swan with his wings expanded, within a double tressure, counter, flory, argent, was the arms of the Company of Musicians; this double tressure might have suggested a gridiron to the unsophisticated, and when the traditions of the Mitre were forgotten the swan would easily be transformed into a goose. Music was in great vogue at this time, and fiddlers, in threes, attended all taverns and ordinaries, many of which were called " Musick Houses ". In the old dramatists we continually come across the expression " a noise of fiddlers," not in a depreciatory ROUND ABOUT ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. 23 which disappeared only the other day. Sir Christopher Wren, when the cathedral was building, opened a Freemasons' Lodge there, of which he was Grand Master, and Caius Gibber, the sculptor, Colley's father, one of the Grand Wardens ; Paul's Coffee-house, patronised by the clergy ; Child's, a resort of Addi- son's ; the Queen's Arms, frequented by Garrick and Johnson, where he started a city club ; and the Chapter Coffee-house, patronised by publishers and authors. THE GOOSE AND GRIDIRON. Even in Shakespeare's days the churchyard was noted for booksellers, and at the sign of the White Greyhound the poet's Venus and Adonis and Rape of sense, but as a common term ; each band was known by its leader's name, so it was " Mr. Cartwright's noise," or " Mr. Creake's noise". Every barber kept a cittern or lute for his patrons to play upon while they waited, as his successor keeps newspapers ; and a viol de gamba, frequently played by ladies, held a conspicuous place in the best room of every gentleman's house. 24 STREETS OF LONDON. Lucrece were published ; and in this same neighbour- hood The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II., Richard III., King Lear and Titus Andronicus were first issued in book form. At the north-west corner of the churchyard was the shop of John Newbery, so highly eulogised by Goldsmith in the Vicar of Wakefield ; he was the publisher of The Traveller, and commissioned the poor poet to write The Citizen of the World for The Public Ledger. Cowper's Task was also issued from this house, and some of Wordsworth's and Coleridge's earlier works. But it was for children's books that Newbery's was chiefly noted : Goody Two Shoes, supposed to have been written by Goldsmith, Valen- tine and Orson, The Seven Champions of Christendom, and others of that ilk, dear to the childhood of our ancestors. Another famous old bookseller of the churchyard was Joseph Johnson, who published Cowper's first volume of poems, Table Talk, and The Olney Hymns ; he was imprisoned in the King's Bench nine months for the publication of Gilbert Wakefield's political writings. His successor, William Hunter, was noted for his Friday literary dinners, at which Fuseli and Godwin were frequent guests. A better known name is that of John Rivington & Sons, whose shop bore the sign of the Bible and Crown ; they were the leading publishers for sermons, and to them the country clergy brought their bundles of soporiferous theology : they were the first publishers for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. ROUND ABOUT ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. 25 Paternoster Row, Stow informs us, was built with- out the walls of the churchyard by Henry Walles, who was mayor in the year 1282. "The rents of those houses," says the chronicler, "go to the main- tenance of London Bridge. This street is now called Paternoster Row, because of stationers or text writers that dwelt there who wrote and sold all sorts of books then in use, namely, A. B.C., with the Pater Noster, Ave, Creed, Graces, etc. There dwelt also turners of beads, and they were called paternoster makers, as I read in a record of one Robert Nikke, paternoster maker and citizen, in the reign of Henry IV., and so of other." In the time of Queen Elizabeth this thoroughfare was also noted for its ordinaries, where the gay gal- lants who frequented the middle aisle of St. Paul's took their midday meal. The best patronised of these was the Castle, the great resort of the actors of the Blackfriars, who, at the beginning of the seven- teenth century, were as much petted and as eagerly sought after 'by " the great folks " as they are to-day. 1 1 " He is not counted a gentleman that does not know Dick Burb- age and Will Kemp. There's not a country wench that can dance Bellinger's Round but can talk of Dick Burbage and Will Kemp." " England affords these glorious vagabonds, That carried erst their fardels on their backs, Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets, Sweeping it in their glacing satin suits, And pages to attend their masterships, With mouthing words that better wits have framed, They purchase lands, and now esquires are made." The Return from Parnassus. 26 STREETS OF LONDON. The Castle (afterwards Dolly's Chop-house) was kept by Dick Tarleton, that "fellow of infinite jest," whom Shakespeare is supposed to have described as Yorick. Dick, after being one of the twelve players that formed the queen's company, was appointed court jester. " He could make Elizabeth smile in her sourest mood, tell her more of her faults than her chaplain dared, and cure her of melancholy more effectually than all her physicians." At last, however, he fell into disgrace for speaking scurrilously of the favourites, Leicester and Raleigh, and so was sent packing. But he is now host of the Castle, and hither come all the wild young bloods of the time to listen to his quips and cranks, droll stories and merry sayings, which keep the table in a roar. There he sits at the head of the board, a broad-faced, broad- nosed, sturdy-looking fellow, telling a story he has told scores of times but his infinite variety never stales, and everybody roars as though he had never heard it before. How, having made merry at an inn at Sandwich and run up, as Falstaff did at Dame Ouickly's, a long bill for sack, he found himself without money to pay it, so he instructed his boy to accuse him of being a popish priest in disguise ; the alarm was given, and when the officers of the law arrived they found him upon his knees crossing himself and telling his beads. So paying his bill, they carried him off a prisoner to London and took him before Fleetwood, the Recorder, who at once recognised him, and so enjoyed the trick he had played that he took ROUND ABOUT ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. 27 him home to dinner with him. All this is told with appropriate mimicry, convulsing the hearers. Who would think now that the day will come when merry Dick will grow sour and puritanical ! It will be the old story, " When the devil was sick," etc., but as Dick did not get well again the devil remained a saint to the end. Paternoster Row is associated with one of the darkest secrets and mysteries of the reign of James I. Here lived the notorious Mrs. Anne Turner, the milliner, who first introduced the use of yellow starch, for getting up linen, into this country. It was at the house of Mrs. Turner in Paternoster Row that Lord Rochester and that vile woman, the Countess of Essex, held their assignations. How the countess obtained a divorce from her husband and was married to her paramour, then Earl of Somerset ; how Sir Thomas Overbury, the king's secretary, for opposing this marriage and other things was marked out for vengeance, thrown into the Tower and done to death by poison, are events known to every reader of history. It was the woman Turner, assisted by a fortune-teller and an apothecary, who prepared the poisons which were mixed with every article of food used by the doomed Overbury. The tools were brought to justice and executed, the earl and countess, after five years' imprisonment, were pardoned, as was Sir Thomas Monson, the king's falconer, who was also involved in the accusations, because, it is said, the king dared not drive to extremities the people who knew so many guilty secrets of his life. 28 STREETS OF LONDON. That terrible mania for secret poisoning which raged throughout the seventeenth century in France and Italy had just begun to spread in England. It has been asserted that Henry Prince of Wales was poisoned by Buckingham to make way for Charles, without the latter's knowledge, however ; and that James himself shared the same fate at the hands of his unscrupulous favourite. These accusations, how- ever, are only on dits. Sir Anthony Weldon, in his Court and Character of James /., relates that when the king was first informed of the cruel fate of his secretary, he sent for the judges, and kneeling down in the midst of them invoked God's curse upon the heads, not only of them but of himself and his posterity for ever, if they or he spared the criminals. The criminals were spared, and the invocation was terribly answered in the fate of his successors. Paternoster Row in the days of the Stuarts was chiefly occupied by mercers and lacemen, and was so crowded with carriages and footmen during the day- time as to be almost impassable to foot passengers. The great fire brought about another change in the character of the locality ; the fashionable trades mi- grated westward to Covent Garden, though even as late as 1720 the Row was noted for milliners and tire- women's shops ; but the booksellers and publishers were now rapidly elbowing out all rivals. The most ancient of these firms is Longman's, the founder of which purchased the business of a Mr. Taylor, the publisher of Robinson Crusoe, in 1724; and all other ROUND ABOUT ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. 29 dealers in books who have taken up their business quarters there are the merest parvenus when com- pared with the venerable Longman. In the first half of the present century "the Row" had almost a monopoly of the trade, the publishers living over their shops. Readers of Thackeray's Pendennis will recall to mind Bungay and Bacon, their jealousies and the little dinner in the Row, " to which Pen and Warrington and Captain Shandon and the Honour- able Percy Popjoy, to give it a flavour of aristocracy, were invited ". Then publishers, as the mercers and lace-sellers did before them, began to move westward, and the glories of the Row at one time seemed to be in danger of extinction ; but the neighbourhood has of late once more become one of the chief emporia of the trade. " At the end of the Paternoster Row," to continue the quotation from Stow, the supreme authority upon London antiquities, " is Ave Maria Lane, so called upon the like occasion of text writers and bead makers then dwelling there ; and at the end of that lane is likewise Creed Lane, late so called, but some time Spurrier Row, of Spurrier's dwelling there ; and Amen Lane is added thereunto betwixt the south end of Warwick Lane and the north end of Ave Maria. At the north end of Ave Maria Lane is one great house, built of stone and timber, of old time pertain- ing to John, Duke of Britain, Earl of Richmond, as appeareth by the records of Edward II., since that it is called Pembroke's Inn, near unto Ludgate, as 30 STREETS OF LONDON. belonging to the Earls of Pembroke in the times of Richard II., the eighteenth year, and of Henry VI., the fourteenth year. It is now called Burgaveny House, and belonged then to Henry, late lord of Burgaveny." (Now the Abergavennys.) For the continuation of this history we must turn to another of London's chroniclers, Pennant. " Bur- gaveny House (some time after the reign of Eliza- beth) was finally possessed by the Company of Stationers, who rebuilt.it of wood, and made it their hall. It was destroyed by the great fire, and was succeeded by the present plain building." This famous hall, that figures so conspicuously in literary history, is hung round with portraits of cele- brated literati Steele, Prior, Richardson, Dr. Hoad- ley taken from life. Here, in 1680, was instituted the St. Cecilia Society, to commemorate that patron saint of music ; for its initiation Dryden wrote his fine ode, " A Song for St. Cecilia's Day," and two years after the yet greater " Alexander's Feast/' perhaps the two grandest odes written since the days of Pindar. They were set to music by Jeremiah Clarke, the organist of St. Paul's. " Alexander's Feast " thereafter found a much greater interpreter in glorious Handel. Formerly Stationers' Hall had the sole monopoly of publishing almanacs ; it was from there the venerable "Moore" was first issued. In Panyer's Alley, on the north side of the Row, there is a curious stone, built into the wall of one of the houses, on which is carved the figure of a boy 32 STREETS OF LONDON. seated on a pannier or wicker basket, with the follow- ing inscription underneath : When you have sought the city round, Yet still this is the highest ground. According to Stow this was a sign, but apropos of what he does not explain ; the date upon the stone, however, 1688, is a century later than the time of the old chronicler. Panyer Alley originally led to the THE BOY IN PANYER S ALLEY. Church of St. Michael and Bladudum. Parallel with the alley westward runs Ivy Lane, "so called," again to quote Stow, "on account of ivy growing on the walls of the prebends' houses, but now the lane is replenished on both sides with fair houses, and divers offices have been there kept, by registers, namely, for the prerogative court of the Archbishop of Canterbury, 7 IVY LANE. 34 STREETS OF LONDON. the probate of wills, which is now removed into Warwick Lane, and also for the lord treasurer's remembrance of the exchequer, etc." At the King's Head Beef-Steak House in Ivy Lane Dr. Johnson in his earlier years started one of his many clubs ; the members were merchants, booksellers, physicians and clergymen, over whom he dogmatised in his usual Aristarchian fashion. After a time the GUY, EARL OF WARWICK. doctor ceased to attend the meetings, which soon languished for want of his commanding presence. One December day, when the great lexicographer was nearing his end, a meeting of the surviving members was held at the Queen's Arms, St. Paul's Churchyard. "We had not met together for thirty years," wrote the doctor to Mrs. Thrale, " and one of ROUND ABOUT ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. 35 us thought the others grown very old. Our meeting may be supposed to have been somewhat tender. We were as cheerful as ever, but could not make so much noise." His voice had been weakened by a slight attack of paralysis. " This [Ivy] lane," writes Stow, " runneth north to the west end of St. Nicholas Shambles. Of old time was one great house sometime belonging to the Earls of Britain, since to the Lovels, and was called Level's Inn." Warwick Lane, originally Eldenese Lane, was so named from an ancient house there built by an Earl of Warwick, the memory of whom is pre- served by a stone similar to that in Panyer Alley, bearing a figure of Guy, Earl of Warwick. Here again the date attached is much later than that to which the stone belongs. Retracing our steps and crossing the churchyard to the south, we are confronted by reminiscences of another dead and gone institution Doctors' Com- mons, which dated back to the reign of Elizabeth. To us of these later times, Doctors' Commons is chiefly associated with the white-aproned men who used to stand at the entrance and tout for marriage licences. " Licence, sir ; licence," was the cry, with a touch of the hat, much as a Clare Market tradesman cried his wares on a Saturday night. The scene is comically described by Dickens in Pickwick,, and touched upon with a soberer pen in David Copperfield : " Doctors' Commons was approached by a little low archway. Before we had taken many paces down the 36 STREETS OF LONDON. street beyond it, the noise of the city seemed to melt, as if by magic, into a softened distance. A few dull courts and narrow ways brought us to the skylighted offices of Spenlow and Jorkins " to whom David was articled. Doctors' Commons disappeared in 1867. That ancient narrow thoroughfare called Knight Riders Street is said to have been so named as being the usual route taken by knights on their way to and from the Tower. Close to St. Andrew's Church is a secluded court, approached by a covered opening, quite an old-world place, with trees and quiet, quaint houses, one of those forgotten spots which have escaped the flood of " improvement," and that are becoming fewer and fewer every year. This marks the site where, in the fourteenth century, and for some cen- turies afterwards, stood the Royal Wardrobe. Richard III. stayed there for a time. It is frequently referred to in Pepys' Diary. A network of ancient streets and lanes and churches that occupied the ground between St. Paul's and the Thames was swept away to make Queen Victoria Street ; in the thick of these was hidden that fine old mansion, the Heralds' College, which is now one of the handsomest ornaments of the new thorough- fare. It need scarcely be said that the original build- ing, formerly the house of the Earls of Derby, was destroyed by that universal exterminator, the great fire, and that the present belongs to the Stuart period Not far beyond, at the western end of Thames Street, the name of one of the ancient London ROUND ABOUT ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. 37 fortresses still survives in Baynard's Castle. Baynard was a follower of William of Normandy ; and he erected a feudal stronghold on the banks of the river. In the reign of King Richard it had passed into the possession of the great baron, Fitzwalter, about whom and his daughter Matilda tradition has woven a pathetic romance. At a great festival held in the castle, Prince John conceived a passion for his host's daughter ; but his licentious suit was spurned with indignation, both by Matilda and her father. In revenge, the vile John, who soon afterwards became king, laid the castle in ruins, banished the baron, and pursuing the unfortunate lady, who had taken shelter in a nunnery, had her despatched by poison. Three of the Elizabethan dramatists availed themselves of the theme : Robert Davenport in King John and Matilda ; Anthony Munday in The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon ; and Munday and Chettle in The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon. After being rebuilt, and burned down in 1428, the castle was taken over by the Crown, and it was at a great council held there that Edward IV. was first pro- claimed king. The famous scene between Buckingham and Gloucester, in Richard III., takes place in the court of Baynard's Castle ; and, according to Shake- speare and history, it was there the Lord Mayor tendered Gloucester the crown. In 1553 the castle was the scene of another momentous historical event. Having been again rebuilt, by Henry VII., it had passed into the hands of the great Earl of Pembroke, 38 STREETS OF LONDON. who, Edward VI. having just died, convoked a council of the nobles and clergy, which there decided to pro- claim Mary queen in opposition to Lady Jane Grey. The last of Baynard's Castle perished in the great fire. That dreary-looking wharf, an epitome of the most sordid side of commerce, in one of the dreariest and most sordid of London's commercial localities, seems to be a strange spot for such memories of romance, of fierce passion, pomp, splendour, and intrigues that have helped to fashion the destinies of England. Who would think of looking for mediaeval romance in a Thames Street wharf! CHAPTER III. THE BLACKFRIARS THEATRE LUDGATE NEWGATE NEWGATE STREET ; ITS GREAT SCHOOL, AND REMINISCENCES OF ITS SCHOLARS. IN the middle ages the great Dominican monastery, which has given the name Blackfriars to the whole locality, stretched from Ludgate almost to the Thames, while on the opposite side of the Fleet, then a broad river, stood the Palace of Bridewell, a residence of Saxon, Norman and Plantagenet kings, rebuilt by Henry VIII. for the reception of Charles V. It was given by Edward VI. to the city for a hospital and endowed with the revenues taken from the Savoy ; in Elizabeth's time it became a prison. All that remained of the palace perished in the great fire, and upon the site was erected the notorious gaol which figures in one of the plates of Hogarth's Harlot's Progress. The monastery was destroyed by the Tudor tyrant, and a church within its precincts, dedicated to St. Anne, was converted into a storehouse for properties used in court entertainments ; and here " the Children of Paul's," who had been actors since the days of the (39) 40 STREETS OF LONDON. Miracle Plays, rehearsed. 1 In the next reign it became a tennis-court, and in 1596 James Burbage converted it into a theatre, the renowned Blackfriars, greatly to the horror of the Puritans, who swarmed in this neighbourhood, and who presented endless petitions to both Elizabeth, James and Charles to suppress this " sinful " place, as the crowds who flocked to it so blocked the thoroughfares that people could not get to their shops. It is worth noting that these snuffling hypocrites were dealers chiefly in feathers, pins and looking-glasses, and such like vanities, and that the players were amongst their best customers. No picture of the theatre, in which many of Shake- speare's masterpieces were first produced, is known to exist ; but from contemporary plays, more especially those of Ben Jonson, it is possible to give a vivid presentment of the interior of the building during a performance. The Blackfriars was a private theatre that is to say, it was chiefly supported by noble patrons, who subscribed for boxes, and consequently it was conducted with greater decorum than was the Globe 1 are feverishly scanning proofs or scrawling paragraphs, or waiting anxiously for the last reporter's "flimsy" from the Commons and the latest scrap of foreign news. Outside the bustle has not yet subsided ; late omnibuses, crammed in and out, are rattling along, and pedestrians are rushing to catch their last train, which is puffing and panting in Ludgate Station. With the smallest hours comes a lull, though the slaves of the lamp have not relaxed their toils, and the thunderous hum of printing machines is louder than ever. Presently the street is all alive again ; the compositors have finished their task and are hurry- ing out of the glare and heat into the cold morning air. A little while longer and the newsagents' carts come clattering over the stones, and after being filled with bales of newspapers dash off noisily for the rail- way stations. And now from citywards great lum- bering waggons, piled up with vegetables and baskets, these lovers call the Bars," how one grew white as ashes because his inamorata turned the sugar in his rival's tea-dish, and another was going to drown himself because his idol would wash the dish in which she had but just drank tea, before she would let him use it. What a mortifying reflection it is for this up-to-date age to discover that not even the pretty barmaid and her Johnny are originals ! There is no gainsaying that Solomon was the wisest of men. 142 STREETS OF LONDON. drawn by slumberous horses, unguided by sleeping drivers, slowly make their way to Covent Garden the one bit of repose in all this feverish turmoil. And so the day life mingles with the night life, and the eternal round of struggle and eager hurry goes on unceasingly. Note. Four hundred years ago Wynkin de Worde opened the first London bookseller's shop in " Flete Street at the sygne of the sonne against the Condyth ". The printing offices of the Standard in Shoe Lane now occupy the site. Note to p. 125. Since the context was written, Mr. Catling, the editor of Lloyd's Newspaper, has informed me that their old office, 12 Salisbury Square, with an entrance through a court leading from Fleet Street, was Richardson's printing office. The original lease is in possession of the Lloyd's. I understand, also, that the dingy room in which Pamela and Clarissa Harlowc were written still exists. CHAPTER IX. CHANCERV LANE LINCOLN'S INN AND FIELDS- CLARE MARKET. INSTEAD of making our way through Temple Bar and along the Strand we will turn up Chancery Lane, which has been completely transmogrified during the last ten or dozen years. Of the Chancery Lane of Dickens, haunted by the shadow of poor Miss Flite, with its flat, soot-begrimed Georgian houses, little remains except the grand old gateway of Lincoln's Inn, which none of us wish to part with ; the impos- ing pile of the new Record Offices, and smart-looking chambers have imparted to the old street a much more cheerful and pleasant aspect which, however, the London atmosphere will soon tone down to its previous sootiness. Chancery Lane is a very ancient thoroughfare, and Stow tells us that in the reign of Henry III. it was known as New Street. Old Sergeant's Inn, founded in the reign of Henry IV., and the ancient office, Gustos Rotulorum, the Rolls Court and its Chapel have disappeared to make room for the buildings of the Record Office. In demolishing the chapel, built by Inigo Jones, remnants, including a beautifully (H3) CHANCERY LANE LINCOLN'S INN, ETC. 145 moulded chancel arch of the original structure, 1232, were discovered, that must have formed part of that Dorm us Conversorum, or hospital for converted Jews, which originally occupied the site. Chichester Rents marks the site of the ancient town house of the Bishops of Chichester, which in the thirteenth century stood in spacious and beautiful gardens. Cursitor Street was originally the Coursitor's office, "built," says Stow, " with divers fair lodgings for gentlemen, all of brick and timber, by Sir Nicholas Bacon, late lord keeper of the Great Seal ". On the eastern side, near Holborn, stood one of the mansions of Cardinal Wolsey ; Thomas Wentworth, afterwards the great Earl of Strafford, was born in this street. A narrow passage, on the eastern side of the lane, near Fleet Street, leads into that ancient house of the law, Clifford's Inn, originally the town house of the Lords de Clifford, which was given over to the students in the eighteenth year of Edward III. Of all the inns of court this wears the air of greatest antiquity, but it is the antiquity of decay that pre- cedes dissolution. Harrison, Cromwell's lieutenant, was a lawyer's clerk here before he joined the Parlia- mentary army. Coke, that great lawyer but bitter advocate, who so ruthlessly crushed Raleigh, lived here for a time, but he is chiefly identified with the Middle Temple. Passing beneath the great gateway of Lincoln's Inn, some of the bricks of which, it is said, were laid by Ben Jonson, whose stepfather was a mason, we note 10 CLIFFORD \S INN. CHANCERY LANE LINCOLN'S INN, ETC. 147 that ancient tower in the south-west corner, a plate upon which indicates to passers-by that my Lord Protector's secretary, Thurloe, had chambers there. And to think how often old Noll's burly form might have ascended those narrow winding stairs. Tiinbs tells a romantic story in connection with these chambers. One evening Cromwell came there to talk with Thurloe over a plot which had been devised for seizing the persons of the Prince of Wales and the Dukes of York and Gloucester. In the dusk they had not perceived a young clerk with his head upon his desk, seemingly asleep. Cromwell drew his dagger and would have killed the man had not Thurloe interposed. The clerk, 'however, had only been shamming slumber, and found means to warn the princes of their danger. Henry de Lacey, Earl of Lincoln, early in the four- teenth century, bestowed this noble domain upon the law students. In those days it was a rural garden filled with fruit trees and embowered in roses, with a fish pond in the centre. Previous to his time, in 1221, it was the first home of the Dominicans in London, where they continued to dwell until 1276, and then removed to their great house near Ludgate, thereafter called Blackfriars. With the exception of the gate- way, hall and chapel, none of the buildings are older than the time of Charles II. The hall was built in the twenty-second year of Henry VI I., and the chapel by Inigo Jones, 1623. Among the most famous men associated with this Inn are Sir Thomas More, Sir 148 STREETS OF LONDON. Matthew Hale, Sir Robert Walpole, Lords Mansfield, Camden, Brougham. Although Lincoln's Inn was as famous for its revels and feasts as its great rivals, its traditions, apart from the law, would have little interest for the general reader, so I will leave it for the Fields. During the seventeenth century, Digby, Newcastle, Somers, Sandwich and other nobles, erected mansions in Lincoln's Inn Fields the Duchess of Portsmouth resided in one at the south-west corner, \h& fleur de lys may still be seen upon the walls of the remnant that yet remains of her house, which spans a passage leading to Clare Market casual ward. But the centre, which we now call -the Square, was given over to swarms of loafers and beggars, who took their meals, played cards, quarrelled, fought, importuned every passer-by for alms, slept beneath the shadow of the trees, and under cover of night waylaid, robbed and sometimes murdered the belated wayfarer. A Lincoln's Inn mumper was a proverb. Mountebanks harangued, bears danced, bulls were baited by dogs, horses were exercised, and rubbish was shot everywhere. The Fields were not infrequently used as a place of execution ; there Babington and his accomplices expiated their treason against Elizabeth, and there a far more illustrious personage, Lord William Russell, was beheaded for his alleged complicity in the Rye House Plot. On that July morning, 1683, a vast crowd fills the Square and looks down upon it from every window and roof and " coign of vantage ". Very CHANCERY LANE LINCOLN'S INN, ETC. 149 slowly is the coach containing the victim and Bishops Burnet and Tillotson able to make its way through the dense human mass, and the Oxford Blues have much ado to keep back the mob, who make rushes to get near the carriage window. Some yell, some hiss and curse, others take off their hats and murmur prayers and blessings, and women sob ; but all draw back with a momentary shudder as the headsman, clothed from head to foot in black, his face covered by a black mask, and the glittering axe upon his shoulder, stalks noiselessly, like Fate, in the rear. Singing a psalm and with a firm step, looking neither to right nor left, Russell mounts the black-draped scaffold, and, after protesting his innocence, kneels and prays ; then strips off his coat and bares his neck, and when the executioner has cut off his hair, lays his noble head upon the block. An awful hush falls upon the riotous mob, the vilest among which are awed, for the shadow of the Angel of Death is over all. There is a flash in the sunlight, a silent thrill shivers through the multitude ; the axe is raised ; another flash and it descends; a third rise and fall of glit- tering steel, an awful shriek from the women and a cheering and groaning from the men, and the severed head falls upon the scaffold dyeing it with blood. At the back of the Fields, in Portugal Street, 1 stood the famous Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, a fine house, 1 Now covered by an extension of the College of Surgeons. Much of the theatre was preserved in a large china warehouse until 1848. 150 STREETS OF LONDON. handsomely decorated and glittering with looking- glass : you will find plenty about it in Pepys' Diary. But that gossipy chronicler has long been laid at rest in St. Olave's Church, and the second George is on the throne when we pay our visit to it. The boxes are filled with beaux and belles, the pit with coffee- house wits from Covent Garden, the gallery with butchers from Clare Market ; on each side of the stage is a double row of seats, which the fops affect, as they did in the days of the Blackfriars. The play is Macbeth, and Mr. Quin, most pompous and stilted of actors, personates the Thane of Cawdor in a scarlet- velvet coat, knee breeches, silk stockings, buckled shoes, a huge powdered wig and a cocked hat ; while Lady Macbeth is in hooped skirt and stomacher, according to the fashion of the day, and all the other characters are costumed in the same mode. The beaux and belles on the stage are more interested in displaying their toilettes to the house and in their own conversation than in the business of the play, and freely exchange remarks. In the midst of the dagger soliloquy my Lord Sandwich deliberately crosses the actor to speak to some person on the opposite side. Cries of " Shame ! " " Throw him into the pit ! " come from the gallery, and John Rich, the manager and most famous of harlequins in great indignation, steps from the side scene and expostulates with the earl upon the unseemliness of his behaviour. My lord's reply is a blow in the face ; manager Rich draws his sword ; the beaux start to their feet ; the actors rush to CHANCERY LANE LINCOLN'S INN, ETC. 151 the support of their chief, and the next moment there is a clash of steel and the players and their patrons are at cut and thrust ; gentlemen leap from the boxes to the succour of their friends ; ladies scream and faint. The actors have the best of it, and drive their opponents off the stage and out of the building. But the hot-blooded beaux are not so easily got rid of. Rushing to the houses of the nobles close by for reinforcements, they soon return to the theatre in overwhelming numbers, cut down the door-keepers who oppose their entrance, and force their way in ; the more prudent among the audience have taken their departure, but some of the more fiery spirits, including the butchers, side with the actors. The beaux and their lacqueys, however, are too many for the defenders, who are put to the rout. Then the work of destruc- tion commences, the mirrors are smashed, seats and scenery torn up, cast into a pile and set alight. But just at that moment there is a cry without of " The soldiers ! The soldiers ! " and in a few minutes a detachment of troops arrives, just in time to prevent a conflagration. There will be no play at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre for many a day after this, and a custom, which has fallen into desuetude since the time of Charles It., will be revived that is to say, a guard of soldiers will attend at both Lincoln's Inn and Drury Lane for every performance. And this regulation has always been observed at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, the latter being the successor to Lincoln's Inn, which was not used after about 1743. 152 STREETS OF LONDON. Above that heavy stone archway leading into Duke Street is Sardinia Chapel, built in 1648, originally for the Sardinian Embassy, it will go for the new street. It has been partly destroyed more than once in no- popery riots, especially after the flight of James II., when every Romish church throughout London was sacked and burned, and again in Lord George Gordon's rising. That imposing-looking house, approached by a high flight of steps at the north-west corner, dates back to 1686; first known as Powis House from its builder, the Marquis of Powis ; it was renamed New- castle House when it came into the possession of that duke, whom Macaulay epigrammatically says, was "a living, moving, talking caricature". One of the most absurd and ignorant of men, the laughing-stock of every satirist of the day, was for thirty years a Secretary of State, and for ten, First Lord of the Treasury under George II. Foote said of him that he always appeared as if he had lost an hour in the morning and was all the rest of the day looking for it. 1 As we turn round under the heavy stone arcade, where in days gone by footpads used to lurk at night for unwary pedestrians, our eye is caught by the name of "Whetstone Park". Why such a cramped-up bit of ground should be called a park I 1 John Forster had chambers in Newcastle House. It was visiting him there that probably suggested to Dickens to make it, in Bleak House, the scene of Tulkinghorn's murder. [No. 57-58 Lincoln's Inn Fields, not Newcastle House, was the scene of the Tulkinghorn. The room is now the private office of Messrs. Soame, Edwards & Jones.] CHANCERY LANE LINCOLN'S INN, ETC. 153 cannot discover; in the time of Charles II. it was one of the most vicious spots in the metropolis. Yet Milton, on leaving Barbican, resided in it, or close by it, for several years. Great Queen Street, notwithstanding its width, is a dull, depressing thoroughfare, yet with an air of faded gentility about it that tells of better days. And it has seen better days. Built by Inigo Jones, and named after Queen Henrietta Maria, its noble houses were early inhabited by the famous Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the author of one of the most interesting of autobiographies ; by the Bristols, the Finches, the Conways and Paulets. Here lived the eccentric Dr. Radcliffe, as blunt and uncouth to his patients as was Abernethy after him. " I would not have two such legs as you have for your three kingdoms," he said to William III., to whom he was court physician. He frequently sent rude messages to Queen Anne when she summoned him. " Tell Her Majesty I shall not come ; she's only got the vapours." When she was dying he sent a similar message, not believing in the gravity of her illness, and, after her death, would have been lynched by the mob, could they have got hold of him. He was the founder of the magnificent Radcliffe Library at Oxford. Sir Godfrey Kneller, whom we shall meet again in Bow Street and Covent Garden, died in this street. Brinsley Sheridan lived at Nos. 55 and 56, south side, when he first became manager of Drury Lane Theatre in 1776, and it is probable that the School for Scandal 154 STREETS OF LONDON. was written there. Its vicinity to the great theatres brought some notable actors and actresses to Great Queen Street: "the airy" Lewis, most incomparable of light comedians ; Kitty Clive, most humorous of soubrettes ; and her successor, Miss Pope ; " Little " Knight, and others. Sir Robert Strange, the cele- brated engraver, and Opie, the no less celebrated painter, also resided here. Most of these dwellings were at the south-west end of the street, but little remains of them now. Lord Herbert of Cherbury's house was close to Great Wild Street, down which we must now turn on our way to Clare Market. Wild Street marks the site of Weld House, a fine mansion which was destroyed in those terrible riots, when James II. by his cowardly flight left London without head or government to the mercy of a fanatical mob. The last remnants of that once notorious haunt of vice and misery, Clare Market, will soon have disap- peared. Until recently a bit of Dickens's Tom All Alone's survived in a narrow lane of tall, toppling houses, hideous with dirt and decay, and dark as pitch at night. It lay at the back of the south end of Ports- mouth Street, and you reached it by passing through an opening beneath a tumble-down house, upon which were carved the arms of the Earls of Clare. In the time of Charles I. the whole of this neigh- bourhood was covered by the mansion and gardens of that noble family, who afterwards gave their names and titles to the various streets. A plate let into the CHANCERY LANE LINCOLN'S INN, ETC. 155 wall of one of the houses in Denzil Street, of which an illustration is given, tells the story. A little before the death of Cromwell, John Holies, a son of the earl, created Marquis of Clare and Duke of Newcastle, opened a market upon a portion of the grounds. It was not until 171 1, when the title became extinct, that Den^ell Street /6s 1 Socalled by Gilbert Earle of Clare in Memo ryofhis VncleDenxell Lord Hoi lestu hodyed February y'jT)6y 9 Aged 5; years .-3 months a great honour to his >~ name and theexacT paterne of his Fathers great Men ft -John*. Carle of Clare Rbu,it ky H v COCKER 1796 STREET TABLET, DENZIL STREET. the family ceased to reside there. Picture to yourself bright parterres of flowers, velvet lawns and blossom- ing fruit trees flourishing in that now murky district ! While the eighteenth century was still young the tide of poverty and crime was creeping closer and 156 STREETS OF LONDON. closer up to this once aristocratic quarter. Clement's Lane, however, was quite a fashionable lounge, and beaux of the first water, with clouded canes, silver- hilted rapiers and diamond buckled shoes, picked their way among brawling butchers, squalid poverty and vice, and along side-ways slippery with offal and garbage, to the Spiller's Head, where an actors' club was held. Spiller was a famous player who made his fame as Mat o' the Mint in The Beggar's Opera at the Portu- gal Street Theatre ; the butchers swore by him and changed the sign of their favourite tavern, the Butcher's Head, to the Spiller's Head in his honour. And it must be borne in mind that the knights of the shambles were a power in the theatrical world of that day ; the success of a new actor or a new play depending not a little upon those burly blue-frocked frequenters of Olympus. Thus their good-will was much courted by the members of the sock and buskin. So while Queen Anne was still upon the throne some actors formed a club, which held weekly meetings at the Spiller's Head until nearly the middle of the century. Tom Durfey, who used to sing duets with Charles II., and wrote novels and poems not puerisque virginibus, a rakehelly cavalier, was the first president; and that most famous of fops, off the stage and on, whose Lord Foppington was to that age what Sothern's Dundreary was to the last generation, though a member of White's, was his successor. Can you not see him, his broad, flat face half-hidden by a twenty-guinea periwig, his stockings of spotless silk rolled high over CHANCERY LANE LINCOLN'S INN, ETC. 157 his velvet breeches, in his square-cut, buckram-skirted, embroidered silk coat and red-heeled shoes, groping his way up the dark staircase into the smoke-dimmed atmosphere of the low-ceiled room, where " King Colley " is hailed with a shout of welcome by those famous confreres, about whom, in old age, he will write so graphically in his Apology for his life. There is handsome Will Mountfort, with his musical voice, most irresistible of stage lovers, over whom hangs the shadow of a real tragedy, reminding one of poor Terriss's fate ; crooked saturnine Sandford, most in- comparable of stage villains, who might have played Richard III. without any make up ; owlishly solemn- looking Nokes, who, however, cannot show his face upon the stage without provoking a roar ; droll Willy Pinkethman, who has come from his booth at Bar- tholomew Fair ; Dick Estcourt, facile princeps of mimics, about whom Steele writes so unctiously in The Tatler; the admired Tom Spiller himself, and others who are now nomen pretercsa nihil. When Spiller died, a Clare Market poet wrote : Down with your marrow bones and cleavers all, And on your marrow bones ye butchers fall ; For prayers from you who never prayed before, Perhaps poor Jemmy may to life restore. Guy Fawkes day was celebrated with high jinks in Clare Market : a huge bonfire was always made in front of Newcastle House, in the Fields; but the butchers had one of their own, in the space near Bear Yard, and thrashed each other round about the fire 158 STREETS OF LONDON. with the strongest sinews of bulls ; while large parties of them from all the markets paraded the streets with marrow bones and cleavers. Indeed the whole of London was so lit up by bonfires and fireworks, " that from the suburbs," says Hone, " it looked in one red heat," and such disorder reigned in the streets that horses and carriages were sometimes overthrown by the hustling, driving, fighting mobs. Clare Market was noted for its taverns and six- penny and shilling ordinaries, with " private rooms for the nobility and gentry," who occasionally patronised these houses ; they were mostly frequented, however, by gentlemen in shabby scarlet coats, high jack-boots, jingling spurs and fiercely cocked hats, their weather- beaten faces showing them to be soldiers, most of whom were proud of having fought under Marl borough. Yet these heroes of Ramilies, -Blenheim and many another bloody field, were glad of a sixpenny dinner when they could get it, and ogled and flattered buxom landladies to shorten the reckoning, and sometimes lived at free quarters with their Desdemonas. How many ghosts flit across our memories of the old place. Here is a dainty one, quietly but exqui- sitely attired, a charming brunette, 'a pretty, demure face half-hidden beneath a hood, upon which every eye is turned ; the rough butchers check their free talk and respectfully salute her ; she has a basket upon her arm, and is making little purchases, and as she buys her vegetables she talks to the poor women, oh, so kindly, and asks them about their troubles, and CHANCERY LANE LINCOLN'S INN, ETC. 159 as she passes along drops coins in the hands of hungry shivering wretches huddled on doorsteps, and then hurries away, followed by showers of blessings from lips little used to such utterances. That is sweet Anne Bracegirdle you walk over her tombstone in the abbey's cloisters; "the darling of the theatre," says Gibber in his Apology, " For it will be no ex- travagant thing to say, scarce an audience saw her that were less than half of them lovers, without a suspected favourite among them ; and though she might be said to have been the universal passion and under the highest temptations, her constancy in resist- ing them served but to increase the number of her admirers." Would she could make of me a saint, Or I of her a sinner ! sighed Congreve, one of her most devoted admirers. A later ghost that haunts the market is that of a young barrister, named John Scott, who not long ago ran off with beautiful Bessie Surtees from her home at Newcastle, flitted over the border and married her at Gretna Green, without a sixpence between them. It is hard times for the young couple who have to live upon love and herrings, which the bridegroom cheapens in Clare Market. Bessie's parents are inex- orable, little thinking that one day poor John Scott will sit upon the woolsack and be known as Lord Eldon. Only fancy such a romance being attached to the future ogre of the Tory party ! Alas, for the end of a romance, in years to come my lord will be glad to 160 STREETS OF LONDON. steal into the Geerge Coffee-house, at the top of the Haymarket, to drink his pint of wine, which his dear Bessie will not allow him to enjoy in peace at home ! A notable Clare Market tavern, which has only just disappeared, the Black Jack, was particularly associated with the names of Joe Miller and Jack Sheppard. In the low-ceiled, wainscotted room up- stairs so well known to old medical students, and old lawyers' clerks of the Fields, who often took their dinner there before the days of the Holborn Restaurant Joe Miller, an actor at Drury Lane, smoked many a pipe. Never was a reputation more curiously acquired than his. Joe was the most stolid of men, he could neither read nor write, and could learn his parts only by his wife reading them to him ; he seldom opened his mouth, except to put his knife or his pipe into it, and was never known to make a joke. So John Motley, a fellow-player, thought it would be capital fun to make a collection of jests and affix Joe Miller's name to them, little thinking that posterity would take him literally. It is said that the Black Jack was at one time called the Jump, to celebrate one of Jack Sheppard's many escapes from the pursuit of Jonathan Wild. While Jack was lying perdu in the tavern, the word was passed that the thief-taker was at the door, and when he was mounting the stairs Jack leaped from the first-floor window into the street below and got clear off. This house was also the scene of " the Popgun CHANCERY LANE LINCOLN'S INN, ETC. 161 Plot," 1794, which aimed at assassinating the king with a poisoned arrow. A peculiar-looking tavern at the corner of Ports- mouth Street to the south of the Black Jack with the upper storey supported by slender pillars known by the sign of the George the Fourth, which has also passed away, is generally believed to have been the Magpie and Stump of The Pickwick Papers, where Lowton, Mr. Perker's clerk, spent his evenings pre- siding over harmonic meetings, where Mr. Pickwick listened to the story of " The Queer Client," and where old Weller and his fellow-coachmen entertained Mr. Pell. 1 It would appear that several successive land- lords of this house kept a register of the names of the different students attached to the hospital opposite, who used the tavern, and some late and present very famous doctors are to be found in the list. Another notoriety of Clare Market, whom the butchers swore by, was the mad preacher, Orator Henley, satirized by Hogarth, Pope, and Foote, and in almost all the literature of the time. 2 He had a 1 The Three Tons, or " Clock House " (now modernised), in Clement's Passage, seems to have a better right to be identified with the Magpie and Stump than the George the Fourth. Opinion is divided. 2 "Preacher at once and Zany of thy age," wrote Pope in The Dunciad. His career is another illustration of the poor-devil author. Master of a Grammar School in Leicester, Henley came to London to try and make a living by his pen, endowed with a knowledge of ten languages ; but he shared the fate of his brothers of the craft, both literate and illiterate, and fell to be a bookseller's hack. Soured by poverty and lack of appreciation, he resolved "to live by making one II 1 62 STREETS OF LONDON. chapel at the corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields, though he frequently preached in the market, and he is described as leaping, harlequin fashion, into the pulpit, which Pope called his " gilt tub," through a spring door, falling to work at once with hands, arms, legs, head, and ranting and raving at the top of his voice. Though greatly shrunken in its area Clare Market still retains its characteristic features, and no more graphic picture of how the poor of London live could be gained than by mingling with the crowds that on Saturday night gather about the stalls of stale and much-watered vegetables, about the butchers and half the world laugh at the other ". He first opened his School of Oratory in Newport Market, and then, at the invitation of the silly Duke of Newcastle, removed to Clare Market. He proposed by his lectures to supply the want of a universal school for all classes of the community. But it was by preaching always the best card for an adventurer to play in cant-ridden England in something after the style afterwards so successfully adopted by Whitfield, Rowland Hill and Spurgeon, a judicious mixture of brimstone and buffoonery, that he made his mark. He advertised an oration on marriage, got together an immense assemblage of women, and then coolly told them he was afraid they oftener came to church in the hope of getting husbands than to be instructed by the preacher, and wound up with indecent jest. He announced a lecture on the most expeditious method of making shoes, and attracted thereby all snobdom. Hold- ing up a boot, he cut off the leg ! Yet, says Pope : "'Twill break the benches, Henley, with thy strain, While Sherlock, Hare and Gibson preach in vain ". All this time he was pursuing learned studies ; he left behind him 6000 MSS., and 150 volumes of commonplaces, wit and memoranda, all of which when sold realised less than 100, although for some years the money had flowed galore into the oratory. Hurrah for cant and buffoonery, they always appeal to John Buirs organ of benevolence ! CHANCERY LANE LINCOLN'S INN, ETC. 163 bacon shops, chaffering for uninviting-looking morsels of fly-blown meat and scraps of bacon that are heaped upon the boards. The flaring lights of paraffin jets throw up in grim relief this motley mob of buyers and sellers, while ears polite are outraged by the shouting costers and the riotous noise from densely packed public-houses. In all these things Clare Market is much the same as it was in the time of the Spiller's Head Club. But its days are numbered. Year by year, for a generation and more, this grue- some neighbourhood has been gradually vanishing before the march of improvement. The grand new thoroughfare which is shortly to pass through it will complete its demolition ; and though one cannot repress a sentimental regret at the disappearance of any historic landmarks, the most ardent antiquary must admit that in this case at least it was an urgent necessity. CHAPTER X. " THE JOYOUS NEIGHBOURHOOD OF COVENT GARDEN." I . Drury Lane WycJi Street Bow Street Russell Street Covent Garden Theatre The Beef-steak Club. THE ancient name of Drury Lane was the Via de Aldwych hence Wych Street ; but in the reign of Elizabeth Sir Robert Drury built a mansion with gardens upon the spot where now stands the Olympic Theatre, and from that time it has been known by its present appellation. The gallant Earl Craven, who was supposed to have been secretly united to James I.'s daughter, the titular Queen of Bohemia, was the next tenant, and during the latter part of the eighteenth century the noble house was converted into a tavern, known by the sign of the Queen of Bohemia. By 1805 the structure had fallen into such decay that it was necessary to pull it down. The ground was taken by Philip Astley, of amphitheatre notoriety, who thereupon erected, chiefly out of the materials of an old French warship, a naval prize, " The Olymphic Pavilion," and opened it as a circus. Drury Lane was quite an aristocratic quarter in (164) COVENT GARDEN. 165 the Stuarts' days ; the Marquis of Argyle and the Earl of Anglesey among others had mansions in it ; but even in the time of Charles II. its inhabitants were i Ja LAST OF THE BULK SHOPS, CLARE MAKKET. mixed. Pepys tells us that Nell Gwynne lodged here when she was an actress, and some biographers assert that Nelly was born in the Coal Yard, at i66 STREETS OF LONDON. the Holborn end of the street, but this is very doubt- ful. By the opening of the eighteenth century Drury Lane had begun to be known as a harbour of vice and squalor, and as such it has been notorious ever since. Goldsmith writes of " the drabs and bloods of Drury Lane " ; Pope, in The Dunciad, indicates that it was the haunt of the hack writer who. Lulled by zephyrs through the broken panes, Rhymes ere he wakes, and Gay, in Trivia, writes of Drury's mazy courts and dark abodes. Hogarth here laid the scene of The Harlofs Progress, and references to the peculiar vices of the place will be found in The Tatler. Drury Lane, from the time of James I., has been closely associated with the stage. The Cockpit, burned down in a 'prentice riot, and rebuilt under the name of The Phoenix, the first theatre erected within its precincts, was, like the Blackfriars and Salisbury Court, " a private house ". Its memory was preserved until recently in Pitt Court, a noisome cul-de-sac, now covered by the model lodging-houses on the eastern side of the Lane. It ceased to be used soon after the Restoration. Killigrew converted a tennis court in Vere Street, Clare Market, into a temporary theatre, which he opened on the 8th of November, 1660. It had a brief existence of less than three years, and it does not appear to have been used again after the company was COVENT GARDEN. 167 transferred to their new house, of which I shall write directly. Vere Street would claim no notice here but for the fact that it was on its stage the first English actress made her debut, 8th December, 1660, in the character of Desdemona. The name of the lady who inaugurated such a revolution in things theatrical, as the women's parts had hitherto been performed by boys, is unknown, though it might have been either of the beautiful sisters, Anne or Beck Marshall, so frequently mentioned by Pepys, or Prince Rupert's favourite, Mrs. Hughes, who figures in De Gram- mont's Memoirs. 1 Charles II. granted Henry Killigrew, a groom of the chamber, a patent, still extant, for the erection of a theatre upon an old riding yard in Drury Lane. Four successive houses have stood there. The first, which cost only the modest sum of .1500, was opened on 8th April, 1663, and destroyed by fire nine years afterwards. The second, built from the designs of Sir Christo- pher Wren, was plain and unpretentious, and thereby offered a striking contrast to Davenant's splendid theatre in Salisbury Court. Its records were, however, unique ; it stood through six reigns, and was the scene of the triumphs of Betterton, Booth, Garrick, Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Oldfield, Mrs. Porter, Mrs. Pritchard, was not the actual debut of a woman upon the English stage. In 1656 a Mrs. Coleman took the part of lanthe in the opera of The Siege of Rhodes. This was probably a private performance at the Cockpit, either in defiance of or by connivance of the law, for the stringent suppression of the theatres was beginning to be relaxed at that time. 1 68 STREETS OF LONDON. Peg Woffington, Mrs. Abington, Mrs. Siddons, etc., etc. By 1791 the house had fallen into such decay that it had to be pulled down. A magnificent and colossal building, which could accommodate 3611 people, or nearly 600 more than the present theatre, was opened on I2th March, 1794, and perished in the flames on 24th February, 1809. The loss was so enormous that it was not until loth October, 1812, that the Drury Lane of to-day was ready for the public. A host of delightful recollections are as- sociated with this famous Temple of Thespis, but the exigencies of space forbid me even to glance at them. 1 But as I have attempted a picture of the Blackfriars in the days of James I., I will now essay a companion sketch of Drury Lane in the days of his grandsons. The theatre is of moderate dimensions, and lit only by candles ; footlights are unknown, and will be until Garrick introduces them from Paris, and the stage is illumined only by a ring of candles dependent from "the flies". The orchestra occupies a side balcony, as it did at the Blackfriars ; the deep proscenium projects in a semi-oval form to the front bench of the pit ; there are no stage boxes, but an entrance on each side for the actors. The auditorium consists of two tiers of boxes, divided into compartments ; at the sides are balconies, and a I2d. and i8d. gallery. In the boxes, which are almost exclusive to the court, 1 See the author's Our Old Actors, and The London Stage front 1576 to 1888. COVENT GARDEN. 169 with their heads affectedly posed on one side, lan- guish the Sir Fopling Flutters and Sir Courtly Nices, a raree-show of gaudy velvets and satins, slashed, laced, spangled and covered with streaming ribbons. Their inane faces, spotted with black patches of various shapes, are half-hidden by huge periwigs, veritable cascades of hair of every shade from flaxen to black. Lounging back in their chairs, they languidly pass silver or gold-mounted combs through their rippling locks, to display the whiteness of their hands and their jewelled fingers, and their ruffles of point de Venise, while some wear gold-fringed and embroidered silk gloves, buttoning up to the elbow, the cuff of the coat or doublet not coming lower. Standing behind their chairs lacqueys sprinkle their wigs and handkerchiefs with delicate essences from gold and crystal flagons, while they themselves titillate their nostrils with pulvilio from gold and jewelled snuff-boxes, lest the odour from the groundlings should " nauseate" them. A lady kisses her hand to one of these beaux from an opposite box ; he rises, bows almost to his knees, and, in doing so, contrives to jerk the whole mass of his periwig over his face, and as he rises again throws it back without ruffling a curl. To another enter un bon camarade. With what effusiveness he greets him in a jargon of French and Italian, and kisses him upon both cheeks, amidst shouts of derision from " the groundlings," whose choice sport it is to bait the fops. The male butterfly is so gorgeous that the female 170 STREETS OF LONDON. is almost eclipsed by him. The faces of most of the ladies are concealed by silk visors, a necessary reserve, considering the very free dialogue of the play, though here and there some Phryne braves the leers of men, preferring to display her charms. But what a hubbub of laughter, jesting, hissing, quarrelling, jumping on seats, tumbling over seats, scrambling and screaming rises from the half-crown pit during the intervals. The more sober part of the audience occupy the centre, while the sides are given up to the gallants and the vizards. Ladies of quality, hiding their identity beneath their masks, share the licence of this Agapemone with the nymphs of Covent Garden. In Fops' Corner, men of mode mingle with the Temple beaux, threadbare wits, knights of the post and adventurers of every description. "Fine Chancy oranges! Fine Chancy oranges!" is a cry that resounds on every side, and the buxom vendors drive a thriving trade with their fruit at sixpence each, while the gallants toy and flirt with them. Up in the galleries the fun is yet more fast and furious. The Olympians pelt the boxes with apples and oranges, and salute the Laises and Phrynes of the court with epithets more truthful than decent. Abigails, sempstresses from the New Exchange, and Lindabrides from the Stews, better on the example set by their superiors. When the curtain draws up, another audience is revealed to the occupants of the auditorium, which hem in the stage, much as I have COVENT GARDEN. 171 shown in my pictures of the Blackfriars and Lincoln's Inn Fields. 1 During the last twenty years Drury Lane has undergone much purging, and many of its vilest slums have been cleared out. Not many years ago no fewer than three hundred professional thieves were located in Charles Street, which was equally notorious in the eighteenth century, when it was known as Lewkner Lane. The clearing of the area to the south of Drury Lane Theatre has removed some plague spots and some interesting nooks as well. 2 Among them the burial ground in Russell Court, through the grated iron gate of which Jo showed Lady Dedlock her lover's grave, and against which on that bitter winter's night the erring woman was found dead. Apropos of that ghastly spot, less than half a century ago the coffins on Sundays, which was a general burial day, were often piled seven or eight deep beneath the back windows of the houses in Vinegar Yard, which looked out upon this Devil's acre, and even underneath the kitchen flags human remains were rotting. Another awful Golgotha was the Green Ground ; it was only one-third of an acre in extent, but in the twenty-five 1 This most abominable privilege was supposed to have been abolished by Garrick, but it evidently survived long after his time, as is shown by the following paragraph from The Times, gth May, 1796 : " The stage at the Opera is so crowded that Madame Rose, in throwing up her fine muscular arm into a graceful attitude, in- advertently levelled three men of the first quality at a stroke ". 2 While preparing the ground for the new thoroughfare the Necropolis Company, it is said, cleared away the remains of 28,000 bodies from "Jo's Churchyard". 172 STREETS OF LONDON. years preceding 1848 over 5000 bodies were interred in it. Close to Clement's Inn was Clare Market Chapel, beneath which interments were made until the coffins touched the rafters of the floor. When the place was closed, in 1844, it was turned into a dancing room, and continued to be used for that purpose during several years ! The Green Ground is now covered by a por- tion of King's College Hospital, which at the same time absorbed an ancient tavern, called the Grange, much affected by the actors of Lincoln's Inn Fields. Clement's Inn, which dates back to the fifteenth century, and is associated with Sir Matthew Hale and Justice Shallow, is being fast modernized out of all recognition. Many of us will remember that, before the demolitions for the Law Courts began, it was approached from the Strand by a spacious gateway, enclosed at night by iron gates, w r hich were there in the days when Clement's Lane, as I have before intimated, was the fashionable lounge of a fashionable neighbourhood. New Inn, of which Sir Thomas More was a student, still retains its old-world appearance. It is scheduled for the new street. Upon the site of Lyon's Inn, formerly an annexe of the Temple, now stand the Globe Theatre and the Opera Comique, opened in 1868 and 1870. Bow Street so called because its outline was in the figure of a bent bow was laid out in 1637, and for the first seventy years of its existence was as aristocratic a quarter as Drury Lane. Here lived for a while the libertine Earl of Rochester ; the poet Earl of Dorset, COVENT GARDEN. 173 Dryden's patron ; Edmund Waller, William Wycherley the dramatist, after his marriage with the Dowager Countess of Drogheda, and here he died in 1715; Edward Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford, one of Queen Anne's prime ministers, was born in this street in 1660; Grinling Gibbons, the greatest of wood carvers, lived in a house on the eastern side from 1678 to the year of his death, 1721. Dr. Rad- cliffe felt pulses in Bow Street for some years, and Kneller painted some of his best portraits here before removing to Covent Garden piazza. A notable Bow Street tavern was the Cock ; it frequently figures in the comedies of the Restoration in The Country Wife, Plain Dealer, and others. It was the scene of that disgraceful frolic of Lord Buck- hurst and Sir Charles Sedley, the wit and dramatist : one day both of them stripped themselves naked, and, going out on the balcony, harangued the passers- by ; an indignant crowd stoned the house, and the jokers were heavily fined. Edmund 'Waller's old house was converted into a police court. And in 1749 Harry Fielding came to reside in it as head magistrate. It was burned down by the Gordon rioters in 1780. Horace Walpole, in one of his letters, gives us a curious, if ill-natured, glimpse of Fielding's menage. ;< Rigby and Peter Bathurst, the other night, carried a servant of the latter's, who had attempted to shoot him, before Fielding, who, to all his other avocations, had, by the grace of Mr. Lyttleton, added that of i/4 STREETS OF LONDON. Middlesex Justice. He sent them word he was at supper and they must come next morning. They did not understand that freedom, and ran up, when they found him banqueting with a blind man, a w- , and three Irishmen on some cold mutton and a bone of ham, both in one dish, and the dirtiest cloth. He never stirred nor asked them to sit." 1 Nevertheless the great novelist was very zealous in his office, for he was able to boast, after he had held it five years, that during the last few months of 1753 there had not been a single robbery or murder in the metropolis. More than that Magistrate Fielding discountenanced the corrupt practices then common to his order. His office carried no salary, being paid in fees that had to be squeezed out of prisoners and prosecutors ; he used to say that his predecessor made ^1000 a year, while he never gained more than ^300, because he com- posed instead of inflaming the quarrels of porters and beggars, and refused to take a shilling from a man who would not have had another left. The instruments used by Fielding for the suppres- sion of crime, which had previously been rampant, were the men to whom this street is much indebted for its world-wide notoriety, the Bow Street Runners, who, until they were abolished by the institution of the New Police, in 1829, were as well known by their red waistcoats from which they were nicknamed " Robin Redbreasts " and silver-tipped staves, as the 1 " The blind man " was his half-brother, Sir John Fielding, and the lady so opprobriously designated was Sir John's wife. COVENT GARDEN. 175 British soldier by his red coat and bayonet. A jovial crew were "the Runners," looking like what was formerly the type of the jolly farmer, and as dis- similar from the sphinx-like detective of our own time as the modern agriculturist is from the John Bull of our grandfathers. Most famous among the " Robin Red- breasts " was John Townshend, the special guardian and favourite of George III. After the death of that monarch Townshend used to say : " Why, bless you, his gracious majesty and myself were like brothers ". And indeed " Farmer George " and his protector were frequently seen walking up and down the terrace at Windsor in familiar conversation ; and John Town- shend always dressed in exact imitation of his royal patron. In the performance of his duty this officer was as daring as he was expert ; his very voice was a terror to evildoers. One night while he and Joe Manton, the gunmaker, were travelling in a chaise across Houn- slow Heath they were attacked by footpads. Manton was about to fire upon them, when Townshend stopped him with " Wait a minute, Joe," and thrust his head out of the window. At the sound of that dread voice the thieves fled like the wind, but not before he had identified them. He acquired a great reputation by his captures of the notorious highwayman, Jerry Abershaw, and pickpocket George Barrington. He was usually selected for duty at all the royal levees, and at the routs and balls of the aristocracy. George Ruthven, George Ledbitter, John and Daniel Forester were notable members of this formidable 176 STREETS OF LONDON. fraternity, which never numbered above forty, about whose doings some good stories might be told did space permit. The last of the Runners died only a short time ago at the age of eighty-five. These old- fashioned thief-catchers were much better rewarded than the modern detective ; they were paid from 40 to .100 for the conviction of every criminal they cap- tured, and received besides handsome presents for private services. Townshend died worth 20,000. The " Robin Redbreast " played an important part in the fiction of his day. I think Oliver Twist is one of the last novels he appeared in, and it is curious that Dickens, with Inspector Bucket, was the first to exploit his successor. One may still be young and yet remember that dreadful old police court, at which Harry Fielding presided, in all its noxiousness. The chronicles of it would be tantamount to the history of criminal London during the last century and a half, since a very large percentage of the most notorious law-breakers have there undergone their preliminary examinations. Among all the associations of Bow Street, however, those connected with its great theatre are the most world famous. Covent Garden playhouse was erected by John Rich, in 1731, to take the place of Lincoln's Inn Fields, which had then fallen into decay. Many curious scenes have been enacted without as well as within its walls. While it was building, the street became a fashionable lounge, and when the ladies had finished their shopping in Tavistock Street they drove COVENT GARDEN. 177 round in their carriages with their cavaliers to watch the masons at work, and to flirt and chatter. At the beginning of the present century there was the furore over the "Young Roscius" (1804), one of those unaccountable manias to which that most hysterical of bodies, the British public, is subject. A company of Foot Guards had to be sent to make a passage through the prodigious crowd that assembled round the theatre at one o'clock on the day of his debut ; when the doors were opened coats and gowns were torn to ribbons in the rush, and swooning people were dragged out of the press every few minutes. Duchesses contended for the honour of driving Master Betty in their carriages ; William Pitt adjourned the House of Commons to see him act, and the University of Cambridge made him the subject of a prize medal. Yet he was only an ordinarily clever boy, after all, and when he reappeared the next season his whilom perfervid admirers found that out. A very terrible scene was witnessed in Bow Street when, on the night of 3Oth September, 1808, the great theatre was discovered to be in flames. Twenty-three firemen perished in the conflagration. Kemble and his sister lost everything ; but the Duke of North- umberland sent him the munificent sum of ^10,000, and burned the bond on the day the foundation stone was laid. Never was Bow Street more lively than it was during the sixty-one nights of the O. P. riots. In consequence of the enormous sum, ; 150,000, expended upon th 12 178 STREETS OF LONDON. new theatre, Kemble raised the prices of admission the boxes from 6s. to 75., the pit from 33. 6d. to 45. Instead of showing their disapproval by staying away, theatregoers made the advanced tariff an excuse for one of the most extraordinary riots on record. Night after night not a word of the performance could be heard, the voices of the actors being drowned by shouts of " old prices !" groans, hisses, cat calls, dust bells, rattles, horns and a kind of Carmagnole, called the O. P. dance. Men went about with the letters O. P. stuck in their hats, and ladies wore O. P. medals. The struggle ended in the victory of the malcontents. It may be noted that at this time the nightly expenses of the theatre were ,300. The new house went the way of its predeces- sor, on 4th March, 1856, during a masked ball given by James Anderson, the conjuror. Covent Garden Theatre was the original home of the celebrated " Sublime Society of Beef-steaks," founded in I/35- 1 The famous Earl of Peterborough, then an old man he who, for his daring and romantic exploits, was called " the last of the knights errant," and who had secretly espoused Anastasia Robinson, the singer was in the theatre one afternoon talking with Rich in his room, while the manager was cooking a steak upon the gridiron for his dinner ; my lord was invited to partake of it, and, with the help of a bottle or two of good wine, made such a hearty meal, and was so delighted 1 This, however, was not the first club of that name. Reference to a Beef-steak Club, of which Dick Estcourt was the first providore is to be found in The Tatter. COVENT GARDEN. 179 with the novelty of the thing, that he proposed it should be repeated on the following Saturday. He kept his engagement and brought three or four friends with him. Everybody was charmed, and it was ar- ranged that a select little club should be formed and meet every Saturday, the fare to be strictly confined to steaks, port and punch. This was the fortuitous com- mencement of a society, which, during the hundred and thirty-four years of its existence, numbered among its members the Prince of Wales and his brothers, the Dukes of Clarence and Sussex and York, Garrick, John Wilkes, George Colman, John Kemble, Sheridan, Brougham, and any number of peers. Two of the most famous of its members were the gourmand Duke of Norfolk, Fox's great friend, and Captain Charles Morris, the poet laureate of the club, who celebrated its members in a ballad, of which the following is a specimen : First Rich, who this feast of the gridiron planned, And formed with a touch of his harlequin's wand, Out of mighty rude matter this brotherly band, The jolly old steakers of England. First George Prince of Wales, and York's royal Duke, For the wit of this board other pleasures forsook, And of good wine and punch they both freely partook With the jolly old steakers of England. And Norfolk's great Duke, who belonged to the band Of sturdy old barons of famed Runnymede, In the same cause of freedom delighted to feed With the jolly old steakers of England. i8o STREETS OF LONDON. And his Grace certainly did feed, for after prepar- ing his stomach by a fish dinner at a Covent Garden hotel, he would sometimes consume six pounds of steak at the club, and never less than four, with wine in pro- portion. A man of enormous proportions, such as we see in Rowlandson's and Bunbury's caricatures, he invariably dressed in a bright blue coat, which made him look even more unwieldy than he was. Punctually at five " the jolly old steakers " sat down to table in a room set apart for them in Covent Garden Theatre. It was divided in two by a curtain, which, on the last stroke of the hour, was drawn aside aid discovered the kitchen, partitioned off from the diners by an open grating, over which was this motto from Macbeth : If it were done, when it is done, then 'twere well It were done quickly. The Duke of Norfolk, with a small silver gridiron suspended round his neck by an orange ribbon, would take the chair. Captain Morris was the punchmaker, a very important office in those days, requiring great nicety of palate. When the cloth was removed the Steakers gave themselves up to conviviality, and the Captain was again in great request, for he had a good voice and trolled forth his own songs, sentimental and bacchanalian, with excellent effect. The members were limited to twenty-four, and many notable persons were always on the list of candidates eager for election. Perfect equality among the Steakers was the rule of the club, and the last COVENT GARDEN. 181 enrolled, though he were a prince of the blood, was made the fag for the rest. One night a somewhat pompous Liverpool merchant was among the guests, and perceiving the free and easy manners that ob- tained, communicated his suspicions to the friend who had brought him to the club that the royal and titled persons whom he had been told that he was among were all a flarn. The friend informed his fellow-steakers of the bourgeois' incredulity, and to keep up the joke they pretended to be a society of tradesmen. The Duke of Sussex reproached Alderman Wood for the tough steaks he had sent in last Saturday. The alder- man retorted upon his royal highness by complaining of the ill-fitting stays he had sent his wife, and so on. A leaf had to be withdrawn to shorten the table, and in closing it again the chair of the Duke of Leinster, who was presiding, was overturned, and his Grace was toppled into the grate. Nobody moved, everybody roared. This confirmed the Liverpudlian's scepti- cism. " Why, of course," he said, " if it had been a real duke everybody would have run to pick him up. It was a very good joke, but I saw through it from the first." When Covent Garden was burned down in 1808 the Sublime Society took up its quarters for a time at the Bedford Coffee-house, in the north piazza, but very soon migrated to the Lyceum, where the club remained until its dissolution in 1869. Sir Henry Irving now uses the old beef-steak room for his receptions. A new Beef-steak Club, however, was 182 STREETS OF LONDON. formed, and now holds its meetings in Charing Cross Road, opposite the Garrick Theatre. Among the chief glories of old Bow Street was Will's Coffee-house, which stood at the south-west corner. The earliest mention of it is in Pepys' Diary, (2nd Oct., 1660). But it is with Dryden that it is chiefly associated. " Under no roof," writes Macaulay, " was a greater variety of figures to be seen ; earls in stars and garters, clergymen in cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from the universities, trans- lators and index makers in ragged coats of frieze. The great push was to get near the chair where John Dryden sat. In winter that chair was always in the warmest nook by the fire ; in summer it stood in the balcony. To bow to him and hear his opinion of Racine's last tragedy, or of Bossu's treatise on epic poetry was thought a privilege. A pinch of snuff from his box was an honour sufficient to turn the head of an enthusiast." Pope, at his own request, was taken to Will's when a mere child to see the great poet, and at seventeen became himself a constant frequenter of the house, but not until after the master's death. Steele says in The Tntler that Will's declined after Dryden's time, and that cards took the place of conversation. In Russell Street, nearly opposite to Will's, stood Button's Coffee-house, which was of a much later date than its celebrated rival. Button's was first opened in 1712 by a servant of Addison's wife, the Countess of Warwick, and it became the favourite resort of COVENT GARDEN. 183 Mr. Spectator and his colleague Steele, of Budgell and Philips, Swift, Gay, Prior, and consequently of ' the Town ". How charmingly Landor, in one of The Imaginary Conversations, has sketched the author of Cato as he appeared at Button's. jti cervicibus Jfen tun! uelec7 B*r c i TU r THE LETTER-BOX AT BUTTON S. Addison. "There we have dined together some hundred times." Steele. " Aye, most days for many years. . . . Why, cannot I see him again in his arm-chair, his right hand upon his breast under the fawn-coloured waist- 1 84 STREETS OF LONDON. coat, his brow erect and clear as his conscience, his wit even and composed as his temper, with measurely curls and antithetical top-knots, like his style ; the calmest poet, the most quiet patriot : dear Addison f drunk, deliberate, moral, sentimental, foaming over with truth and virtue, with tenderness and friendship, and only worse in one ruffle for the wine." At the entrance to Button's was the renowned Lion's Head, into the mouth of which were dropped contributions, by unknown hands, for The Guardian, and so frequently referred to in that periodical. It is preserved at Woburn Abbey. 1 Near Button's was the no less famous Tom's, which survived until 1814; it was during the eighteenth century the resort of " blue and green ribbons and stars," of Garrick and Johnson, 1 Steele writes in The Guardian, No. 98 (3rd July, 1713) : " On the twentieth instant it is my intention to erect a lion's head, in imita- tion of those in Venice, through which all the intelligence of that commonwealth is to pass. This head is to open a most wide and voracious mouth, which shall take in such letters and papers as are conveyed to me by my correspondents. . . . Whatever the lion swallows I shall digest for the use of the public. ... It will be set up at Button's Coffee-house, in Covent Garden, who is directed to show the way to the lion's head, and to instruct any young author how to convey his works into the mouth of it with safety and secrecy." In No. 114 Steele announces that the lion is set "for the reception of such intelligence as shall be thrown into it. It is reckoned an ex- cellent piece of workmanship, and was designed by a great hand in imitation of an antique Egyptian lion, the face of it being compounded out of that of a lion and a wizard. The features are strong and well furrowed. The whiskers are admired by all that have seen them. It is planted on the western side of the coffee-house, holding its paws under the chin, upon a box which contains everything it swallows." COVENT GARDEN. 185 and Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Murphy, Sir Philip Francis, etc., etc. The house, which was No. 17, was pulled down in 1865. To the east, No. 8, was the shop of Davies, actor and bookseller, the rendezvous both of wits, players and literati. It was in Davies' parlour that Johnson and Boswell first met. What delights the reading world, past, present and to come, owes and will owe to that encounter ! Notorious among taverns was the Rose ; it was very near old Drury Lane Theatre, and in some of Garrick's alterations was absorbed in it. It was as old as the Stuarts' days, and there are frequent allusions to it in the old dramatists as a haunt of riotous roues. How many of us have supped at the Old Albion after the play, and there met Ben Webster, and Buckstone, and John Ryder, and many another famous player of our young days. Nor must I forget the Harp, close by, Edmund Kean's favourite tavern, where I have seen a looking-glass shivered by a tumbler he had hurled in one of his mad freaks ; many a wild orgie had he assisted at in that frowsy parlour, fresh from the delirious excite- ment of shouting and applauding audiences. It was there he was at home, and he would abruptly leave a nobleman's table to hurry back to his boon com- panions, and heartily damn all lords. 1 86 STREETS OF LONDON. II. Covent Garden Market Piazza Coffee-houses Taverns and surrounding Streets. The wanderer in the now dreary and depressing piazza of Covent Garden, where the squat market buildings loom ghostly through " the fog and filthy air," and the nostrils are assailed by every odour that foul mud and bruised and trampled vegetables can give forth, would require a very potent imagination to conjure up in its place such a picture as this. A plea- sant garden all sweetness and greenery, shaded by umbrageous trees ; a sparkling stream of clear water that has come all the way from the northern heights, and, after eddying into a fish pond, overflows and pur- sues its way merrily into the brooks that run down to the river ; on the slope facing the sun is a vineyard clustered with ripening grapes ; above all a cloudless blue sky ; there is no sound to break the stillness save the songs of the birds, the soughing of the trees in the breeze, and now and again the chanting of the monks in their chapel. Mount those steps and glance over the south wall into Long Acre and your eyes will fall upon a delightful woodland, and over the mossy turf you will see citizens and their wives, and youths and maidens, taking their evening stroll and enjoying the fresh country air that is wafted over the golden meadows that stretch away to Hampstead. Less than four hundred years ago such a picture could have been realised in the Covent it was COVENT GARDEN. 187 always so spelled after the French convent Garden of the Abbot of Westminster. At the confiscation of the monastery Edward VI. granted the lands to his uncle, the Duke of Somerset, and when that traitor was attainted they were trans- ferred by patent to John, Earl of Bedford, who had so very interestedly served Henry VIII. in his appro- priation of Church property. Upon the site now occupied by Bedford Street he built a half-wooden mansion, the garden of which skirted the Strand. But the greater part of the monastic domain was left a waste, where rubbish was shot and where football matches were played, a pastime that continued to be practised there even in the days of the first Georges. 1 From the reign of Elizabeth London had been rapidly extending, and in 1631 Francis, the fourth earl, having previously leased Long Acre to the builder, commis- sioned Inigo Jones to lay out a portion of the ground as a square. 1 Gay thus describes the scene in Trivia : Where Covent Garden's famous temple stands, That boasts the work of Jones' immortal hands, Columns with plain magnificence appear, And graceful porches lead along the square ; Here oft my course I bend, when lo ! from far, I spy the furies of the football war ; The 'prentice quits his shop to join the crew, Increasing crowds the flying game pursue. Thus, as you roll the ball o'er snowy ground, The gath'ring globe augments with ev'ry round. But whither shall I run ? the throng draws nigh, The ball now skims the street, now soars on high ; The dext'rous glazier strong returns the bound, And jingling sashes on the penthouse sound. 1 88 STREETS OF LONDON. The plan prepared by the great architect was a model of the piazza at Leghorn ; on the northern and eastern sides were continuous porticoes the south- eastern was destroyed by fire in 1769. On the west was built a church dedicated to St. Paul, 1 while the south side was bounded by the garden wall of Bedford House ; against this wall, beneath a row of trees, country people, from about Oxford Road and the village of Charing, obtained permission to vend fruit and vegetables from their gardens three times a week. The centre of the square was gravelled, and in the middle stood a column with a sun-dial. Stately houses were erected upon the lines of the porticoes, which soon found tenants among the chief nobility and other persons of consequence, and became the most fashionable quarter of London. The market rapidly increased and grew into a strange medley of shed and penthouse, rude stall and crazy tenement, coffee-house and gin-shop, intersected by narrow foot- ways, where the shoeblacks kept up a din that would do credit to the modern newspaper boy, of " Black your honour's shoes ! " 2 Towards the end of the last century a portly woman, who stood at a fruit stall, appeared daily in a lace dress which was worth a hundred guineas. The market, however, continued to be a heterogeneous mass, without plan or definite Burned down in 1795 and rebuilt on the same model as its predecessor. 2 See The Spectator, No. 454, for a pleasant sketch of the market people in 1712. COVENT GARDEN. 189 arrangement, until the present buildings were erected in 1830. Many remarkable people have been inhabitants of the Piazza. In the mansion at the north-west corner lived that bitter Puritan, Sir Harry Vane, who, with Pym, compassed the destruction of the great Earl of Strafford. To him succeeded the great scholar, mystic and man of action as well, Sir Kenelm Digby, who was accredited with the knowledge of twelve languages and with having discovered the philosopher's stone ; it was he who introduced into England the Greek " sympathetic powder," which, it was averred, healed a wound, not by its application to the injured part, but by anointing the weapon which had inflicted it. 1 A more delightful presence than that of this learned pundit graced the mansion in the person of his wife, the lovely Venetia Stanley, so rapturously praised by the poets of the time ; one compared her hair to a stream of sunbeams made solid, and Ben Jonson com- posed an exquisite little poem upon her sudden and premature death. Denzil Holies, a son of the Earl of Clare, and Admiral Russell, Earl of Oxford, the victor of La Hogue, were successive tenants of this house ; ultimately it was converted into an hotel, and at the beginning of the century Evans's Supper-rooms were 1 It is worth noting that Francis Bacon in his Natural History says that such experiments, and the success ot them, are " constantly received and avouched by men of credit," though he himself is not ."yet fully inclined to believe them". Yet the great philosopher presented to Prince Henry "a sympathising stone, made of several mixtures, to know the heart of man ". icp STREETS OF LONDON. built upon the site of Sir Kenelm's garden and labora- tory. Lately it has undergone rapid transformations it was the Falstaff Club and is now the New Club. The Tavistock Hotel has a record equally illustrious, as it was 'the abode of four celebrated artists, Lely, Kneller, Thornhill and Richard Wilson. Think of the illustrissimi who flocked to the studios of Lely and Kneller ; the Stuart kings, Charles and James ; Dutch William and German George; all the princes and princesses ; the voluptuous beauties ; the fine gentlemen, the wits and the philosophers, the literati and the actors who still gaze at us out of the can- vasses of those artists ! King James was sitting to Kneller when the news came of the landing of the Prince of Orange. The painter naturally would have retired but the king said : " No, I have promised Mr. Pepys the picture and will finish the sitting". Sir Godfrey charged only sixty guineas for a full length ! He was terribly egotistical. " Don't you really think, Sir Godfrey," said Pope to him one day. " that if your advice could have been asked at the creation some things would have been better shaped than they are ? " " Foregad ! " retorted the painter, laying his hand upon the poet's crooked shoulder, " I think they would." It is worthy of note, as a contrast between past and present London, that Kneller's hobby, the cultivation of flowers, was carried on in his garden that extended to Bow Street. Almost adjoining this house were the Piazza and Shakespeare Coffee-houses did not Major Pendennis, COVENT GARDEN. 191 and several other characters in Thackeray's immortal portrait gallery, sometimes dine at the Piazza ? At the latter end of the last century " the prince of auctioneers," George Robins, had his auction rooms at the Piazza ; and here he once entertained no less a personage than George, Prince of Wales ; the Piazza was afterwards incorporated with the Tavistock. Don't you remember that Harry Foker and that superfine snob, Arthur Pendennis, frequented the house ? It need scarcely be added that little or nothing of the original building, except the cellarage, is now left. Among notable residents of the houses under the portico were the last Earl of Oxford, the Bishop of Durham, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, John Rich, and Tom Killigrew. At the corner of Russell Street stood the old "Hum- mums," l another house used by Dr. Johnson, and with a ghost story scarcely worth relating ; also the bar known as " Rockley's," the resort of generations of actors, especially on Saturday afternoons ; both have disappeared to make room for the new hotel. As I have attempted a sketch of Covent Garden in the sixteenth century, let me essay another, as a companion picture, of " the joyous neighbourhood " in the early decades of the eighteenth. 1 Hummums is a corruption of the Turkish Homoum, a sweating bath, which was introduced into London in the reign of James I. But in course of time these "bagnios," which gave their name to houses of ill fame, were abolished as being haunts of immorality, to be revived in our own day as the Turkish bath. 192 STREETS OF LONDON. The fruit and vegetable stalls have advanced from beneath the wall of Bedford House to the centre of the square, and are now presided over by buxom lasses from Fulham and Battersea ; fine ladies and city wives are cheapening the gifts of Pomona ; old and young beaux are loitering about, leering at the country girls, chucking them under the chin, snatching kisses, and proceeding even to greater freedoms. But it is beneath the porticoes that the scene is most animated, for they vie with the Mall as a fashionable promenade ; the belles sweep backwards and forwards in their rustling silks and hoops and sacques, laughing over the latest scandal, and listening, with half-averted faces and fluttering fans, to hide the enjoyment in their sparkling eyes, to anecdotes from the lips of their cavaliers that would now be thought fit only for a bachelors' party. Yet much more salacious stories are exchanged among the beaux, as with mincing steps they follow behind, titillating their nostrils with pulvilio and interlarding their sentences with many a " Fore- gad " and " stap my vitals," the slang of that day. There are poets and statesmen, actors and painters, nobles and adventurers, actresses and ladies of title, just what you find now-a-days at an "afternoon " a la mode. That little, round, fat, sleepy-looking man is John Gay, the poet, whose Beggar s Opera is drawing all London to Drury Lane, and that charming girl, upon whom her somewhat staid but noble-looking cavalier is casting such doting glances, is Lavinia Fenton, the Polly Peachum, who will by-and-by be Duchess of COVENT GARDEN. 193 Bolton ; on the other side of my lord duke is a dark- eyed, vivacious, somewhat shrewish-looking lady, that is the eccentric, but good-hearted Kitty, Duchess of Queensberry, Gay's patroness, fearless in the defence of her friends and out of favour at court for her bold speaking. Here come two gentlemen, evidently personages of importance from the attention they excite ; one is a handsome, well-made young fellow, very elegantly dressed, and with the swagger and self-satisfied smirk of a ladykiller, that is Tom Walker, the original Captain Macheath ; they say there is not a fine lady in the boxes who would not willingly play the part of Polly or Lucy in private life, while he is singing "How happy could I be with either". His companion, portly, stately, pompous, solemn and measured of tread, is Mr. Quin, the tragedian of Lincoln's Inn Fields, a man much esteemed, and received by the highest in the land, even by royalty. 1 A lady, handsome but somewhat raddled, superbly dressed, but somewhat slovenly it is my Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who has been both flattered and reviled by poet Pope is evidently not a persona grata to the canaille ; the basket women glower and the porters scowl upon her, and make uncomplimentary remarks ; they have hissed and hooted her through 1 Quin was elocution master to George III. when that monarch way Prince of Wales. " I taught the boy," said the old actor proudly, when he heard of the first speech that the king delivered from the throne. 13 194 STREETS OF LONDON. the streets before to-day : for has not this Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced a barbarous practice from heathen Turkey, called inoculation, and submitted her own child to the operation, for which every mother feels that she should like to tear her eyes out? We boast of our progress, and yet we have returned to the same state of things ! In the years to come, a dapper little fellow, with eyes of fire, named David Garrick, who carries on a wine business in partnership with his brother in Adam Street, Adelphi, and is terribly stage-struck, will walk up and down here for hours, eagerly conversing upon his favourite theme with Charles Macklin, who has just made a great hit by playing Shylock as a serious character, the Jew of Shakespeare having hitherto been pre- sented as a low comedy part in a fiery-red wig. The Piazza was almost as favourite a rendezvous for duellists as Leicester Square or the fields behind Montagu House, especially among the actors, who were as sudden and quick in quarrel as the fine gentle- men. A dispute over stage business as was the case with Quin and a player called Bowen, who was killed and after the performance an adjournment to the porticoes and a flashing of rapiers. Another actor, a choleric little Welshman named Williams, who chal- lenged the tragedian for deriding his pronunciation of Cato he called it " Keeto " fell beneath Quin's sword. But in both cases it was proved that the survivor acted only in self-defence, and he was acquitted. Quin had another affair with that rogue, Theophilus Gibber, COVENT GARDEN. 195 who well deserved pinking, but he was reserved for the fishes of the Irish Channel. Pepys (2pth July, 1667) graphically describes the fatal duel between Tom Porter and Sir H. Bellasses, the latter dying of his wounds, that was fought here in Covent Garden. The Bedford Coffee-house, under the eastern portico, was to the second half of the eighteenth century what Will's and Button's had been to the beginning of it, the great resort of the actors and their following. Here struts the Temple beau, a notable figure of the day a wit, a gallant more versed in plays than law books, who passes the hours, fondly believed by parents to be engrossed by Blackstone and Coke, in theatres, taverns, coffee-houses ; here is the poor devil author, shabby and humble, hoping to get a commis- sion for a prologue or dedication, or to meet with some one he can borrow a coin of; there is a sprinkling of clergy in shabby cassocks ; one or two country squires, listening open mouthed to the discussions upon the last new play or poem, or the repartee upon the latest scandal, all of which is as Greek to them ; a young cit., supposed by his parents to be snug in bed beneath the shop counter, in red-heeled shoes and scarlet coat, is devouring the words of the wits and actors that he may repeat them at a city tavern next night. Every one is eager to listen to Foote's bans mots and malicious quips, to Garrick's imitations of the great French actors and actresses whom he has seen during his visit to Paris. Although Garrick was always his best and truest friend, Foote never spared 196 STREETS OF LONDON. him. One night the famous actor, who was rather close-fisted, dropped a guinea at the Bedford, nor could the most diligent search recover it. " Where can it have gone to? " remarked some one. " To the devil, I think," answered Garrick irritably. " Trust Davey to make a guinea go farther than anybody else," retorted Foote. Tavistock Row, now absorbed by the market, was in our time as dull and dreary a thoroughfare as any within the neighbourhood, but in the days of the first Georges it was the Bond Street, or Regent Street, of the town the most fashionable shopping-place in London, and its narrow limits were crowded with carriages and sedans, and with lounging beaux dang- ling attendance upon the ladies, throughout the day. In the year 1779 it \vas the scene of a notable tragedy. No. 4 was a hosier's and glover's, at which served a young girl, Miss Ray, who attracted the attention of that notorious libertine, Lord Sandwich the inventor of the husky comestible which bears his name, one of ''the monks of Medmenham," and familiarly known as "Jemmy Twitcher " and she became his mistress. Miss Ray was the mother of several children when Captain Hackman, an officer in a foot regiment, conceived a mad passion for her. He proposed marriage, but Miss Ray had no taste for following the drum. So Hackman doffed his red coat for a black, entered holy orders and obtained a living at Wyverton, in Norfolk. But a country parsonage had no more temptation for the lady than a barracks. COVENT GARDEN. 197 Finding all hope gone and that Miss Ray was placed under the charge of a duenna, Hackman became des- perate. On the night of yth April she and her attendant went to Covent Garden Theatre ; as her carriage was skirting the northern portico on its way homeward, the door opened, a man thrust himself in and pressed the muzzle of a pistol against Miss Ray's forehead ; there was a report, a shriek, and the next moment the lady who sat next to her was deluged in blood. The murderer then tried to batter in his own brains with the butt end of his weapon, but was arrested before he could effect his purpose. This dastardly crime created a great sensation, and the letters and chroni- cles of the day abound in references to it. It is a curious trait of the time that the Earl of Carlisle and James Boswell rode in the carriage which conveyed the criminal to Tyburn. There is not a foot of ground around Covent Garden that is not haunted by the memories of famous people. " Peter Pindar " (Dr. Wolcott), who SQ cleverly ridiculed the eccentric silliness of George III., and was himself so terribly and deservedly flayed by Gifford in The Mceviad, for he was a very black sheep, lived at one time in Tavistock Row. Wolcott was clever rogue enough even to do a publisher ! Putting on a dying air and a racking cough he sold him all his copyrights for an annuity of ^250. " Barabbas" (I quote Byron) went away well satisfied that he had made a good bargain and would not be called upon for more than a quarter's payment. But " Peter 198 STREETS OF LONDON. Pindar " rapidly recovered and enjoyed his stipend for many years. In a narrow passage, which joined Tavistock Street and Tavistock Row, stood, until the demolition of the Row, a public-house called the Salutation, at which, when bent upon some nocturnal ramble or a visit to Stunning Joe Banks's in " The Rookery," the Prince Regent, Sheridan and one or two others of that ilk, under assumed names, often dined, and witnessed a little sparring by " The Fancy," who used the house. The improving of Maiden Lane, which, as it anciently formed a part of the convent grounds, was probably so called from an image of the Virgin that stood in it, 1 has swept away many interesting houses. Andrew Marvell, the republican poet and satirist, and Milton's Latin secretary, lived next door to the Bedford Head, and in the next century Voltaire, during his visit to London, lodged in the same domicile, then known by the sign of the White Peruke, and there wrote the greater part of La Henriade. At the west end of the north side was formerly a gloomy, tunnel-like place, approached by a low archway, called Hand Court, in the left-hand corner of which was a barber's shop, kept by William Turner, the father of the greatest of all English landscape painters, who first saw the light in that gloomy defile. It was demolished in 1861. The Bedford Head, just mentioned, was famous among *Covent Garden taverns as a resort of the wits and 1 Some authorities give a very different origin of the name by asserting that the true form of the word was Midden (Dunghill) Lane. COVENT GARDEN. 199 beaux, and was frequented by Voltaire, who dined there with Bolingbroke on his first introduction to the renowned statesman. There also M. Arouet met Pope, and Gibber, and Young, Arbuthnot and the literati of the day, and read portions of La Henriade to them. Pope celebrates the tavern in two couplets : Let me extol a cat on oysters fed, I'll have a party at the Bedford Head. Again : When sharp with hunger, scorn you to be fed, Except on pea chicks at the Bedford Head ? Here was held " the Shilling Rubber Club," of which Fielding, Hogarth, Wilkes, Garrick, Churchill, Gold- smith and others were members. The old house was not pulled down until 1870. On the south side of Maiden Lane, close to the spot where the stage en- trance to the Adelphi now stands, was the notorious Cyder Cellar, first opened in 1730, a sort of Cafe Chantant, though no women ever sang there ; its regular patrons seldom dropped in before midnight. As I have before mentioned, 1 it was the nightly resort of Porson, the great Greek scholar, whose power of memory sur- passed even that of Macaulay, and whose learning was equally prodigious ; Porson was a most extraordinary combination of supreme intellect and gross bestiality. Somewhat late in life he married a widow ; on his marriage day he dined alone at the Bedford Head and afterwards repaired to the Cyder Cellar, where 1 See " The Temple," p. 134. 200 STREETS OF LONDON. he remained drinking until eight o'clock the next morning. Round the corner, in Southampton Street, No. 27, now a gas office, Garrick spent the earlier years of his married life ; the house has been little altered since ; Caius Gibber, the father of Colley, who sculptured the designs on the base of the Monument, lived and died in this street, and the famous actress, Mrs. Old- field, was also a resident in it. No. 3 Henrietta Street was Offley's Supper Rooms. The window of the large room looked out upon St. Paul's Churchyard, Covent Garden, and therein was buried the original of Thackeray's Captain Costigan ; out of this window, it is said, that some of his boon companions used to pour libations of punch upon his grave. In Henrietta Street lived the famous actress, Kitty Clive, the " Pivy " of Horace Walpole's Letters, and Garrick's "Joy and Plague ". It was in a room of the Castle Tavern in this street that Sheridan fought a duel with Captain Matthews for traducing the beautiful Maria Linley, "St. Cecilia," with whom Brinsley had made a runaway match, and forced the scoundrel to beg his life and publish an ample apology. King Street is equally rich in memories; at No. 35, on the north side, the Garrick Club was first established, in 1834. At No. 38 lived Dr. Arne, the composer of the once famous opera, Artaxerxes, but now best remembered by his setting of Shakespeare's songs, and no musician, since his day, has succeeded so well in catching the spirit of the dramatist. His sister, Maria, afterwards the COVENT GARDEN. 201 celebrated tragedienne, Mrs. Gibber, of whom Garrick said, hyperbolically, that tragedy died with her, passed her early years in this house. Coleridge the poet was for a time a resident of King Street. Readers of Richardson will remember that Clarissa Harlowe lay in hiding from Lovelace at a glove shop in this thoroughfare. \\\.Covent Garden Elections -The Finish Evans's Supper Rooms. In the pre-reform days Covent Garden had a lively time of it during the Westminster elections, especially when Sir Francis Burdett or Charles James Fox was the candidate. The poll was open three weeks, during which the whole neighbourhood was given over to riot and debauchery. The pencils of Hogarth and Bun- bury have bequeathed us vivid representations of these scenes, but they are so unfamiliar to the present genera- tion that a word-painting of the humours of an old- fashioned contest, in which Fox was the hero, may not be unacceptable. The hustings are close against the east end of St. Paul's Church, and right away beneath the porticoes ; and overflowing into King Street, Tavistock Street, Henrietta Street is a turbulent, shouting, shrieking, scrambling, swearing, fighting crowd, almost every man and woman of which wears the candidates' colours, the blue and buff of Charles James being greatly favoured. Against the hustings is a phalanx of " bludgeon- 202 STREETS OF LONDON. men," a villainous-looking crew, chiefly selected from the prize ring, armed with heavy cudgels. A cry of " Here comes the duchess !" sends everybody wildly rushing in the direction of Henrietta Street, which is all of a roar as an open carriage drawn by four high-stepping horses, the panels and harness ornamented with a ducal coronet, slowly makes its way through the human billows. Seated within is a splendidly attired and very handsome woman, who smiles and bows and kisses her hand effusively in re- sponse to the cheers with which she is greeted. But, oh heavens ! huddled on the satin and velvet seats, beside and opposite her, are three or four drunken, dirty creatures that her Grace of Devonshire has raked out of the slums of St. Giles's " free and in- dependent electors " who are going to vote for " Fox and liberty". She has actually bribed one of them with a kiss ! Faugh ! It suggests Circe and her swine. And now the shouts grow louder than ever as another carriage is seen making its way towards the market-place, the central figure in which is a very dark-complexioned man, very big, very slovenly in dress ; a frantic rush is made for the coach, men hang on behind, grip the horses' manes and harness, and a score of dirty hands are thrust out to be shaken by the hero of the hour, while a beery brass band brays out something intended for " See the Conquering Hero Comes ! " It is with difficulty, and only by the inter- position of the bludgeon-men, that his perfervid COVENT GARDEN. 203 admirers permit Fox to descend from his carriage and mount the rostrum. As he bows to the seething mass, ^'caps, hands and tongues applaud him to the sky," and quite drown the groans and hisses of the feeble minority, who are little heeded until " the patriot " is struck upon the breast by a well-directed dead cat. In a moment the bludgeon-men are in the thick of the crowd, whirling their clubs and indiscriminately smash- ing friend and foe ; there is a free fight, men pummel one another, women scratch each other's faces and tear out each other's hair by handfuls, while the spectators from the windows shriek shouts of encouragement. This is the last day of the poll, and when soon after four o'clock Fox is declared to be elected by a substan- tial majority, there follows an indescribable saturnalia. The taverns, which have been all full, are more crowded than ever. Evoe Bacche ! The friend of Fox who can keep his feet under him that night is a skulker ; the streets look as if London had been cannonaded ; they are strewn with helpless wretches, but it is John Barley- corn and not Mars who has put them hors de combat ! Then comes " the chairing " ; on a gorgeous throne, covered with blue and buff, the successful candidate is carried round the borough upon the stalwart shoulders of bludgeon-men, who, however, have drunk his health so frequently that they are in danger of breaking their patron's neck. In Hogarth's picture of " Morning " we see against the north end of St. Paul's Church a wooden shebeen, Tom King's Coffee-house, in his time a resort of the 204 STREETS OF LONDON. market porters, of thieves, beaux, harlots. Half a century later Tom King's was superseded by the yet more notorious Carpenter's Coffee-house, nick- named "The Finish". It was not demolished until 1829. Some place that's like the Finish, lads ! Where all your high pedestrian pads That have been up and out all night, Running their rigs among the rattlers, At morning meet, and honour bright, Agree to share the blunt and taters, wrote Tom Moore, in Tom CribUs Memorial to Con- gress. This tavern was supposed to be expressly for the accommodation of the market people, but as it was open all night, " the Corinthians " made it a house of call in the early hours of the morning, and nick- named it "The Finish". Here, at those unseemly hours, in the long low sanded-floored room, with its rough wooden benches and tables, its atmosphere reek- ing with fumes of stale tobacco, beer and unsnuffed tallow candles, met footpads, highwaymen, cypri- ennes, dandies, legislators, actors, literati ; Sheridan, Fox, Tom Moore among others. Adolphus, in his Recollections, gives us a glimpse of stately John Philip Kemble coming into the Finish at five o'clock in the morning, after a dinner-party, very drunk, and begin- ning to spout to an acquaintance some new part that he was studying, at which the company, quite unawed by the frown of Coriolanus, broke into a ribald chorus, and the tragedian, who resented this insult, had to COVENT GARDEN. 205 be hurried into a hackney coach to save him from violence. Kemble, like other men of his day, was a tre- mendous toper. When George Colman the younger had completed The Iron Chest, he invited John Philip to dinner and to hear it read. The reading progressed slowly, the bottle quickly ; the dawn found them both hard at it the bottle, not the play. The butler was roused out of bed to get a fresh supply ; they drank all night and began again after breakfast, and, with dozes between, kept it up until dinner-time ; after that they made another night of it until they fell asleep. Both woke simultaneously in the grey light of the morning. " What are you staring at ? " cried Colman nervously. " By , Kemble, you look like the devil incarnate ! " Upon which Coriolanus took his depar- ture in high dudgeon. And it might have been on that night that Adolphus met him at the Finish. Sir Walter Scott said that Kemble was the only man who, after he had attained middle life, could seduce him into deep potations, and more than once, when John Philip was playing at Edinburgh, did Sol's red face look in upon the pair as they sat with a half- emptied bowl of punch still between them. Notable among dead and gone institutions of Covent Garden was the well-known " Evans's Supper Rooms". Evans, an actor, who first opened the place at the beginning of the century, had long since quitted this world of chops, steaks and kidneys for another, where the eaters thereof are themselves eaten. When I knew 206 STREETS OF LONDON. the rooms, famous " Paddy Green," rubicund of coun- tenance and effusive of manner, who raised them to the pinnacle of their glory, was the director. And there was the great star, Herr Von Joel, who whistled like birds, imitated a farm-yard, sang Swiss moun- tain melodies, and played tunes upon walking-sticks borrowed from the company. Ah, me ! What recollections of the halcyon days of our youth, before we were on intimate terms with our liver, before we troubled our heads about what to eat, drink and avoid, and pessimism had taken the savour out of life, what recollections that old familiar name conjures up ! Why, Evans's was one of the things to do, and a young man from the country would now as soon omit a visit to the Empire or the Alhambra as our provincial fathers and grandfathers would have thought of returning home without sup- ping at the famous Covent Garden rooms, where all the lions of the day, actors, artists, literati were to be seen after twelve. Thackeray, spectacled, with nose in air, was at times almost a nightly visitor ; he had his own particular seat at the back of the room, against the wall, apart, unsocial, wrapped in meditation ; it was an excellent place for the study of character, and many a one in his marvellous portrait gallery was mentally sketched over his chop or kidney. What is more probable than that the presence of some old Indian officer and his son suggested, not only the scene at this " the Cave of Harmony," but the immortal Colonel Newcome as COVENT GARDEN. 207 well ? Many a time, after a midnight prowl about the neighbourhood of "Tom All Alone's," Dickens, keen of eye and restless of movement, might be seen at one of the tables ; but the habitues of Evans's were not in the way of " Boz's " pen. There you might see at one table Douglass Jerrold, a little body surmounted by a leonine head with a grey mane, with glowing eyes and a caustic sneer, not a pleasant person even to his intimates. Beside him is another little man, very thin, with the gentlest of faces and the merriest twinkle in his eye, dear Tom Hood, kindest and drollest of tender-hearted creatures, who has drawn tears from all the world by his " Song of the Shirt " and " The Bridge of Sighs"; thrilled it with " Eugene Aram's Dream," and shaken its sides with his puns and humour. A rotund little man, with a sly, moist eye, makes up a trio. It is Harry Lee, whose wit and drollery are second only to those of his com- panions. Talking with these, at an adjoining table, is the Falstaffian, Rabelaisian editor of Punch, genial Mark Lemon. A little apart sits a red-bearded man in seedy attire, gloomily discussing a chop, with a rejected play, called " Society," across which the Hay- market manager has contemptuously scribbled " Bosh," in his pocket. Yet some day not far distant that comedy will make the fortune of another theatre. But Tom Robertson's day has not yet come. He looks up savagely as he hears the well-known tones of " Buckey's " voice, which always sets the Hay- market in a roar before even his words are distin- 208 STREETS OF LONDON. guishable, calling for a steak and punch. And at his heels follow a couple of the Broughs, who have just made a hit with one of their rollicking burlesques at the Strand. Albert Smith, fresh from the descent of Mount Blanc ; cheery Planche, rippling with good- humour like one of his extravaganzas. And so I might pass in review the names of all the bohemians of the time, for they were all frequenters of Evans's after the play. A happy-go-lucky, impecunious, spendthrift race ! With a guinea in his pocket, dull care could find no place in the bohemian's heart; he made but little, and he spent that little merrily; he could not invite friends to an ostentatious banquet as his successors do, but he welcomed them to a cut of cold beef, a jug of ale and a jorum of punch, and pipes and tobacco after- wards ; and on Sundays there were a knife and fork for any associate who liked to partake of a leg of mutton or a rib of beef, and pudding to follow ; such was the hospitality offered by such men as Jerrold and Hood. Sometimes your Broughs and Robert- sons and Lees had not wherewithal to provide even this frugal meal, and then the bitterness of poverty fell heavily upon them. But, hey, presto ! a guinea for a magazine or newspaper article, and all was forgotten. Off to the pit of some theatre authors did not sit in the boxes half a century ago, and stalls were unknown and a chop at Evans's, and all their troubles were dissipated. And at Evans's we find them ; little attention do COVENT GARDEN. 209 they pay to the glees and sentimental songs, though these are" admirably executed : but then they have heard them so often, and they have so much to con- verse about. Presently there enters a performer whose appearance is hailed with universal acclamation, a performer whose terrible realism rivets the attention of the most languid, and there is a dead hush. So horribly but unconventionally repulsive is his make- up that if you have not seen him before you instinc- tively tighten your hold upon your walking-stick. He slouches unto a stool upon the stage, casts a malignant scowl around, and then, without any trick of manner, without any attempt at effect, tells the story, just as it would pass through his mind, of a convict in the condemned cell the night before his execution ; no maudlin, chaplain-humbugging criminal, but a callous, ferocious, impenitent murderer, who ends every verse of his chant with the refrain, " D n your eyes ! " Nothing so shudderingly gruesome as Bob Ross's song, " Sam Hall," has been heard before or since. After that there is a general movement, and William the waiter comes with the reckoning ; he has a system of arithmetic all his own. "Chop, potatoes, bread, stout, sir is., is. 2d., is. 3d., is. /d., and three brandies are 35. id., that's 35. 6d.'" How 33. id., without any additional items, comes to 33. 6d., nobody but William can tell, but it always does. If we pass out under the piazza the summer's dawn is breaking and the market outside is all bustle and commotion. The beaux and belles, the fine ladies and gentle- H 210 STREETS OF LONDON. men, the coffee-houses and taverns, the Finish, the Cyder Cellar, and Evans's, and all their famous and zVzfamous frequenters, all the gaiety, fashion, romance, wit, all the intellectual life of Covent Garden have passed away, and nothing now is left but a sordid emporium in its squalor and ugliness a dis- grace to the greatest capital in the world, and to the magnate who owns it to help feed the insatiable maw of ever-ravening London ; all that remains of old days are the ashes of the famous dead, who lie interred in .St. Paul's Lely, Hudibras Butler, Dick Estcourt, Macklin, Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, Sir Henry Herbert, the famous master of the Revels ; William Wycherley, Kynaston, the celebrated actor of female parts; Mrs. Centlivre, the authoress of The Wonder; Robert Wilks, the renowned comedian of the Queen Anne and the first George's days ; Grinling Gibbons Dr. Wolcott, Sir Robert Strong, and others who After life's fitful fever [there] sleep well. CHAPTER XI. ST. GILES'S THE CHURCHYARD THE ROAD TO TYBURN THE ROOKERY THE SEVEN DIALS. IT is a curious fact that the two London districts which are invariably contrasted as the antithesis of one another have a common origin, each having been the site of a leper hospital ; the one was dedicated to St. James the Less, a bishop of Jerusalem, the other to St. Giles, the patron saint of beggars and lepers, The latter was founded by Matilda, Queen of Henry I., and covered the ground between High Street and two thoroughfares, Crown Street and Dudley Street, now incorporated in Shaftesbury Avenue. Both were dissolved and their revenues confiscated by that rapa- cious robber, Henry VIII. The land of St. Giles's was granted to one of his myrmidons, John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, who built a mansion on it. In the middle ages a village clustered round the church and spital, and a stone cross in the centre made a halt- ing-place on the country road that connected London with Tyburn. It was not until the reign of Eliza- beth that it began to lose its rural aspect ; that is, ceased to be divided from London by broad fields (211) 212 STREETS OF LONDON. At the opening of the seventeenth century buildings rapidly increased. Of the original church, which as a portion of a small conventual establishment was very insignificant, there is nothing to record ; a second was erected in 1623, but the present edifice dates back only to 1730, though the " Resurrection" gate, which originally stood on the north-west side, and was removed to its present position in 1864, belongs to the previous century. Nothing could be more hideously prosaic than the surroundings of St. Giles's Church, and yet what a world of romance is interred beneath those grimy tombstones and that soot-saturated soil ! Here lies Richard Pendrell, who saved the life of Charles II. after the battle of Worcester, and whose extra- ordinary adventures form one of the most romantic episodes of that romantic period. Here, after his exe- cution in 1715, were laid the remains of the heroic John Radcliffe, Earl of Derwentwater, so famous in Jacobite ballads ; the body was afterwards removed to Northumberland, and in 1874 was again translated, this time to Lord Petre's seat, Thorndon in Essex. Michael Mohun, the great actor of the Restoration days he died in Brownlow Street close by who- fought in the king's army against the bitter enemies of his profession, lies here ; so does the gallant Lord Herbert of Cherbury ; and George Chapman, the dram- atist and friend of Ben Jonson. Not far off reposes Shirley, the last of the "Elizabethan" dramatists; Andrew Marvell, the satirist ; and that Countess of ST. GILES'S THE CHURCHYARD, ETC. 213 Shrewsbury who, disguised as a page, held the horse of her paramour, the Duke of Buckingham, when he fought with and killed her husband in the grounds of Clifden. Could a new Robert the Devil summon PENDRELL S TOMB. them to rise from their tombs, how horrified these dainty shades would be at their surroundings ! There is no fear of their "walking" in that churchyard. 214 STREETS OF LONDON. But St. Giles's is remarkable for quite another order of humanity to that of the hero, the poet and lady of fashion. Jemmy Catnach, for instance, from whose press in Monmouth Court, Dudley Street, proceeded those wonderful last speeches and dying confessions of notorious criminals ; those curious old ballads, "Jemmy Dawson," "Jane Shore," "Barbara Allen," Christmas carols printed by the yard, and those won- derful broadsides, describing all kinds of marvels and horrors, that used to be exposed for sale pinned upon blankets, which in our grandfathers' time were the principal literature of the working classes collectors pay high prices for them now. Catnach employed a whole army of cadgers to hawk these delectable com- positions about the town, and the frequent hoaxes perpetrated by the unscrupulous vendors upon the public gave rise to a new word, " catchpenny ". What these peripatetic Mercurys were like may be judged from the fact that even the not over-particular trades- people of St. Giles's in anything but particular days, refused to take the mass of copper coins which were brought into Monmouth Court every night, as it was said fevers and all kinds of loathsome diseases had been caught from handling them, so they had to be boiled in vinegar and potash for disinfection before being accepted. Before the penny-paper days these broadsides were the only vehicles of news within the means of the poorer classes, and their sale was enormous. The death of George III., the Cato Street conspiracy, ST. GILES'S THE CHURCHYARD, ETC. 215 the trial of Queen Caroline, kept the press going night and day. But there was nothing comparable to a good murder ; by the Thurtell and Weare case Catnach, it is said, realised ^500 from the sale of 250,000 copies, and that the block from which the " likeness of the murderer" was taken, served for the likeness of all the other popular murderers for the next forty years. Yet the above number was quite put in the shade by the Greenacre murder, of which 1,650,000 broadsides were issued ; while the Red Barn tragedy broke even this record by some thousands. The gala days of old St. Giles's were the hanging days, and they were frequent enough for a Popish calendar. As I have said, it was the high road to Tyburn, and at an ancient tavern called the Bowl, or Crown, that stood within a door or two of the eastern end of the churchyard, where the Angel now stands, the procession always stopped and the doomed man was given his last drink. Just outside the leper hospital, in the middle ages, was a gallows, and it was an ancient custom for a bowl of ale to be sent out from there to every criminal who was executed. When the spital was demolished and all executions removed to Tyburn, a public-house was built on the spot and named the Bowl, the hosts of which kept up the old tradition. Let me endeavour to piece together a picture of one of those gala days, and for the purpose I will select a notable one, in November, 1724. Although it is a dreary, foggy morning, the house tops, the windows 216 STREETS OF LONDON. and the wooden balconies erected in front of the houses of the High Street are crowded with spectators, many of them beaux and fine ladies of St. James's, while the sideways and road beneath are a seething mass of filth, squalor and blackguardism, a riotous, swearing, hideous mob of men and women, that extends from the church and beyond to the gates of Newgate. Now, along this line of route, the sound of shouts, distant at first, then growing nearer and nearer, swell above the clamour of the crowd, and the cry is raised : " he's coming ! he's coming ! " the pushing, swaying and scrambling of that human sea of darkness grow fiercer, so do the shrieks and oaths and fighting, as each unit endeavours to secure a coign of vantage. Then, with a clatter of horses' hoofs, a clank of sabres, and tramp of heavy feet, through the grey gloom is seen advancing a detachment of cavalry, cleaving their way through the human ant-hill that divides with howls and imprecations. In an open cart, with a coffin in front of it, sits a man, still young, with dare-devil defiance upon his pale and vice-ploughed face ; beside him is a bibulous- looking clergyman, reading prayers from a great prayer-book ; mounted troopers ride beside and behind the cart, while the rear is brought up by a posse of constables and javelin men. The crowd, men and women, salute the doomed man with cheers and cries of encouragement. The procession stops at the Bowl, for which there is a horrible rush, the weaker being knocked down and trampled upon ; soldiers and con- ST. GILES'S THE CHURCHYARD, ETC. 217 tstables fall to drinking, and forth comes Boniface with the fatal bowl, which he smilingly hands to the criminal, who raises it and drinks to the health of the ladies that crowd a small balcony, raised over the entrance of the tavern, whose velvet masks and costly cloaks proclaim them to be people of quality ; they respond by waving their handkerchiefs, one kisses her hand to him, one or two sob hysterically. Then -our Jailbird turns to the mob and calls out : " Here's your health, my noble pals, and when your turn -comes may you all die as game as I shall!" A mighty roar answers the wish ; everybody who can -get a drink is hobnobbing with his neighbour, and even the parson is as jolly and mirthful as though it were a party of pleasure ; nothing indicates the terrible .meaning of it all, except that ghastly box of black boards. At last the commanding officer gives the word to fall in ; again the cavalcade moves forward, followed by the wild, screaming mob, increased from every street and alley that it passes, rolling on like an ever-gathering torrent of Stygian blackness, until it beats and surges, a dammed-up flood, against the gallows-tree, upon which swings the lifeless body of Jack Sheppard. Between the High Street, St. Giles's, now High .Street, Holborn, and Bloomsbury, upon the ground covered by New Oxford Street, within the last half- century was a labyrinth of courts, alleys and streets, inhabited by the most vicious classes of the metro- polis, and known by the appropriate name of " The 218 STREETS OF LONDON. Rookery ". Once upon a time, however, it had beeni a fashionable quarter of the town, and in those hideous lanes were to be seen the carved doorways and the oak- panelled apartments of tall mansions that had been the home of riches and fashion in the Stuarts' days. But even one hundred years ago the Rookery was the cadger's paradise, where the maimed became whole again, the blind were restored to sight, the paralysed regained vigour and the starved feasted on the fat of the land. Almost every house was a cadger's crib, wherein thief and beggar spent their ill- got earnings in nightly orgies ; the most infamous of these, the Hare and Hounds, had once upon a time been one of the noble mansions afore-mentioned, and was kept by a man named Joe Banks, who from his popularity among his customers won the sobriquet of "Stunning Joe Banks". Over the door was in- scribed the legend, " Here you can get drunk for a penny ; dead drunk for twopence and have straw for nothing ". Perhaps the reader who has just assisted at a procession to Tyburn will not be too fastidious to pay a visit with me to the Hare and Hounds. Your handkerchief to your nose, for the odours from these open sewers and unscavengered lanes are vil- lainous. Yes, it is that house with the dim oil-lamp over the door, which announces it to be a public one. It is a ramshackle place grimed with the dirt of genera- tions ; yet red-heeled, diamond-buckled shoes have tripped over that threshold, and silks and satins rustled in that now gulf-like hall. The scraping of a fiddle,. ST. GILES'S THE CHURCHYARD, ETC. 219- snatches of song, coarse laughter, and all kinds of riotous noises salute our ears as we enter a large apart- ment, in which are the remains of a finely carved fire- place, and of a painted ceiling almost obliterated by smoke. In a raised arm-chair, covered with red cloth, at the head of a long table, sits a good-looking, strapping wench in a gaudy-coloured gown and mob cap ; she is " the queen of beauty " for the week, after which she will have to give place to some other Blowsabella. As motley a crew as ever Burns sang the story of in " The Jolly Beggars " are gathered on each side the board, and mingled with the tatterdemalions are burly cracksmen, prize fighters, Minions of the moon, in scarlet and gold lace ; at the end of the table is Stunning Joe himself, with a paunch like Falstaff's and a nose fiery as Bardolph's. The company have just despatched a dinner, as Joe said, "fit for the king ". In the midst of the orgie the door opens and enter four dandies. The company, accustomed to such visi- tors, evince no surprise ; Joe bids the strangers welcome, and the queen of beauty, who rejoices in the sobriquet of " Blooming Sal," beckons one of the four, a hand- some, full-faced, fleshly gentleman, to take a seat beside her ; the other three make for the best-looking " blowens ". Joe waddles out to bring in a big supply of drinks, including bottles of wine. Does the host know who his guests are ? Does " Blooming Sal " know that her arms are round the neck of George, Prince of Wales, or do her companions recognise in his friends 22o STREETS OF LONDON. his Grace the Duke of Norfolk, Major Hanger and Mr. Brinsley Sheridan, lessee of Drury Lane ? Very pro- bably. " I call on that 'ere gem'man in a shirt for a song !" hiccoughs a fellow, pointing to his Royal High- ness. But the Prince, though a fine singer, probably thinks that it is playing a little too low to oblige such a company, so the Major undertakes to be the substitute of his friend, " who has a cold," and trolls forth " The Beggar's Wedding," which evokes rapturous applause. Presently a call is raised for a dance ; table and seats are pushed aside; the Major leads off with "the queen of beauty ". But heads and legs are too unsteady for such exercise, and in a few moments the floor is covered with sprawlers ; the women scream and scratch, the men punch one another's heads, and in the midst of the hubbub the dandies slip out, and grope their way through the dark alleys with many a stumble into unsavoury gutters, and at last emerge into the High Street. It was as much the fashion for " Corinthians," 1 as the dandies were called, to visit the beggars' haunts of St. Giles's in the Regency days as it w r as a few years ago for swells, under the protection of a policeman, to explore the opium dens of Whitechapel. In one of the autobiographical books of Lord William Lennox there 1 The term " Corinthian,'' as applied to the fast young man, is as old as the days of Shakespeare. " I am no proud Jack, like Falstaff, but a Corinthian, a lad of mettle," says Prince Henry in Henry IV. It was a term borrowed from Greece and Rome, in which Corinth was a by-word for every species of immorality. ST. GILES'S THE CHURCHYARD, ETC. 221 is a reminiscence of an orgie at the Hampshire Hog in St. Giles's, very similar to the above. That great Whig bon vivant, his Grace of Norfolk, must have been perfectly at home among the lazza- roni of the Rookery, since his habits so closely re- sembled their own, for certainly none among them had a greater contempt for soap and water than the Lord of Arundel, as he seldom voluntarily performed any ablutions. After leaving a tavern or a club, where perhaps he had been drinking for days and nights together, he would lie down in the streets and go to sleep on a heap of garbage. Discovered by the watch or some one who knew him, and carried to his man- sion, his servants would take away his filthy clothes and put him into a much-needed bath. One day he complained to Lord North of rheumatism doubtless incurred by those al fresco slumbers. " I have tried everything," he said. " Have you tried a clean shirt ? " was the query. Hanger was one of the prince's private equerries, and a most amusing blackguard. One day after he had dined at Carlton House the prince said, half- jestingly, " I am going to impose upon your hospitality and dine with you ; but you must not provide any- thing extravagant ". The major promised that all should be plain. Being without money or credit, when the day came Hanger was at his wit's end how to procure anything at all. It was court etiquette that an officer should be sent in advance to any house at which royalty was to be a guest, to ascertain that 222 STREETS OF LONDON. everything was in proper order for the reception of the august personage. When this functionary arrived at the major's quarters, which were on a third floor some- where about Drury Lane, he found that gallant gentle- man in his shirt sleeves, with a scullion for aide-de- camp, basting a leg of mutton that was cooking in front of the fire ; beneath the joint was a pan full of simmering potatoes, and on the table some foaming jugs of ale, just fetched from the neighbouring tavern. This was the banquet which was to be served on any- thing but a snowy cloth, and with very primitive crockery and cutlery. Need it be added that royalty did not dine with Major Hanger that day ? At the death of his father the major became Baron Coleraine. His Life and Adventures, written by himself, is a frank confession of a disreputable career. About half a century ago the Rookery was de- stroyed for the construction of New Oxford Street, but fragments of it, notably Church Lane, remained until the clearances for Shaftesbury Avenue finally -swept away the last vestiges. Within a few more years the once notorious Seven Dials will be a quarter as much of the past as the Rookery is now. The first mention of it is to be found in Evelyn's Diary (5th Oct., 1694) : " I went to see the building beginning near St. Giles's, where seven streets .make a star from a Doric pillar placed in the middle of a circular area, said to be built by Mr. Neale, intro- ducer of the late Lotteries, in imitation of those at Venice ". These streets covered what was known as ST. GILES'S THE CHURCHYARD, ETC. 223 the Cock-and-Pie-Fields, which were surrounded by a fetid ditch. The houses, considered to be quite triumphs of architecture, were inhabited by people of position and even of fashion. The column, with its dial of six faces, was removed in 1774, on account of a report that a treasure was buried beneath it. It may still be seen on Weybridge Green, where it was set up as a memorial to the Duchess of York. CHAPTER XII. SOHO : ITS STREETS AND REMINISCENCES. A WAYFARER, in the earliest decades of the eighteenth century, after passing St. Giles's Church, and Round- house the station-house of that day would have found himself at the junction of two country roads ; the one, on the left, leading to Uxbridge, the other, straight before him, to Hampstead. A little to the north-east, where now stands the British Museum, he would have caught sight of stately Montagu House, and to the east of that the less conspicuous pile of Bedford House, both encompassed by extensive grounds ; north of these mansions all would be open meadows, much frequented by hot-blooded gentlemen, among whom, as with Mercutio, it was a word and a blow. Many bloody duels were fought in those fields. 1 1 Bloomsbury is named after the ancient manor of the De Blemontes or De Blemunds, which in the reign of Henry VIII. fell into the hands of the Wriothesleys, Earls of Southampton (see p. 98). Hence Southampton Row, and it was through the marriage of Lady Rachel Wriothesley, heiress of the house, to Lord William Russell that the estate came to the Bedfords. Bloomsbury Square was built in the reign of Charles II., and there was little building north of this and Great Russell Street until the end of the century. Bedford House was not pulled down until 1800. Close to where Woburn Square now stands was the noted Field of (224) SOHO: ITS STREETS AND REMINISCENCES. 225 At the corner of the northern road our wayfarer's eye might have rested upon a wooden booth, where- in the redoubtable James Figg, whose pictorial card was engraved by Hogarth, challenged all comers with fists, broadsword, quarter-staff, or any other weapon, to try conclusions with him. A few years later his pupil, John Broughton, the first of the champion pugilists, opened a much larger booth on the ground, where Hanway Street now stands, and was patronised by the elite of fashion ; for while the area was crowned with the ruffianism of St. Giles, mingled with citizens and professional men, the galleries were filled with lords and ladies, headed by Frederick Prince of Wales on one side, and his Royal Highness of Cumberland deadly rivals on the other, with their respective sultanas, all of whom took as much delight in seeing Broughton and Slack, the butcher, beat one another into a red jelly, as did the groundlings below. While, as I have said, all to the north was open country, on the south the town, even in the time of Charles II., extended some little distance west of the church. Indeed, building between Leicester Fields and Tyburn Road (now Oxford Street) must have commenced in the reign of his father, as in the parish books of St. Martin's-in-the- Fields, Peter Cunningham Forty Footsteps, where, as the legend goes, two brothers, about 1680, fought a duel to the death about a woman, of course and left the impress of their feet stamped indelibly upon the earth. Many veracious witnesses, Southey and "Rainy Day Smith " among the number, attest to have seen these impressions, on which the grass never grew, as late as the year 1800. 15 226 STREETS OF LONDON. found an entry, under date 1636, referring to persons who lived at the brick kilns near " So Hoe ! " The origin of that curious name has been always a puzzle to antiquaries. As everybody knows, it is a hunting cry, and in the sixteenth century, curiously as it sounds to us, the neighbourhood afforded good sport, and on certain days the Lord Mayor and aldermen there hunted the hare and the fox, that could then find thyme-scented herbage and bosky coverts upon the ground over which Dean Street and Wardour Street now run their unsavoury lengths, and many a puss has been bagged, and many a brush secured round about St. Giles's Church. 1 Thus it might have been the cry of the huntsmen that suggested ''So Hoe!" Years afterwards that cry led thousands to death on the bloody field of Sedgemoor, where it was the watchword of the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth, who had a noble mansion on the south side of King's Square, afterwards renamed Soho. At that time, and many years afterwards, Soho Square was one of the handsomest parts of the metropolis ; it had a railed- in grass-plotted centre, with a fountain in the middle. The imposing pile of Monmouth House dominated all the neighbouring domiciles ; standing within a large courtyard, its gardens extended to Compton Street. Monmouth Street, afterwards Dudley Street, so notorious as an emporium of " Ole Clo," was built 1 Pepys notes the running down and killing of a buck in St. James's Park in 1664. SOHO: ITS STREETS AND REMINISCENCES. 227 over a part of them. Monmouth House was de- molished more than a century ago ; the Women's Hospital occupies a portion of the site. Another famous resident of the Square was Madame Corneleys, who, about 1770, was giving her splendid masquerade balls at Carlisle House, formerly the residence of the Earls of Carlisle, which stood at the corner of Carlisle Street, then Merry Andrew Street. Madame Corneleys was a German singer who came over to England to follow her vocation, lost her voice, and was only rescued from utter destitution by a prize in the lottery of ^"20,000. Her garret in St. Giles's was quickly exchanged for fashionable apartments ; Madame became a lionne ; the best- dressed woman in London, drove the smartest of equipages, and gave little card parties, which proved so lucrative that she was able to spend ;n,ooo on furnishing Carlisle House for her reception. It was at the suggestion of his Grace of Queensberry that she added bals masques to her other entertainments, and the town went " horn mad " over them. Not since the days of "King Monmouth" had the Square presented such scenes of gaiety. From nine at night until six in the morning one continuous stream of gilded and emblazoned carriages, with gorgeous coachmen and footmen, made their way through an evil-smelling mass of rags, filth and ruffianism, assembled to jeer, applaud, insult and rob. Hither came dukes and duchesses and princes of the blood, some in very eccentric costumes ; the 228 STREETS OF LONDON. Countess of Pomfret one night made a sensation as the Witch of Endor, the Duchess of Kingston the heroine of a most notorious trial for bigamy ; she who hounded Sam Foote to death for satirizing her and her myrmidons in his Trip to Calais created a yet greater, when she appeared as Iphigenia, her beauti- ful and voluptuous figure only veiled by gauzes ; the admired of all observers was a noble lady, every seam of whose dress of cloth of gold was encrusted with precious stones, and who carried upon her head, neck, and arms diamonds worth 100,000. But the climax was reached when a captain in the Guards presented himself as Adam, with the addition only of flesh- coloured tights to the biblical costume. Might the gentleman who, made up as a corpse, alighted from a coffin and danced in a winding-sheet, afford a hint to some one competing for a prize at the Covent Garden balls ? A Roman Catholic chapel now occupies the site of Carlisle House. The White House, upon the scenes of which Messrs. Cross & Blackwell now stew jams and pickles, was no more reputable, even less so, than Madame Cor- neleys' ; it was a gambling hell, bagnio, assembly house, under the immediate patronage of George Regent, the Marquis of Hertford (my " Lord Steyne "), " Old Q," and others of that ilk. The Soho Bazaar is the house in which that illustrious naturalist, Sir Joseph Banks, lived and died. Readers of The Confessions of an English Opium Eater may remember that big, lonely, unfurnished SOHO: ITS STREETS AND REMINISCENCES. 229 house at the north-west corner of Greek Street (originally Grig Street), in which De Quincey, then little more than a boy, took up his quarters on his first arrival in London, sleeping upon the floor with a bundle of law papers for a pillow, and a horseman's cloak for sole covering : they may also remember that night when he sat down upon the steps of a house in the Square in company with " noble-minded Ann ," a poor outcast whom he had met in his eternal perambulations of Oxford Street, that " stony- hearted stepmother," and how he would have died of inanition had not that good Magdalene run and got him some hot spiced wine. I know nothing more sadly impressive in biography than De Quincey's story of that episode in his strange life. Building went on so fast in the fields about So Hoe in the days of Old Rowley that the king con- sidered it necessary to issue a proclamation forbidding the erection of any more cottages in Windmill and Dog Fields, as they choked up the air of his Majesty's palaces and parks, and threatened to draw away water which was conveyed thither in aqueducts for royalty's especial convenience ! In 1688, however, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the French Hugue- nots poured into London ; while a great part took up their abode in Spitalfields, a number equal to filling 800 houses flocked into Soho, which from that time became a French quarter. There is much history and anecdote connected with the dim and dingy streets of Soho: Crown Street, 230 STREETS OF LONDON. now Charing Cross Road, originally Hog Lane, is the scene of Hogarth's picture, " Noon," and the old almshouses on the western side are supposed to have been founded by Nell Gwynne. Dean Street is chiefly notable for the little theatre, built some sixty years ago by Fanny Kelly. William Hazlitt died in Frith Street, and was interred in the churchyard of that odd, depressing specimen of ecclesiastical architecture, St. Ann's ; wherein also lie the notorious duellist Lord Camelford, and Theodore, titular King of Cor- sica, whose tomb is marked by a somewhat pompous tablet. The story of this crownless monarch is one of the romances of history. Born in 1696, of a noble Prussian family, he served under Charles XII. of Sweden, and so distinguished himself that the people of Corsica, then under the heavy yoke of Genoa, at that time an independent republic, invited him to become their king. His reign was brief ; the Genoese set a price upon his head, his own subjects conspired against him, and he was obliged to fly to escape assassination. After that he wandered from country to country, imploring, but in vain, the monarchs to assist him to recover his crown. At last he arrived in London, utterly destitute, took up his abode in Soho, found means, probably at the gambling table, to make an appearance, and nearly persuaded Lady Lucy Stan- hope to share with him his kingdom en I' air. By-and- by his old foes, the Genoese, employed agents to buy up his debts, threw him into prison, and made the SOHO: ITS STREETS AND REMINISCENCES. 231 price of his release a formal renunciation of all claim upon the Corsican throne. Worry, want, and loss of liberty, however, had done their worst ; when released from jail he was penniless ; he took a Sedan chair to the house of the Portuguese ambassador, hoping to borrow a little money. Not finding the gentleman at home he had not wherewithal to pay the chair- men, and desired the man to carry him to a tailor's, in Greek Street, who had worked for him, and of whom he begged a shelter. Three days afterwards the phantom monarch was no more. In a curious and indirect way King Theodore is associated with a notorious scandal of English royalty. He left behind him an illegitimate son, who bore the name of Frederick and became a colonel in the British army. By an amour with a young girl, Frederick had a daughter, but as the girl afterwards married a man named Thompson, the child was brought up as Mary Anne Thompson. Mary Anne was very pretty and fascinating, and when quite young a builder's son, named Clarke, fell in love with her and married her. But he was a worthless, dissipated fellow, who treated her so badly that she left him. Mrs. Clarke then became the chere amie of more than one gentleman of fortune, and while living at Blackheath accidentally attracted the attention of a distinguished-looking person who turned out to be the Duke of York. His Royal Highness was madly infatuated, and settled her in a sumptuous house in Gloucester Place. As every one knows, the duke was the commander-in-chief, and 232 STREETS OF LONDON. consequently the military were very strongly repre- sented at Mrs. Clarke's receptions. It now occurred to the lady that she might make an addition to her income by disposing of the duke's patronage that is to say, selling commissions below the Horse Guards price : for instance, a captaincy worth ^1500 and a majority, which would have fetched ^2600, could be obtained at Gloucester Place for 700 and ,900. How the inevitable discovery was brought about is not the least curious part of the story. Among her morning visitors was Colonel VVardle, M.P., a most notorious Radical, who was so bitterly opposed to the court that Mrs. Clarke never informed the duke of this acquaintance. One day when Wardle was with her the royal carriage drove up to the door. Unable to get the colonel out of the room, she thrust him beneath a sofa. It was not her lover, however, but an aide-de-camp, who had come about the purchase of a commission for a friend, and a conversation ensued which opened Wardle's eyes to the iniquity that was going on. Being a red-hot reformer, he made no scruple of using this information against the duke. The exposure made a tremendous sensation, and although there was no vestige of proof that the duke knew anything about his mistress's doings, he naturally resigned his post and his inamorata. Never- theless Mrs. Clarke was cute enough to get ^7000 down and an annuity of .400 a year settled upon her in exchange for his Royal Highness's love letters, which she had threatened to publish, on condition SOHO : ITS STREETS AND REMINISCENCES. 233 that she left the country and never returned to it. She died at Boulogne in 1852. The most notable thoroughfare of Soho is Gerard Street. Until Shaftesbury Avenue played such havoc with the old neighbourhood and let in the light of modernity, Gerard Street still wore an air of respect- able if decayed dignity, quite different to the frowsy squalor of Wardour and Greek Streets, and the faint echoes of the feet of the illustrious dead who had once inhabited it still seemed to linger in its drowsy atmosphere. At No. 43, which is the veritable house, in a room on the ground floor, "glorious" John Dry- den wrote some of his best plays and later poems. Can we not fancy his plump figure, clad in a well- fitting suit of black, his fresh-coloured face, shaded by his own wavy, grey hair, issuing from that pedimented doorway for his daily visit to Wills', and returning in the small hours of the morning not quite so steady of step or precise of mien as when he departed ? On a May day, in the year 1700, the great poet here passed away. His remains were escorted to West- minster Abbey by a procession on foot, on horse and in carriages, headed by a band of music. Lord Mohun, whom we shall meet in the next chapter, lived in a house which, after being partly con- sumed by fire, was pulled down to build the Pelican Club. And after him an equally notorious roue, Lord Lyttleton, of ghost-story fame a story which has been told too often for me to venture upon its repeti- tion made it his abode. Early in the nineteenth 234 STREETS OF LONDON. century Charles Kemble resided there ; and it was from that house that, his daughter Fanny issued on the memorable night when she made her dtbut as Juliet at Covent Garden, created a furore, and saved her father from bankruptcy. Edmund Burke resided in Gerard Street, and "Rainy Day" Smith, 1 in his Recollections, tells us that he had often watched the great orator in his drawing-room, after his return from the Commons, dictating to an amanuensis during the greater part of the night. And to turn from fact to fiction, do you not remember that Mr. Jaggers of Great Expectations lived in Gerrard Street, and there entertained Pip at dinner ? Close by, at the junction of Compton with Greek Street, stood the famous Turk's Head Tavern, at which, in 1763, Johnson first started The Club after Garrick's death, in 1779, known as the Literary Club which included amongst its members Burke, Fox, Reynolds, Sheridan, Lord Spencer. Goldsmith and other celebrated men of the time. Its mem- bers were at first strictly limited to nine, a number soon afterwards extended to thirty. It met at the Turk's Head until 1783, when in consequence of the landlord's death it was removed to St. James's Street. Passing through what is left of that once unsavoury emporium, Newport Market, and turning into Cran- bourne Street, which was only a narrow alley sixty years ago, we find ourselves in Leicester Square. 1 So nicknamed from a work he wrote called A Book for a Rainy Day. CHAPTER XIII. LEICESTER SQUARE AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS. EVERY one knows the Leicester Square of to-day, with its trim garden and statues, and swarms of dirty loafers and ragged Arabs, its shops and sale-rooms, its two huge theatres, glittering like fairy palaces through the foggy night air ; its grimy foreigners, its flaunting vice, its pushing crowds and Babel of many tongues. Let me put beside this bustling picture another of Leicester Fields in the days of Shake- speare. A wild, desolate waste, as much in the country as Hampstead Heath is now, an expanse of grass, bush and bramble ; there is the old church of St. Martin's not the classic building of to-day standing literally in the Fields, its western front opening on a muddy lane fenced in by hedges and broken banks, on the other side of which is a line of low buildings, the King's Mews, the present site of Trafalgar Square ; to the west the sails of a windmill move lazily in the breeze ; to the south clusters the little village of Char- ing, backed by the fretted towers of Westminster ; the great mansions of the nobility, marshaled along the Strand on either side, conceal " the silver winding (235) 236 STREETS OF LONDON. Thames," save where they divide ; but to the north all is open country. Here in 1632 the Earl of Leicester, Algernon Sid- ney's father, built a mansion upon a piece of ground then known as Swan's Close, surrounded it with exten- sive gardens, and gave his name to the district. Soon other houses were erected in the vicinity, and a square was formed, the centre of which was after a while laid out with grass plots and paths, and railed in. The readers of Esmond will be reminded of that wonder- fully graphic scene, the duel between Mohun and Lord Castlewood, an incident that was suggested, no doubt, by an historical encounter as bloody as the fictitious, in which Mohun, one of the greatest scoundrels of his time, was also a principal. Soon after midnight, on the 2Qth of October, 1698, when most of the inhabitants had retired to rest, and the watchman was slumbering in his box, a sudden glare reddened the moonlight, a confusion of voices agitated the silence, and from the direction of St. Martin's Lane, six sedan chairs, illumined by the smoky light of as many torches, were borne towards the Fields. A company of roisterers, all men of note, the Earl of Warwick, Lord Mohun and Mr. Coote, an Irish gentleman, on one side, and Captains James and France and Mr. Dockwra on the other, who had been drinking together at the Greyhound in the Strand, and having quarrelled over their cups, were coming thither to settle their differences at the point of the rapier. Finding the enclosure locked, they mounted LEICESTER SQUARE AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS. 237 upon the roofs of the sedans and leaped over the rail- ings. Eager for the fray, the six coats and waistcoats were soon cast off and six blades were flashing like lightning in the moonlight. After a while there was a sharp cry followed by another, Coote and France were pinked by their noble opponents. The fight ceased ; the wounded men were raised, but the chair- men, who had been lounging against the railings, refused to have them put into the sedans, as the blood would spoil the silk linings. " A hundred pounds if you will take them to the nearest surgeon," cried the earl. The bribe was more persuasive than humanity, and they were conveyed to a bagnio close by. Coote died almost immediately, Captain France soon after- wards. -Warwick and Mohun were tried by their peers at Westminster for murder, but both were acquitted. Such scenes were common enough in Leicester Fields, and indeed all kinds of violence, and its in- habitants were so accustomed to cries of " murder " that they paid no more heed to them than did the Charleys snoring in their boxes ; so duellists and footpads, with which the place was infested, were seldom interrupted in their work. References to Leicester House will be found in the pages of Pepys and Evelyn. It was there that the latter, after dining with Lady Sunderland, witnessed the extraordinary feats of Richardson the fire-eater (8th Oct., 1672), who " devoured brimstone on hot coals, and melted glass and roasted an oyster in its shell on a red-hot coal placed upon his tongue and blown 238 STREETS OF LONDON. by a bellows ; drank melted pitch, wax and sulphur, and performed divers other prodigious feats ". After the death of the earl, in 1677, the mansion fell into other hands ; it was for a time the residence of the German ambassador, and afterwards of Colbert, the envoy of Louis XIV. Prince Eugene, the hero of Cremona and Turin, when he came to London to plead against the Peace of Utrecht, in 1712, took up his abode at Leicester House. It is curious to contrast the different estimate of the great General given by Tory Swift, who was of course in favour of peace, with that of Whig Steele, who advocated the con- tinuance of the war. " He is plaguy yellow, and literally ugly besides," writes the dean. " He who beholds him will easily expect from him anything that is to be imagined or executed by the wit or force of man," writes Isaac Bickerstaff. In 1718 the Prince of Wales, having been kicked out of St. James's by his amiable father, George I., for rebellious conduct, purchased Leicester House and re- sided there until his accession to the throne. And here butcher Cumberland, his son, was born. It has been the tradition of the Hanoverian sovereigns that the de facto and the infuturo representative of the dynasty could never get on together, and when Frederick, Prince of Wales was expelled from St. James's, as his father had been before him, and for a similar offence, he also took up his abode in Leicester House. Mother and father both hated Frederick, and the young man returned the compliment with equal LEICESTER SQUARE AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS. 239 ardour. " My eldest born," said the queen, "is the greatest ass, the greatest liar, the greatest canaille and the greatest beast in the whole world, and I wish he was out of it." " Fred," however, though a most contemptible creature, a common cheat, was much more popular than his dapper, lobster-eyed father ; he frequented all places of public resort, would talk with the humblest people, and even sit down at their tables ; he was to be seen among the Norwood Gipsies, at Hockley in the Hole, at Bartholomew Fair, as well as at Ranelagh, the opera, the masquerades and ridottos. Yet he surrounded himself with quite an intel- lectual coterie, to which all the clever men of the Tory party were welcomed he was Tory because the king was Whig, as the Prince Regent was a Whig because his father was a Tory ; it was always the way with the Guelphs. Walpole, in a letter to Mann (nth March, 1750), writes : " The Middlesex election is carried on against the court ; the prince, in a green frock (and I won't swear but in a Scotch plaid waistcoat), sat under the park wall in his chair, and hallooed the rioters on to Brentford. The Jacobites are so trans- ported that they are opening subscriptions for all boroughs that shall be vacant." It was the time of the deadly feud between Handel and Bunoncini, and all the town took sides, the Duchess of Marlborough spent 12,000 to ruin the composer of The Messiah at the King's Theatre. 240 STREETS OF LONDON. The princesses espoused the cause of the Italian, but Fred was " on the side of the angels ". He had a great taste for music himself, and gave musical evenings at Leicester House, where he entertained his guests by scraping upon his 'cello, while his wife accompanied him upon a spinet. Of course everybody went into raptures before his face and ridiculed him behind his back. And there were all kinds of splendid enter- tainments which quite eclipsed the bourgeois court at St. James's Palace. On the 2Oth of March, 1751, Leicester House was draped with black for the death of its owner. When the news was carried to St. James's, his royal father was playing at cards with one of his fraus. He turned pale and whispered to her, " He is dead," and then continued the game as if nothing had happened. I will quote one of the numerous epitaphs written upon the Prince to show the estimation in which the House of Hanover was held by all the nation only excepting the bigoted Whigs : Here lies Fred, Who was alive and is dead ! Had it been his father I had much rather ; Had it been his brother Much better than another ; Had it been his sister No one would have missed her ; Had it been the whole generation, Still better for the nation ; But since it was Fred, Who was alive and is dead There is no more to be said. LEICESTER SQUARE AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS. 241 George III. was born in Leicester House and passed all his youth there under the tutelage of his mother and her cher ami, Lord Bute, and was pro- claimed king in front of it. At the death of the princess, 1766, who, though hard, domineering and narrow-minded, had had between her husband, father- in-law and "the Boot," 1 a sorry life, the mansion fell into other hands, and was pulled down in 1790. The site of it is indicated by Leicester Place ; Lisle Street was run through the grounds'. Savile House, which stood on the western side of Leicester House, was built about the same time as its neighbour. In 1698 Peter the Great lodged there; it was afterwards annexed to the royal residence. In the Gordon riots it was gutted and half-burned because its owner, Sir George Savile, had brought the Catholic Bill into Parliament. When rebuilt Savile House was opened as a museum ; and then as the " Lin wood Gallery," a famous exhibition of needlework, which was to country cousins what Madame Tussaud's is now. Here were to be seen sixty copies of some of the finest pictures in Europe, executed by the needle. After the exhibition was sold off in 1844, all kinds of shows, including Madame Wharton's notorious Poses Plastiques, occupied the premises, until the fire of 1865 demolished them. The establishments of Messrs. Bickers & Bush and of Messrs. Stagg & Mantle and the Empire Theatre now cover the site. When Sir James Thornhill became reconciled to 1 The nickname of the obnoxious Marquis of Bute. 16 242 STREETS OF LONDON. William Hogarth, after that young man's elopement with the knight's daughter, he set up the couple in Leicester Fields ; a tablet on a modern red brick facade marks the site of the house, the last remnant of which disappeared in 1870, wherein the immortal " Mariage a la Mode," " The Rake's Progress " and other famous works were conceived and painted. This was Hogarth's home from 1733 until his death in 1764. There is nothing anecdotical or romantic in the life of the burly little artist, \vith the exception of that run- away match with pretty Jane Thornhill ; with all his great genius Hogarth was a bourgeois, body and soul ; he mixed little in artistic society, or any other ; he seldom wandered beyond the little London of his day, wherein he found all the materials for his pictorial Comedie Humainc ; he lived only in his pictures. Of quite another order was the famous painter, who, little more than three years before the death of the incomparable satirist, came to live at Xo. 47, on the opposite side of the square. In Messrs. Puttick & Simpson's auction rooms much yet remains of Sir Joshua Reynolds' old house the sale-room was his studio ; the broad staircase, likewise is, I believe, the original one. What a procession of ghosts one might imagine gliding up those dusty stair:,, and pass- ing into the whilom studio; ghosts of the celebrated people, the lords and ladies, statesmen, literati, artistes, actors, notorieties who have sat there and upon whose " counterfeit presentments," given us by the hand of the great master, the world has been gazing admiringly LEICESTER SQUARE AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS. 243 through so many generations, and will continue to gaze until the canvasses have perished ; to mention only pretty Angelica Kaufman, stately Siddons, pro- vokingly saucy Abington, demure Fanny Burney. And then those symposia 1 at which yet more illustrious sitters assisted Johnson, Garrick, Goldsmith, Burke, Boswell ; should we ever know them so familiarly as we do had not that Promethean pencil given their forms and features immortality? Do we know the face of our own father better than the ponderous dogmatic visage of the lexicographer? Does not Garrick still fascinate us with those wondrous eyes of his ? and is not the first of the Lady Teazles as vivid to us as Ellen Terry ? They have all, and hundreds more of those days, foregathered within these walls, and though their bodies have long since fallen into dust and ashes, yet, thanks to Sir Joshua, they will 1 These little dinners, \vhich were served precisely at five, and no person was ever waited for, were not, to use the phraseology of the age, " elegant repasts " ; there was a great deal of the freedom of bohemia about them, though the word was not coined, and the race not born just then. Prepared for seven or eight, the table had often to accommodate fifteen or sixteen ; seats were sometimes short knives, forks, plates and glasses often ; the attendance was con- fusion, and the cookery not blameless. Beauclerc once suggested that a dish of peas should be sent to Hammersmith, because that was the way to Turnham Green. And the host sat quite calm, leaving every one at liberty to scramble for himself, and call for what he wanted. It was not the crockery, the food, the drink that constituted the charm of those dinners, but the brilliant people who sat around the board, and the brilliant talk of poets, physicians, lawyers, divines, historians, actors, peers, members of parliament, artists, musicians, scientists and dilettanti meeting on a ground of hearty ease, good- humour and sociability. 244 STREETS OF LONDON. still be, in their habits as they lived, the cherished companions of unborn generations as they are of our own, and have been of our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers. In our homage to these Oracles of Art, however, \ve must not overlook a great scientist, to whom our poor frail bodies owe a deep debt of gratitude. John Hunter's house and anatomical museum stood upon the site of the Alhambra. Here in the closing years of the last century the celebrated surgeon held on Sunday evenings his receptions, to which all the medical profession was invited. The greatest name of all those associated with Leicester Fields, however, is that of Sir Isaac Newton, whose battered old house in St. Martin's Street, on the south side of the square, is marked by a plate. But the heyday of his life was past and he was an old man when he came to live here, in 1710, and the observa- tory, which tradition says was his, there is reason to believe was erected after his death by a Frenchman. Few are the recollections associated with the great philosopher's fifteen years' tenancy, but somewhere in the sixties of the last century Dr. Burney, the his- torian of music, took up his abode there, and, " few nobles," says Macaulay, "could assemble in the most stately mansions of Grosvenor Square or St. James's Square a society so various and so brilliant as was sometimes to be found in Dr. Burney 's cabin". Hither came the greatest Italian singers of the day Paccheo- rotti, Agujari, Gabrielli all ready to display their LEICESTER SQUARE AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS. 245 talents for the delight of his guests. One evening it was all lords, including the Russian ambassador, the gigantic Count Orloff, one of the lovers of the Empress Elizabeth ; on another actors and literati Colman, Barry, Harris, Barretti, Hawkesvvorth ; Garrick came often and played with the children, now raving like a maniac, now imitating an auctioneer, a chimney- sweep, an old woman, to their huge delight All the sensations of the season, African travellers, Indian savages, anything in the shape of a lion, were to be found at Dr. Burney's evenings. It was in this house that demure Miss Fanny Burney secretly wrote her Evelina, about which everybody raved, including Aristarchus Johnson, before they knew the author ; her second novel, Cecilia, was also brought into the world in one of its rooms. She tells you all about these things in her delightful Memoirs. Who could suppose, to look at that tumble-down, faded old house, that it was the resort of nearly all the celebrities of the second half of the eighteenth century ? But there is a dark side to Leicester Square reminis- cences which has yet to be touched upon. In the old gambling days it was notorious for its "hells". Let me put back the clock a hundred years or more and try to call up a picture of these dens of infamy. The outer door of a sinister-looking house stands open, but there is an inner one closely guarded by a human Cerberus, who jealously surveys every arrival through a wicket, lest among the flies who are desirous to enter the spider's web there should be an inimical 246 STREETS OF LONDON. bluebottle. Having satisfied the scrutiny of the door- keeper, the portal is unbarred, we enter a dark passage and thence into a large, low-ceiled, dingy apartment; the atmosphere is close and fetid with human exhalations, no ventilation being admitted from year's end to year's end. The smoke-blackened ceiling, the dark-panelled walls are all in deepest shadow ; the light of the gut- tering tallow candles, which the players snuff with their fingers, such as it is, being concentrated on the green tables. To those not infected by the vice the pictures that may still be seen in the great gaming establishments of the Continent, in the midst of blazing light and every adjunct of luxury, are ghastly enough ; but this dimness and squalor, the yellow, flickering flare of the smoky dips wavering over the eager, cadaverous faces render the tableau yet more awful. Every stage and nearly every grade of manhood is represented. There is the youn'g fellow who has just come into a fortune, every farthing of which he has lost this night. He cannot quite realise yet all the horror of it, but sits blank, white, staring, benumbed, paralysed. Most probably this time to-morrow he will be em- bedded in the Thames' mud ; and there is an old man, blear-eyed and toothless, clutching the dice-box with trembling fingers, chuckling with delight when he claws up the gold the croupier pushes towards him ; watching him with fiendish envy is a grizzled-haired man still in the prime of life, who has just staked and lost his last guinea, his livid features dank with sweat, his eyes bloodshot and glaring with incipient madness ; LEICESTER SQUARE AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS. 247 a few hours hence the old man will be found dead in the street, robbed of all his winnings. But even here all is not lurid, there are neutral tints : placid, sphinx- like men, quite imperturbable through good and bad luck ; there are winners and losers that can still afford to treat the chances with indifference, though a time may come when they also will be numbered with the Volpones and the Ugolinos. 1 At last the croupiers, utterly overwhelmed by exhaustion, close the bank. Now out into the cold light of the morning stream forth the ghoulish crew, shivering at the touch of the crisp air, and blinking 1 Gambling was no hole-and-corner vice in the eighteenth century ; gaming-houses were as public and frankly avowed as theatres and taverns. In 1770 the Moorish ambassador kept a common gaming- table at his house in the Strand ; in Golden Square the ambassador from Bavaria, and in Suffolk Street, Haymarket, the representative of Hesse Darmstadt turned their establishments to the same use. The privileges of these ministers safeguarded them from the law. Hannah More relates in one of her letters that at the opening of the Savoir Vivre, in St. James's Street, 60,000 were lost in one night. Young men of fashion sometimes lost 15,000 to ,20,000 at a sitting. There is a story told of a young nobleman, who, after losing 11,000, won it back at a single hand at Hazard, upon which he exclaimed with an oath : " Now, if I had been playing deep, I might have won millions ! " Here is a good story from Horace Walpole : " Within the week (1780) there has been a cast at Hazard at the Cocoa Tree, the difference of which amounted to one hundred and four-score thousand pounds. Mr. O'Brien, an Irish gamester, had won 100,000 of young Harvey of Chigwell, just started from a midshipman into an estate by his elder brother's death. O'Brien said, ' You can never pay me '. ' I can,' said the youth, ' my estate will sell for the debts.' ' No,' said O'Brien, ' I will win 10,000, and you shall throw for the odd 90,000.' They did, and Harvey won." More anecdotes of this terrible mania will be found in chapters xx. and xxi. 248 STREETS OF LONDON. like surprised owls at the first gleam of sunshine ; the milkmaids, going their rounds, cast terrified glances upon them, for they look more like spectres who have overstayed their appointed time and are hurrying back to the graveyards than living beings. And now we must retrace our steps to Temple Bar, and thence continue our course westward, until we arrive at the end of our pilgrimage. CHAPTER XIV. TEMPLE BAR THE STRAND : ITS HISTORY, MANSIONS, CHURCHES AND STORIES. TEMPLE BAR is now but a memory of the past ; a line as imaginary as the equator. But in olden times it was a very real boundary between city and court, between the privileges of London and " the liberties " of Westminster. When the sovereign approached in state the gates were closed ; a herald sounded a trumpet ; a second herald knocked ; a parley ensued, which ended in the portals being flung open ; the Lord Mayor then advanced and presented the city's sword to the monarch, who graciously returned it, after which royalty and its attendants were free to pass. Even in the reign of Queen Victoria this cus- tom was religiously preserved, though it was then a ceremony, a survival and nothing more. But when Elizabeth halted at the Bar, on her way to give thanks for the victory over the Spanish armada, it indicated that the city fathers were so jealous of their rights that they would not have them infringed by a hair's-breadth, as they never knew how soon they might be called upon to defend them against the encroachments of the regal power. Everybody, (249) 250 STREETS OF LONDON. however, is not aware that Temple Bar was not a city gate, but belonged to Westminster. Anciently the two cities were divided only by chains and posts, and Edward, afterwards first of that name, punished the London citizens for aiding Simon de Montfort by destroying these barriers. The earliest gate was erected in the reign of Henry VII. ; it was entirely of wood. The funeral procession of his queen, Elizabeth of York, was the first pageant that passed beneath the archway. Then came the coronation procession of Anne Boleyn, of Edward VI., not long afterwards that of Mary Tudor, his sister ; and then of Elizabeth. But all these were inferior in splendour to the entrance of Charles II. Evelyn stood close by and witnessed it. " A triumph of 20,000 horse and foote, brandishing their swords and shout- ing with inexpressible joy ; the wayes strewed with flowers, the bells ringing, the streets hung with tapistry, fountaines running with wine ; the Mayor, Aldermen and all the Companies in their liveries, chaines of gold, and banners ; Lords and Nobles clad in cloth of silver, gold and velvet ; the windows and balconies well set with ladies ; trumpets, music, and myriads of people flocking even so far as from Rochester, so as they were seven hours in passing the city, even from 2 in the afternoon till 9 at night." The gloomy nightmare of Puritanism had been lifted from the soul of London. But, alas ! that so splendid a promise should not have been fulfilled. In 1670 a ne\v stone gateway, designed by Wren, TEMPLE BAR THE STRAND. 251 took the place of the old. Fourteen years later it was surmounted by the ghastly heads of some of the Rye House Plot conspirators, and in the next century it bristled with the heads of the victims of the '45. Walpole says that men used to make a living by lending spy-glasses at a halfpenny a time to people who wished to have a good view of these horrible relics. Few regretted the disappearance of the grim, dingy old gateway, which had long been an anach- ronism ; but could we have anticipated the griffin we might not have been so ready to part with it. The Strand is one of the streets of the world : it is the representative street of London. According to metropolitan boundaries it begins at Temple Bar ; but the atmosphere of the Law Courts is more congenial to the City than to Westminster ; thus I hold that the true Londoner's Strand starts from St. Mary's Church, and that it is only from that point you enter upon that region of theatres, clubs, taverns and famous restaurants, the genial influences of which have per- meated the whole neighbourhood through so many generations. Coming from the east you find your- self in a new phase of London life the moment you pass Somerset House : you have left behind the feverish hurry, the terrible tension, the haggard eager- ness of the Ixions and Sisyphuses of the great Temple of Mammon the city ; the pace is slackened ; men loiter about book and picture shops, their minutes are not so precious ; they lounge at their favourite bars, and sip instead of bolting their drinks ; actors and 252 STREETS OF LONDON. actresses, artists, journalists, men about town stroll and chat and laugh, or gather in knots, and the nobodies linger to observe them. Whatever there is of business is the business of pleasure. The Strand is the pleasantest street promenade in all London ; and the only one of which, perhaps, a Londoner does not sometimes weary. Yet, from the point I have started, it has not one single archi- tectural feature to recommend it ; nay, in its perversity of tall houses, short houses, narrow houses, broad houses, flat houses, and bulgy houses, dingy brick and glaring stucco, grimness and tawdriness, it is a positive offence to an artistic eye, and would not be tolerated in any other land than England. Yet so potent and delightful are its associations, that one not only forgives its faults and shortcomings but almost loves them : to the passe man about town it recalls some of the pleasantest hours of life ; its very air is rejuvenescent ; those old nights at the play, be- fore satiety and the development of the critical faculty robbed us of half the power of enjoyment ; those nights at the club, when " the lions " were still lions to us, and the good stories were not chestnuts, and the wit and repartee were fresh ; those dinners at (let each fill up the blank for himself), when we did not shirk the bottle or the menu. A saunter up and down the Strand recalls these memories, and many others to the old and middle aged ; while to the young for the old order, though it changeth in detail, varieth but little in form the pleasures are in progress. TEMPLE BAR THE STRAND. 253 To the man who may contemplate vast crowds from the same point of view as Xerxes gazed upon his army, and think how soon all will be as if they had never been, the Strand is a weird spectacle when theatre and music hall are pouring forth their thou- sands into the semi-darkness of the night ; a veritable human ant-hill swarms over the pavements ; while along the roadway an endless procession of vehicles, cabs, carriages, omnibuses, packed as densely as the crowd, is moving east and west. Every diversity of London life is interwoven as inextricably as the threads of a many-coloured fabric : the peer and millionaire, looking for their carriages, jostle the coster dodging his way among the horses ; my lady in sables and jewels is pushed aside by a city work girl ; and the club man leisurely strolling towards the Savage or Garrick is nearly overturned by some suburban dweller frantically rushing after a fast-filling bus or to catch a last train. All sorts and conditions of men rub shoulders. But it is yet more remarkable that all these hetero- geneous individualities, as differentiated at all other times as though they were separate orders of creation, have, for a few brief hours, been united in community of thought and feeling, have been absorbed in the same ideas, moved by the same emotions, whether of laughter or of tears, in fine, have been one common humanity. But now once more they are sundered as the poles : isolated atoms, each struggling for himself and his own in the great ocean of life ; some return 254 STREETS OF LONDON. to their garrets and crust, heavy with thoughts of the morrow, which the illusions of the stage have faded for a brief while ; suburban snobbery retires to its jerry-built villa ; Crcesus to his luxurious mansion or club ; and so on through all the grades and varieties of grades of the social scale. Night after night the Strand witnesses the same scene : this rush of the mighty river of London life, sudden, overwhelming as a torrent, then fast flowing away until it is lost in the midnight. A brief lull, with only a fitful ripple now and again passing over the silent stones ; but as the strokes of the clock increase, the ripples come faster and faster with a murmurous sound of the approach- ing flood ; then swell into waves and break into cross currents, growing, and swirling and roaring, ebbing and flowing until another day is ended. And each day some drops sink into the quicksands and are seen no more, but fresh fountains ever growing in volume, pour their streams into the tide and few miss the lost waters. Mr. Loftie, in his Memorials of the Savoy, tells us that in the tenth century much of the Strand now covered by buildings was non-existent ; that the Thames extended up to what is now Covent Garden, and even to Lincoln's Inn at high water, and was fed by streams from the northern hills that ran across the roadway. Little by little the foreshore was reclaimed and fell to the crown. In the reign of Edward III. three bridges were thrown across the Strand : two were known as Ivy and Strand Bridges ; the name TEMPLE BAR THE STRAND. 255 of the third has not come down to us, but its remains were discovered near St. Clement Danes at the be- ginning of this century, buried deep in the soil. In 1315 a petition was presented to Edward 1 1., in which it was set forth that the road from Temple Bar to Westminster was so overgrown with thickets and bushes, and in such bad condition, that it was ruinous to the feet both of horses and men. Imagine such a picture of the Strand, such a picture of desolation : the scrubby thickets and bushes, the rushing streams, the swampy, rutty ground, the broad, silent river, the almost houseless waste, across which a solitary horse- man gingerly picks his way, or a few wayfarers plod, now the dwelling-place of thousands, traversed by countless human footsteps, and ringing with a cease- less din and clatter of wheels and horses' hoofs day and night. Even in the reign of Henry VIII., although the great nobles were building rapidly on both sides of the road, the Strand was still described as full of pits and sloughs and very noisome. Yet long before the close of the sixteenth century it must have been a stately thoroughfare, with its double line of impos- ing mansions, within courtyards or encompassed by pleasant gardens sloping down to the silver, winding Thames, with a vista of green meadows and the Surrey hills, while retinues of splendidly liveried lacqueys, passing in and out, would have imparted a colour and picturesqueness to the scene scarcely realizable in this dull, grey age. But, as I have 256 STREETS OF LONDON. previously noted, in consequence of the badness of the roads, the Thames was the great highway, and each house had its water-gate and boats and sumptuous barges. Less than a century ago the Strand between Temple Bar and the Church of St. Clement Danes was divided by a narro\v thoroughfare of ancient, overhanging houses called Butcher's Row, which much resembled Holywell Street as it was five and twenty years ago ; on the north side of it was a maze of courts and alleys, a refuge of vice and misery, that was not demolished until the ground was cleared for the new Law Courts. It is nearly a thousand years since the first St. Clement Danes was built, a little to the north of the present church, marking the spot where, according to legend, lie the bodies of Harold Harefoot, the Danish king, and some of his followers. The St. Clement Danes of to-day is by Wren, and dates back to 1682. It is associated with memories of Dr. Johnson, who worshipped here in the pew now marked by a brass tablet ; of poor Otway and Lee, the dramatists, both of whom perished so miserably and sleep their last sleep in the churchyard, not far from Bishop Berkeley, who anticipated the transcendental philo- sophy. Essex Street was built just two years later than Wren's Church, over the ruins of that great mansion which had been inhabited in turns by the Norfolk, who died in the cause of Mary Stuart, by Elizabeth's favourite Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and by her other TEMPLE BAR THE STRAND. 257 less fortunate lover, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who gave his name to the house, and about whose brief career so much romance has gathered. Here the gentle Spencer was a frequent visitor. In his Prothalamion, after describing the Temple, he says : Next whereunto there stands a stately place Whereof I gayned giftes and goodly grace Of that great lord which therein wont to dwell. The last of Essex House did not disappear until the middle of the eighteenth century. THE EARL OF ESSEX, DEVEREUX COURT. In Devereux Court we have another memento of the hot-headed lord. There also stood the Grecian Coffee-house, celebrated in The Spectator as a chief resort of the wits of Queen Anne's days. Grim, ugly Essex Street has interesting memories. One of its old houses sheltered for a while the devoted Flora Macdonald, and Charles Edward was concealed 17 258 STREETS OF LONDON. there during his brief visit to London in 1750. Dr. Johnson made the Essex Head, little altered interiorally since his time, the home of one of his many clubs. Mil ford Lane the ford by the mill (a mill stood there in the time of James I.) divided the boundaries of Essex and Arundel Houses. The latter was the residence of the Howards, Earls of Arundel and Dukes of Norfolk. The Princess Elizabeth was for some time an inmate of Arundel House, then in possession of Admiral Lord Seymour, who had married the widow of the late king, Catherine Parr ; and it was there my lord carried on his schemes against the person of the princess, which might have succeeded had not the headsman interposed in the nick of time. Probably she never re-entered the house until she was summoned,, only a fortnight before her own death, to the death- bed of the countess of Nottingham, who was born a Howard, to hear the wretched woman confess that she had withheld the ring, the queen's pledge of pardon, which Essex, just before his execution, had entrusted her with to deliver to his royal mistress. " God may forgive you, but I never can ! " cried the heart-broken Elizabeth. And from that hour she laid in no bed nor took any sustenance. Old Parr was a guest in Arundel House when he came to London from his native Shropshire, to die of good living at the age of 152 (?). It was one of these Earls of Arundel that here housed the famous marbles. Arundel, Howard, Surrey and TEMPLE BAR THE STRAND. 259 Norfolk Streets now cover the ground of the great historic mansion. Congreve, the dramatist, passed his last years in Surrey Street. Will Mountford and his clever wife, of whose acting Gibber has left us so vivid a picture in The Apology^ lived in Norfolk Street, and Mrs. Bracegirdle and the great tragedienne Mrs. Barry in Howard Street. On the 9th December, 1692, Norfolk Street was the scene of a tragedy, the counterpart of which was acted not long since in Maiden Lane. No actress was ever more pestered by importunate admirers than was Anne Bracegirdle. 1 One of the most persistent of these suitors was Captain Richard Hill, who, finding that persua- sions were useless, conspired with another villain, Lord Mohun, 2 to achieve his conquest by force. Hearing that his proposed victim was to sup with a friend in Drury Lane, he hired a carriage and six ruffians to carry her off that night. Just as she was passing Craven House they rushed upon her, but, than ks to the courage of her brother and a friend and her shrieks, which brought a crowd to her rescue, the attempt was baffled. Then my lord and the captain insisted on escorting her home. For some 1 Dryden's epilogue to King Arthur, spoken by this actress, begins : I've had to-day a dozen billets doux From fops and wits and cits and Bow-street beaux ; Some from Whitehall, but from the Temple more, A Covent Garden porter brought me four. She then proceeds to read the supposed contents of some of them. 2 For more about Lord Mohun see the chapter on " Leicester Square"; for Mountford and Mrs. Bracegirdle, "Clare Market". 260 STREETS OF LONDON. reason, probably because they played lovers together upon the stage, Hill chose to suspect, though without the least foundation, that Mountford enjoyed the lady's favour, and all the way along uttered the most violent threats against him. As soon as Mrs. Bracegirdle reached her lodgings she sent a messenger round to Mrs. Mountford to warn her of her husband's danger. In the meantime the two ruffians, having procured a bottle of wine from a neighbouring tavern, walked up and down before the house with their swords drawn, and after some time Mountford was seen coming up the street. He had heard of what had passed, and came to ask an explanation of Hill's language and behaviour. Lord Mohun embraced him, and Mountford said that he hoped his lordship would not assist Captain Hill in his designs against Mrs. Bracegirdle. Upon which Hill struck the actor in the face, and before Mount- ford could draw his sword ran him through the body. He expired on the next morning. He was only thirty- three. The assassin fled the country, and there is no further record of him. Mohun was tried by his peers and acquitted to do more villainy. Mrs. Bracegirdle resided in the same house until her death at the age of eighty-five. A curious story is told by Gibber in connection with this lady, which shows the respect that could be won by chastity even in that dissolute age. One day, while sitting over their wine, my Lords Dorset, Devonshire, Halifax and other gentle- men were eulogising her virtue, which had withstood all their importunities, when Halifax remarked that TEMPLE BAR THE STRAND. 261 they might show their appreciation in a better form than words, and put down 200 guineas. Six hundred more were quickly added. And then my lords pro- ceeded in a body to Howard Street and laid their offering at the feet of the fair actress. Walpole relates that my Lord Burlington sent her a love-letter and a present of splendid china. " You have made a mis- take," said the lady to the servant who brought them ; " the letter is indeed for me, but the china must be for your lady, the countess ; take it to her at once." What a transformation from the stately dignity of the House of the Howards, and even the quiet seclusion which formerly marked the streets that took its place, to the feverish bustle of the gigantic news emporium of Smith & Son. It is these wonderful contrasts, the unbroken continuity, the flawless links that con- nect the past with the present by the preservation of ancient names and landmarks, that render London so uniquely interesting, so superior to Paris, where every fresh revolution makes a tabula rasa of tradition. Over this same ground that now rattles with the per- petual din of the newspaper carts, carrying their count- less reams of newspapers night and day for distribution through the length and breadth of the land, have paced Elizabeth " in virgin meditation fancy free," the dark plotter Seymour, injured Catherine Parr, and how many more illustrious ones whose, doings are chronicled for all time. Nay, close at hand, in Strand Lane, is a memento of times to which those are but yesterday ; for there in its entirety, still fed by the pellucid waters 262 STREETS OF LONDON. of the " Holy Well," 1 is a Roman bath, in which men who gazed upon the face of Augustus or Nero, or may have talked with Pontius Pilate about the crucifixion of " the King of the Jews," have bathed. Where the new Church of St. Mary-le-Strand now stands the ancient church occupied a portion of the site of Somerset House rose the famous Maypole, which at the Rebellion was destroyed by those bitter kill-joys, the Puritans. It was 100 feet high. But after the Restoration another, thirty-four feet longer, was raised in the same place, with much ceremony and drum and pipes and tabours and morris dancing, the Duke of York superintending its erection by twelve of his sailors. It was paid for by the subscriptions of the inhabitants round about, at the head of whom was one John Clarges, a farrier in the Savoy, whose daughter, Anne, became the wife of General Monk, and so Duchess of Albemarle ; she was a coarse, ill-looking woman who never rose above her origin. Newcastle Street was then known as Maypole Alley. This Puritan's horror was finally taken down early in the next century, as it interfered with the new church. At the Maypole, in 1634, four hackney coaches plied for hire ; this was the earliest coach-stand in the metropolis. Much history gathered about Old Somerset House, built by that rapacious tyrant, Protector Somerset, out of the spoils of houses, Inns of Court, and the ancient Church of St. Mary. He never inhabited it himself, 1 It is beneath a book sliop in Holywell Street. The water is still of the parest, and about ten tons daily pass through the bath. TEMPLE BAR THE STRAND. 263 for ere it was completed he was sent to the Tower for high treason. But Elizabeth, Anne of Denmark, Henrietta Maria it was here the disputes raged over her papist household and Catherine of Braganza in turns held their court within its walls. Evelyn describes two notable funeral processions that he saw start from Somerset House. On 6th March, 1652, that of Ireton, Cromwell's son-in-law and the most implacable of his lieutenants ; the body in a chariot canopied with black velvet and drawn by six horses, attended by four heralds and regiments of soldiers, and followed by my Lord Protector, parliament men and officers. Less than seven years afterwards (22nd October, 1658) he witnessed the obsequies of a far mightier man. Though he died at Whitehall, it was in Somerset House that the body of Oliver Cromwell lay in state, and was carried thence on a velvet bed, lying in effigy in royal robes with crown and sceptre and globe, like a king, and drawn by six horses to the abbey. And there were imperial banners, a horse in housings covered with gold, a knight of honour, armed cap-a-pie, guards, soldiers, and innumerable mourners following. "It was," adds Evelyn, " the joyfullest funeral I ever saw, for there were none that cried but dogs, which the soldiers hooted away with a barbarous noise, drinking and taking tobacco in the streets as they went." The old house was pulled down in 1776, and the chef d'ceuvre of Sir William Chambers took its place. The mansion of the Earls of Worcester, which was called Beaufort House, is kept in remembrance by 264 STREETS OF LONDON. Beaufort Buildings. And the old house of the Cecils, formerly marked by Salisbury and Cecil Street, is covered by the huge hotel, which has swallowed up the last-named thoroughfare, the date of which was marked by a stone, as seen in the illustration above. It was from lodgings in Cecil Street that, hungry and almost shoeless, on a rainy, miserable winter's night, STREET TABLET, CECIL STREET, STRAND. the poor stroller, Edmund Kean, started to make his first appearance at Drury Lane as Shylock. " The pit rose at me ! " he cried, when he returned home after the performance, almost delirious with his triumph. " You shall ride in your carriage, Mary ; you shall go to Eton, Charles." Both prophecies were fulfilled to the letter. TEMPLE BAR THE STRAND. 265 Most famous among Strand palaces was that erected by Peter, Earl of Savoy, the uncle of Henry III., in 1245. John, the French king, taken prisoner at Poitiers, was lodged in the Savoy. Chaucer lived there, and drew an annuity from the revenues of the manor. ^Stow tells us that " in 1381 the rebels of Kent and Essex [this was the Wat Tyler and Jack Straw rebellion] burnt this house, unto the which there was none in the realm to be compared in beauty and stateliness. They set fire on it round about, and made proclamation that none, on pain to lose his head, should convert to his own use anything that there was, but that they should break such plate and vessels of gold and silver as was found in that house, which was in great plenty, into small pieces, and throw the same into the river Thames. Precious stones they should bruise in mortars, that the same might be of no use, and so it was done by them. One of their companions they burnt in the fire be- cause he minded to have reserved one goodly piece of plate." (Verily a mediaeval mob was more virtuous and disinterested than a modern would be.) " They found there certain barrels of gunpowder, which they thought had been gold, or silver, and, throwing them into the fire, more suddenly than they thought, the hall was blown up, the house destroyed, and them- selves very hardly escaped away. " The house being thus defaced, and almost over- thrown by these rebels for the malice they bore John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, of latter time came to the king's hands, and was again raised and beautifully 266 STREETS OF LONDON. built for an hospital of St. John the Baptist, by King Henry VII., about the year 1509, for the which hos- pital, retaining still the old name of Savoy, he purchased lands to be employed upon the relieving of a hundred poor people." This was no other than an ancient casual ward, where the said hundred were received nightly, and the master and chaplain were obliged to take the first who came and not to choose " the most clean ". The charity was suppressed by Edward VI., but re- vived by Mary. It soon afterwards, however, fell into decay ; the hospital was let out in rooms to fashionable people and the revenues malappropriated. In Queen Anne's time its inhabitants were utterly disreputable and no bailiff dared enter it. The chapel is supposed to have been built in the reign of Henry VII. The interior was burned in 1860 ; and was restored in accordance with the ancient model. After the revo- cation of the Edict of Nantes, William III. allowed many French Huguenots to settle there. In 1755 Strype described Savoy House as "a very ruinous dwelling," and adds that a cooper used a part of it as a storehouse for his hoops, and another part was converted into a prison. The last of the old Savoy was demolished in 1806 to make an approach to the new bridge, now known as Waterloo. The Savoy was as notorious for illegal marriages, before the passing of the Marriage Act of 1755, as the Fleet, and in that year the Rev. Dr. John Wilkin- son, chaplain of the Savoy, and father of the noted TEMPLE BAR THE STRAND. 267 Tate Wilkinson, the actor, was condemned to fourteen years' penal servitude for these practices. The nomenclature of the Strand streets is an un- erring index to their history. Exeter Street indicates that thereabout stood the house of the Exeters. But it was originally known as Burleigh House, the resi- dence of Elizabeth's great minister, who died within its walls. Being a great lover of gardening, he had in this garden the finest collection of plants in the king- dom ! It was one of his sons who was created Earl of Exeter, and so we get the name of two thorough- fares. The house extended over the site of Wellington Street, and thereupon, after its demolition at the end of the seventeenth century, was built the Exeter 'Change. In Strype it is described as containing two walks below stairs, and as many above, with shops on each side for milliners, sempstresses, hosiers. There were upper apartments beside for general purposes, in one of which the body of Gay, the poet, lay previous to its interment in the abbey. During the earlier part of the nineteenth century it was chiefly famous for its menagerie. It bulked over the Strand in a most un- gainly fashion, and was pulled down in 1830 for the new thoroughfare to Waterloo Bridge. The Lyceum Theatre stands upon a portion of the ground of the Cecils. It was originally built in 1765 for the Society Note. Terry's Theatre stands on the site of the notorious " Coal Hole," first opened by John Rhodes, a bass singer, as a sing song for the coal-heavers of the Thames wharves. In 1851 " Lord Chief Baron Nicholson " brought " the Judge and Jury Society " there from the Garrick's Head, now the Opera Hotel, Bow Street, where it was first started. 268 STREETS OF LONDON. of Artists. Here, in 1802, Madame Tussaud first exhibited her waxworks in London. It was first used as a theatre by the burned-out company of Drury Lane in 1809. Such was the volume of water that ran down the declivity, now known as Catherine Street, in olden times, that, as I have before noted, it was found neces- sary to throw a bridge across the roadway, which was called emphatically the Strand Bridge. Steele relates in The Spectator, No. 454, how he landed with " ten sail of Apricock boats " at Strand Bridge. This was in 1712. A little farther west was Ivy Bridge, at which commenced " the Liberties " of Westminster, and just beyond rose the great London palace of the Bishops of Durham. Stow has bequeathed us a sumptuous picture of doings there in 1540, when Henry VIII. held at West- minster one of those splendid jousts for which his reign was famous. It had been formally proclaimed in France, Flanders, Scotland and Spain for all comers that would undertake the challengers of England and continued through six days ; and at this mansion the king, queen and court held feast and open house, on the last day entertaining the Lord Mayor, the aldermen and their wives, knights and burgesses. The pale shadow of gentle Lady Jane Grey falls upon the memories of Durham House, for it was from those portals she was conducted to the Tower for her mock coronation. And the brilliant Raleigh, at the time when neighbour Cecil was spying upon him to TEMPLE BAR THE STRAND. 269 compass his destruction, was amongst its many dwellers. When, in the reign of James I., a portion of Durham House facing the Strand was pulled down, a fashion- able mart, called the New Exchange, frequently re- ferred to by Restoration dramatists, was built on the site. The shops were raised upon a gallery, approached by an outside staircase, beneath which the gallants lounged attendance on their ladies. Here gathered milliners, dressmakers, perfumers, sempstresses, book- sellers, jewellers. It was the Bond Street of its time, and at the back, overlooking the river, with a special water-gate, was a sheltered promenade, shaded by trees, as notorious for amorous assignations as a West- end modiste's is at the present day. 1 Anne Clarges, thereafter Duchess of Albemarle, and her first hus- band, Ratford, sold wash-balls, powder and gloves, and did sempstress work here ; and another duchess, the widow of that rapscallion, Tyrconnel, Viceroy of Ireland under James II., had a stall. She always wore a white mask to conceal her personality, and was known as the White Milliner. Coutts' Bank now stands upon the site of this once famous Vanity Fair. When Durham House fell into ruin, about 1768, the ground was bought by the brothers Adam, who, to celebrate the fraternal arrangement, christened the district the Adelphi. 1 " For close walks the New Exchange," says Alithea to Mrs. Pincknife, in The Country Wife, one of the scenes of which, where Margery eludes her husband's jealous vigilance, takes place there. CHAPTER XV. THE STRAND (continued) THE ADELPHI AND ITS PRECINCTS CHARING CROSS HUNGERFORD MARKET TRAFALGAR SQUARE SCOTLAND YARD. TURNING out of the noise and bustle of the Strand into the quiet precincts of the Adelphi, we breathe an eighteenth-century air ; much as it was when David Garrick and his brother Peter carried on their wine business in Durham Yard, as when the mortal remains of the great actor, whose death Johnson said finely, if hyperbolically, " eclipsed the gaiety of nations," were carried with all pomp and ceremony from his house in Adelphi Terrace to their last resting place in the abbey. The stones of the terrace still seem to echo to the footsteps of Johnson and Garrick and Beauclerk, and Goldsmith and Burke and Rey- nolds, and the very house in which they foregathered, nay, the very rooms, in which " Little Davey " received his guests, are still there. It is the fashion now-a-days to sneer at the eighteenth century and the men thereof, and to depreciate its influence ; but, in London at least, its footsteps have sunk deeper into the soil than those of any other era. (270) THE STRAND (CONTINUED). 271 The seventeenth-century men, with all their superior genius, have left no such clearly cut impress upon their haunts and associations ; we know them only by their pictures and effigies, at least out of their works. But Johnson and his group still live and breathe about Fleet Street, the Strand, Leicester Square, Covent Garden ; the powdered wigs, velvet coats, silk stock- ings and red-heeled shoes are still more vivid to us even than the high stocks, strapped trousers and curled hair of our grandfathers' days. Buckingham Street is as dreary and Villiers Street as commonplace thoroughfares as any about the Strand, though the plates on a couple of houses, bearing the names of Peter the Great and Samuel Pepys, give interest to the former. Yet the locality abounds in reminiscences of the great dead. Here stood York House, sometime the abode of the archbishops ; after- wards of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk ; then of Sir Nicholas Bacon, and later of his illustrious son, Francis, who had a great love for the place. It was at York House that he dwelt during his chancellor- ship, and it was there he was deprived with degrada- tion of the Great Seal, the privileges of which he had so unhappily abused. It is one of the darkest pages in the history of genius. York House was rebuilt by that brilliant and superb favourite of two sovereigns George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the records of whose magnificence read like stories of Haroun al Raschid. His coach was drawn by six horses, an extravagance in which no 272 STREETS OF LONDON. sovereign had as then indulged, and he first brought the sedan chair into fashion, though it had been known in London before his time. He would in his house shake diamonds off his clothes for his guests to pick up. His cloaks were trimmed with great diamond buttons, and he wore diamond hat-bands, cockades and earrings, yoked with knots of pearl. He had twenty-seven suits of clothes, the richest that embroidery, lace, silk, velvet, silver, gold and gems could make ; one of these was a white, uncut velvet, set all over, both suit and cloak, with diamonds valued at fourscore thousand pounds, besides a great feather, stuck all over with diamonds, as were also his sword, girdle, hat and spurs. Bassompierre, the French ambassador, in his Me- moirs, relates how the king took him in his barge to York House, where the duke gave "the most magnifi- cent entertainment I ever saw in my life. The king supped at one table with the queen and me, which was served in complete ballet l at each course with sundry representations changes of scenery, tables and music ; the duke waited on the king at table, the Earl of Car- lisle on the queen, and the Earl of Holland on me. After supper the king and we were led into another room, where the assembly was, and one entered it by a kind of turnstile as in convents without any confusion, where there was a magnificent ballet, in which the duke danced ; and afterwards we set to and danced country dances (contre-danse) till four in the morning ; thence 1 Served by persons in fancy dresses with music and dancing. THE STRAND (CONTINUED). 273 we were shown into vaulted apartments, where there were five different collations." In a letter of the period, published in Disraeli's Curiosities of Litera- ture, also describing this fete, it is stated " that all things came down in clouds," and that the cost of the entertainment was ^5000. Gerbier, the duke's painter, once gave an enter- tainment to the king and queen that cost ^1000. The costumes on these occasions were equally extra- vagant : the gentlemen dressed in crimson or white velvet covered with precious stones, the ladies in white with herons' plumes, jewelled head-dresses and ropes of pearls. Imagine, then, something of the splendour that must have passed beneath Inigo Jones's old water- gate, that now. looks so grim and desolate beneath the shadow of the embankment trees, as though brooding, melancholy, and alone, in its grey, colourless surround- ings, upon the wonders it has witnessed. Contrast the gorgeous state of York House with the present aspect of the streets that have taken its place. What a text for a preacher upon the well-worn " Sic transit". Transitory indeed was the splendour of which the knife of the assassin made so tragical an end. The next notable figure in the annals of York House is that of the great Commonwealth general, Lord Fair- fax, the marriage of whose daughter with the son of the late duke restored the old mansion to the second George Villiers, lavish, extravagant and brilliant as his father, but very much his inferior in dignity, who is so 18 YORK GATE. THE STRAND (CONTINUED). 275 conspicuous a personality in the chronicles of Charles II.'s reign ; here he " played chemist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon " ; painted, rhymed, drank, wrote satires, and squandered his wealth until he was beggared, and died in obscurity and almost actual want. Some time before his death need compelled him to dispose of the historic house and grounds, which were then demolished and laid out in streets. Scarcely less interesting are the associations con- nected with the new departure. Among the inhabi- tants of Buckingham Street were gossip Pepys, and the Czar Peter the Great, who indulged in many an orgie, and consumed many gallons of brandy and cayenne, his favourite tipple, in that shabby house overlooking the Thames. Here also lived the poet Earl of Dorset, one of the most brilliant wits of the Restoration; Harley, Earl of Oxford ; Clarkson Stans- field and Etty, the painters ; while Villiers Street was for a time the abode of Evelyn and of Steele. The Strand, however, even in its palmy days, was not all grand mansions. In the time of Charles I. fish and other stalls were set in front of the noble houses, and increased to such an extent that, in 1630, an edict had to be issued for their clearance. As everybody knows, Charing Cross marks the last resting-place of the body of Edward I.'s beloved queen, Eleanor, previous to her interment in the abbey. The cross erected by the great king cost nearly ,600, an enormous sum for those days ; it was of Caen stone with Purbeck marble steps, and contained 276 STREETS OF LONDON. eight gilt metal figures. The derivation of the name Charing from chere reine, however, is less acceptable than that of cerre-ing, two Anglo-Saxon words which mean "bend" and "meadow," so that it was the meadow at the bend of the river. The brutal bigotry of the Puritans destroyed this beautiful relic of anti- quity. But it was well avenged, for Hugh Peters, the zealot Harrison and others of less note were executed in front of its site. Behind the Cross stood the mansion of the Hunger- ford family. Its destruction by fire is noted by Pepys (April, 1669). It was not rebuilt, but Sir Edward Hungerford obtained permission from the king to establish a market upon the ground. This same Sir Edward was a notorious spendthrift ; he is said to have once spent ^500 upon a wig for a court ball ! No wonder he died a poor knight of Windsor ; but it is wonderful that he attained the age of 115. It was at Old Hungerford Stairs, "in a crazy, tumble- down old house, abutting on the river, and literally overrun with rats," that the boy Dickens had his dole- ful experiences in the blacking warehouse. Whence he wandered about those coal-sheds and mouldering old taverns notably the Fox Under the Hill, which covered the foreshore previous to the formation of the Thames Embankment and for some time afterwards. " Until Old Hungerford Market was pulled down," he wrote, " until Old Hungerford Stairs were destroyed, and the very nature of the ground changed, I never nad the courage to go back to the place where THE STRAND (CONTINUED). 277 my servitude began. I never saw it." Hungerford Market was cleared away in 1862 for the Railway Station. Twelve years later the last of the noble mansions which had adorned the Strand, Northumberland House, built in 1605, on the site of the hospital of Ste. Marie Rouncevalles, was demolished to form the new avenue to the Thames Embankment. Exteriorally it had no architectural beauty to recommend it ; but, with its noble terrace overlooking the river, its magnificent galleries and suites of apartments it contained 150 private rooms with their columns, statuary and pictures by the great masters, its painted ballroom, vestibules and wonderful spiral staircase, it was worthy of the Howards, the Somersets, the Percys who had in turns inhabited it ; and it was an act of vandalism to destroy so interesting an edifice when the avenue could have been formed just as conveniently a little further to the west. Only during the later decades of its existence did Northumberland House command so pleasant a prospect as Trafalgar Square, which was not formed until 1830; and even the pepper-castors of the National Gallery were preferable to the mass of dull, mean buildings that covered the site from the time of Richard II. Here, in the hawking days, the king's falcons were kept in moulting time, this being the royal mews 5 1 and from the reign of Henry VIII. to that of 1 From the Anglo-Saxon word mew, to moult. 278 STREETS OF LONDON. George III. here were the king's chief stables. Hence the origin of the term " mews " as applied to stables. A little further to the east it looked upon the tower of old St. Martin's Church, which dated back to the Xorman kings, the lower part being hidden among a maze of courts and alleys that, from the days of Ben Jonson until well into the present century, was known as "The Holy Land," "Bermudas Straits," "The Caribbee Islands," and " Porridge Island," noted for its cook-shops. Here again we encounter the shadow of the boy Dickens, his little figure clad in a short jacket and corduroy trousers, looking in longingly at the window of that "special pudding shop," hesitating between quality and quantity, for two penn'orth there was not more than one penn'orth at ordinary shops but then it was made with currants. When, in 1721, the present handsome church took the place of the ancient, it was still obscured by these squalid dens of vice and poverty, which were not removed until after the square was formed. And Northumberland House had looked upon some strange scenes as well as strange places. To go no further back than 1678, when the murder of Sir Ed- mund Berrie Godfrey 1 threatened London with riot, if 1 Sir Edmund Berrie Godfrey was the magistrate before whom Titus Gates, first a beneficed clergyman, then a Roman Catholic, lastly a Protestant zealot, laid his information of the existence of a popish plot, which aimed at the subjugation of the kingdom and the massacre of all the Protestants. Godfrey, a few nights afterwards, was enticed from his home by a false message, and four days from then his body was discovered with the neck broken and a sword passed through it THE STRAND (CONTINUED). 279 not revolution. He was buried in St. Martin's Church, and the wildest excitement marked the funeral. Thousands followed the bier of the murdered magis- trate, and a crowd equally dense flowed towards it from the opposite direction. At the Cross the bier was set down, and Titus Gates, standing beside it, delivered a fierce oration, in which he called upon every citizen to avenge "the Protestant martyr". Then went up a tremendous shout, " We will ! Burn all the papists ! " And but for the troops there would have been a terrible massacre of the Romanists. Seven years later Northumberland House beheld an equally turbulent and ferocious crowd surging about the pillory, which had risen opposite it for many generations, pelting, with every missile they could lay hands upon, a creature who looked more like a satyr than a human being, as he stood there with his head thrust through a throttling hole, a helpless victim to the pitiless wrath of those who but a brief time before had looked upon him as a saviour, and cheered him to the echo. He was removed from the pillory to Tyburn, thence scourged through the streets to New- gate, and then sentenced to be imprisoned for life. Even Macaulay says that, terrible as were the sufferings of Titus Gates, they were not equal to his crimes. It was at Charing Cross that the first Punch and on Primrose Hill. The mystery of the murder has never been solved ; whether indeed it was committed by some fanatical papist, or, what is more likely, by Gates himself to confirm a story which was afterwards proved to be a fabrication, will never be known. The name is usually spelled " Edmondbury," but the form here given is the correct one. 28o STREETS OF LONDON. Judy show was set up by an Italian, in 1666, and at once became the rage. Three years afterwards Pepys notes that everything short and thick was nicknamed " Punch ". Of course this puppet play differed greatly from the itinerant show that we are familiar with. Of all that old time only the statue of King Charles one of the very few statues for which a Londoner does not blush remains. A curious history is attached to it. Though cast as early as 1633, it was not put up until after the Civil War broke out. Then the Puritans seized upon it, as they did upon the sign of the Golden Cross hostelry opposite, and ordered both to be destroyed as accursed things. The brazier to whom the statue was handed over was a secret Royalist, and concealed it until the Restoration, but, in conse- quence of a dispute, it was not set upon its pedestal until 1674. Where Drummond's Bank now stands was Locket's Ordinary, a noted resort of the wits and fine gentle- men of the last century. " I go to dinner at Locket's," says Lord Foppington, in Vanbrugh's, The Relapse, " where you are so nicely and delicately served that, stap my vitals ! they shall compose you a dish no bigger than a saucer, shall come to fifty shillings." A palace, standing in large gardens, was assigned to the Scottish kings at Charing Cross by Saxon Edgar, and continued to be their dwelling when they came to London to do homage for their kingdom and certain lands, which were held under the suzerainty of England, until the union of the two crowns by James THE STRAND (CONTINUED). 281 I. But ere this the palace, known as " Scotland," had fallen into ruin, and the site was used for Government offices. John Milton lived here for a time, when he served Cromwell ; it was also the residence of Inigo Jones, Sir Christopher Wren and Sir John Vanburgh, architect and dramatist ; from which we gather that it was used as the Board of Works of the period. "Scotland" became the headquarters of the new police in 1829, and continued to be so until the removal of the principal offices to the abandoned Opera House on the Embankment. CHAPTER XVI. WHITEHALL : ITS HISTORY AND ASSOCIATIONS. BUT for the reign of the Saints, Whitehall would have been the noblest palace in Europe. The Banqueting House is still unrivalled in the domestic architecture of London ; how beautiful it is may be judged by com- paring it with the abortive imitation that now shoulders Inigo Jones's masterpiece on the southern side. In the original plan, which was never finished, there were four of these structures ; five courts, the largest 245 feet square ; an embankment, with flights of steps down to the water, faced the river, while towards the street were beautiful gardens and a lake. The entire facade would have been 1152 feet long. In the reign of Henry III. one of the great barons, Hubert de Burgh, Chief Justice of England, erected a castle upon this site, and bequeathed it to the Dominicans. It was afterwards sold to the archbishop- ric of York, and was thereafter known as York Place. Its history begins with Cardinal Wolsey, who enlarged the building and kept regal state in it. Cavendish, his biographer, writes : " The banquets were set forth with masques and mummeries, in so gorgeous a sort and costly a manner, that it was heaven to behold. . . . (282) WHITEHALL : ITS HISTORY, ETC. 283 I have seen the king suddenly come hither in a mask, with a dozen other maskers, all in garments like shepherds, made of fine cloth of gold, and fine crim- son satin paned, and caps of the same ; their hair and beards either of fine gold wire or else of silver, and some being of black silk ; having sixteen torch- bearers, besides their drums, and other persons attend- ing upon them with visors, and clothed all in satin of the same colours." Then, in a passage too long for quotation, the writer goes on to recount all the forms and ceremonies, and how the table was laid with " 200 dishes or above of wondrous costly meats and devices, subtlely devised ". Some readers will be able to recall the splendid realization of this picture in the Lyceum revival of Shakespeare's King Henry VIII. At the fall of the great Cardinal his royal master took possession of York House, added some grand apartments, and rechristened it Whitehall. It was at a masque at the cardinal's house that Henry first met Anne Boleyn ; the grand fetes that followed his marriage with that lady, those given to celebrate the notable events of his reign, and at the receptions of foreign princes, surpassed in magnificence even Wolsey's time. Within those walls the tyrant Blue Beard breathed his last. Under puritan Edward and bigot Mary, Whitehall had no history outside preachers and priests, both being equally priest- ridden ; the first by perfervid Reformers, the second by persecuting Romanists. Elizabeth revived the glories of the court ; and there 284 STREETS OF LONDON. were tournaments and maskings and revels as in the days of her father, and a galaxy of great men to give them lustre, such as no other sovereign of the world was ever surrounded by. Here foregathered the superb figures of Essex, Leicester, Sidney, Raleigh ; that greatest of buccaneers, Drake ; wise Bacon, Burleigh and Cecil. Probably the splendours of the court were little, if at all, diminished by her successor ; but whereas under the great Tudor queen all was high bred and orderly, coarseness and drunkenness tarnished the state of the first Stuart, whereof some very unsavoury pictures may be found in the secret history of the reign : of ladies so intoxicated that they could not keep their legs under them, and of His Majesty dancing while in the same condition. The most brilliant and decor- ous period in the history of Whitehall is that of Charles I. Drunkenness and open profligacy were banished, while gorgeous show was chastened by artistic taste. Charles was not only the patron of Rubens, Vandyke and Ben Jonson, but of all men of art and letters that came within his sphere. His collections of paintings and articles of vertu were matchless ; the catalogue of them when dispersed by the Roundheads filled over 1000 pages. His court was the most polished in Europe, and its magnifi- cence and "exquisite order " excited the admiration of Bassompierre, who was familiar with all the courts of Europe. The famous fetes of Louis XIV. were modelled on those of England. Never before or WHITEHALL: ITS HISTORY, ETC. 285 since has this country held such a supreme position in the world of culture. Foremost among the entertainments of the court of the first Stuarts was " The Masque ". It was in vogue in Henry VIII.'s time, but was then little better than mummery ; nor did it make much progress in grace and refinement under the regime of his great daughter. James and Charles had the good fortune to have these entertainments written by such men as Jonson, Middleton, Heywood, Shirley, and illustrated by such fine artists as Inigo Jones and Gerbier. The queens both of James and Charles, as well as the great ladies of the court, frequently danced and took part in them. This was one of the severest accusa- tions brought by the Puritans against Henrietta Maria. All that has been achieved in our time in the way of stage splendour and illusion, after allow- ing for the absence of lime-light and electricity, was quite equalled in these exquisite productions. 1 For the benefit of those who may not have the original to refer to, I will give some brief account of Shirley's " Triumph of Peace," which was presented by the gentlemen of the Inns of Court before Charles I. and his queen, in 1633. It was the most magnificent of all the masques, and cost over .20,000. At Ely and Hatton Houses the gentlemen of the four Inns met, and thence went in procession to Whitehall. First,to the music of hautboys or clarionets, 1 See. Ben Jonson's " Masques," and the article on " Masques" in Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature. 286 STREETS OF LONDON. started the Ante-masque, a crowd of grotesque figures in showy dresses attended by torch-bearers ; then a number of allegorical personages, Fancy, Opinion, Confidence, Jollity, Laughter, etc., suitably attired ; others, dressed as beggars, mastiffs, all kinds of birds, jays, kites, owls, satyrs, Don Quixote, Sancho Panza and the windmill ; then a drummer and four- teen trumpeters, in crimson satin, followed by the marshal and ten horse and forty foot, in scarlet and silver ; to these succeeded 100 gentlemen splendidly mounted, each attended by two pages and a groom in rich liveries. Then came two chariots, each drawn by four horses, adorned with gold and silver, and contain- ing musicians dressed as priests and sibyls, playing upon lutes, each attended by footmen in blue and silver bearing flambeaux ; four chariots after the Roman form : the first, silver and orange ; the second, silver and pale blue ; the third, silver and crimson ; the fourth, silver and white, all surmounted by canopies of feathers and silver fringe, contained the grand masquers, and between each rode four musicians in robes and garlands, attended by torch-bearers and crowds of splendid lacqueys. This is but a very condensed description of the procession. Within the Banqueting House the scene was yet more picturesque : the king and queen under a canopy of state, attended by their superb court, and opposite them the raised stage enclosed in arbour- work of loose branches and leaves, festooned with draperies, fruits and flowers ; children with silver wings blowing WHITEHALL: ITS HISTORY, ETC. 287 golden trumpets, and on each side of the proscenium two figures in Roman habits representing Minos and Numa. When the curtain was drawn up the stage repre- sented a large street with sumptuous palaces, porticoes, pleasant trees and grounds ; a spacious place adorned \vith public and private buildings, among which was the forum of Peace. Over all was a clear sky with trans- parent clouds which enlightened all the scene. The stage direction marks " From one of the Asides of the street enter Opinion and Confidence," which shows that this was not a mere flat canvas but a " set ". In another scene " there appeared in the highest and foremost part of the heaven, by little and little to break forth, a whitish cloud, bearing a chariot feigned of goldsmith's work, and in it sat Irene or Peace, in a flowery vesture like the Spring," etc. Again : " Out of the highest part of the opposite side came softly descending another cloud, of an orient colour, bearing a silver chariot curiously wrought, and differing in all things from the first ; in which sat Eunomia, or Law, in a purple satin robe, adorned with golden stars, a mantle of carnation, laced and fringed with gold, a coronet of light upon her head," and so on. " A third cloud of various colour from the other two begins to descend towards the middle of the scene with some- what a swifter motion, and in it sat a person repre- senting Justice, in a white robe and mantle of shining satin, fair long hair circled with a coronet of silver fishes, white wings and buskins, a crown imperial in her hand." 288 STREETS OF LONDON. Passing over other transformations we come to this exquisite finale : " The Revels being passed the scene is changed into a plain champaign country, which terminates with the horizon, and above a darkish sky, with dusky clouds, through which appeared the new moon, but with a faint light by the approach of morn- ing ; from the farthest point of the ground arose by little and little a great vapour, which being about the middle of the scene, it slackens its motion, and begins to fall downwards to the earth, from whence it came ; and out of this rose another cloud of a strange shape and colour, on which sat a young maid with a dim torch in her hand ; her face was an olive colour, so were her arms and breast, her garment was transparent, the ground dark blue and sprinkled with silver spangles," etc. This is the forerunner of the morning, " and is that glimpse of light which is seen when the night is past and the day not yet appearing ". Such a combination of regal splendour, of poetry, music, painting, dancing, enshrined within those noble walls, vaulted with pictures by Rubens, and hung with rare tapestries, formed a coup cTceil that is scarcely realizable by imagination. What a contrast to that dark January morning, when the Master of all this magnificence passed through this same apartment to the black draped scaffold without, to be brought back a headless trunk. Changed indeed was Whitehall when Protector Cromwell reigned there, though the transformation was not quite as complete as the more zealous of the WHITEHALL: ITS HISTORY, ETC. 289 saints would have desired ; Milton and Waller and Marvell gave a flavour of culture to the surroundings, and Oliver, who was very fond of music, had a con- cert as often as he dared, though some smite-the-devil- hip-and-thigh preacher denounced it from the pulpit. And after solemn feasts, at which the grace was longer than the feeding, my Lord Protector would exercise his superfluous exuberance by such horseplay as be- daubing the faces of the ladies with sweetmeats, and pelting his companions with cushions, which they failed not to return, so that presently the chamber rather resembled a boys' dormitory than the room of a palace. And, if the Chroniques Scandaleuses tell the truth, there were other diversions much less decorous, smacking rather of the court of James than that of his son. There is little doubt but that Lady Dysert, afterwards Duchess of Lauderdale, and General Lam- bert's wife were Cromwell's mistresses ; the former, however, was too lively for the godly, and had to be put aside ; but they held that there could be no hurt in his " holding heavenly meditations with Mrs. Lambert," who was a very prayerful woman. There was a strange scene when the death-warrant of the king was signed. When it came to Cromwell's turn to affix his signature he wrote his name hastily, and then, in a nervous burst of mirth, smeared the ink in his pen across the face of Henry Martin, who after signing returned the compliment. A yet stranger scene was that when Cromwell visited alone the room in Whitehall, where lay the headless '9 290 STREETS OF LONDON. trunk of the king, which had been put into a coffin, covered with black velvet, and carried thither through the snow. Unshrouding the corpse and gazing long upon it he muttered, " Cruel necessity ! " The latter days of the great Protector were scarcely less gloomy than those of the King whom he had doomed. Haunted by remorse, by the shadow of the dead, by the reproaches of his favourite daughter on her deathbed, in hourly dread of assassination from fanatical republicans, as well as over-zealous royalists, not daring to sleep three successive nights in the same chamber, or to employ the services of a barber lest his enemies should bribe the man to cut his throat ; even his gloomy faith in being one of the elect failing him at times, and plunging him into the terrors of hell ; diseased in body, diseased in mind, all his glory, all his ambition, all his successes were withered into dust and ashes. While he lay tossing in extremis in his chamber in Whitehall on that September night, the last of his life, an awful storm arose, such a storm of wind and rain as there was no record of in England. It was impossible even for horses to make their way through the streets. All next day, the anniversary of Dun bar and Worcester, the storm raged with the same fury, and about four o'clock my Lord Protector's dark and daring spirit passed away, amidst the crash of the thunder, upon the wings of the lightning. A curiously appropriate finale to so tempestuous a career. Charles was happier in his death than his doomsman. Brilliant and gay once more is the Whitehall of WHITEHALL: ITS HISTORY, ETC. 291 Charles II., but as destitute of nobleness as it is of refinement and morality. There are feastings, and balls and music and concerts, but the poetical " Masque" would be too slow for the Rochesters and Sedleys and the second Buckingham, for my Lady Castlemaine, Nell Gwynne, Louise de la Querouaille, La Mazarin and the other ladies of that ilk ; they care for no poetry beyond a love song, for no wit that is not salacious, for no dramatic work that keeps within the bounds of decency ; there is no restraint, moral or ceremonious ; courtiers flout at the king, and his mistresses treat him with no more respect than a fish-woman does her husband ; all is unbridled licence and self-indulgence. Pepys has rendered every detail of this joyous, godless life as familiar to us as our personal experiences. We see the maids of honour strolling in the galleries, in their riding garbs of coats and doublets with deep shirts, " just for all the world like mine, and buttoned their doublets up to the breast, with periwigs and with hats ; so that only for the long petticoats dragging under their men's coats, nobody would take them for women in any point whatever". May I not write 1666 1899? We watch with the dear old gossip the maids of honour in their velvet gowns playing cards with the Duke of Mon- mouth j 1 and stand beside him at the ball while the 1 Pepys writes (i4th February, 1667-8) : " I was told to-night that Lady Castlemaine is so great a gamester as to have won 15,000 in one night, and lost 25,000 in another night at play, and hath played 1000 and 1500 at a cast ". 292 STREETS OF LONDON. king leads a lady a single coranto, all the lords and ladies following. " Then to country dances, the King leading the first, ' cuckolds all awry,' the old dance of England." The rule of life at Whitehall is let us eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we may die. And this gospel of hedonism is fulfilled to the letter. In the midst of his toyings and revellings the English Sar- danapalus is struck down. Always good natured, the man " whenever said a stupid thing nor ever did a wise one " is true to himself to the last. He earnestly recommends the Duchess of Portsmouth and her son to his brother, and begs him "not to let poor Nelly starve ". When the queen implores his pardon for any offence she may unwillingly have given, he cries : " She asks my pardon, poor woman ; I ask hers with all my heart ". On the last night of his life he apologises to those about him for the trouble he has caused them, and almost his last words are that he has been an unconscionable time dying, but he hopes they will excuse it ! The advent of James 1 1. wrought another change in the ways of the palace. A gloomy seclusion marked his brief regime ; outward decorum was restored, but true-blue Protestants were frightened away by the sight of brown-frocked friars ; and saturnine priests and haughty monseigneurs were not to the taste of the courtiers. On a bleak, rainy December night the queen and the iniant prince, the last of the Stuarts born in the purple, were secretly conveyed out of the WHITEHALL: ITS HISTORY, ETC. 293 palace, placed in a boat under the care of Lauzun and rowed across the black river to Lambeth ; horses carried them to Gravesend, where a vessel was waiting for their reception. A few nights afterwards James him- self fled in the darkness from the home of his ances- tors. He was captured and brought back. But on the morning of i8th December, 1688, through grey gloom and beating rain he took his last sight of the grand old palace. 1 Ten years after the flight of James it perished in a great conflagration, not without suspicion of incendiarism. The Banqueting House alone escaped destruction, and was converted by George I. into a chapel royal. It is now incorporated with the United Service Museum. The Whitehall of the Tudor and Stuart days was a collection of heterogeneous buildings, ranging from the Tudor period through the Jacobean and Carolian, some handsome, some mean, some shabby and de- cayed. These various piles were separated into blocks by courtyards or gardens, and included, be- sides the sovereign's state and private apartments, residences for court officials and favourites, quarters for officers and soldiers, and dwellings for the vast swarm of servants and dependants attached to the palace. The area of the entire demesne extended from the Thames to St. James's Park, the road from London to Westminster dividing it into two unequal Charles lost his head for refusing to renounce the Church of England, his son lost his crown for attempting to subvert it. What a strange fatality hung over the Stuart race ! 294 STREETS OF LONDON. parts. This road followed the same line as the present thoroughfare ; between Scotland Yard and the Ban- queting House it was tolerably wide ; but to the west of the latter it narrowed and passed through Holbein's gateway, a handsome structure of two- coloured glazed bricks, designed by the great painter whose name it bore, and finally it debouched into King Street, through another massive gateway. On the western side of the road were the Tennis Court, Tilt Yard, Bowling Alleys and Cockpit, etc. On the Tilt Yard Charles II. built the first Horse Guards, the present building dates from 1751 ; the Cockpit was also covered with buildings, in which were General Monk's apartments ; likewise a theatre, frequently referred to in Pepys' Diary ; Downing Street now occupies the site. Wallingford House, also within the precincts, which William III. con- verted into the Admiralty Offices, was built early in the reign of Charles I. Spring Garden, so called from one of those jets d'eau which did not act until pressed by some unwary foot, and then deluged the victim, originally a part of the private grounds of Whitehall, became in the time of Charles I. and his sons the Vauxhall of the seventeenth century. In 1634 we read in Garrard's Strafford's Letters, that the bowling was put down in Spring Garden 1 for one day, "but by the intercession of the queen, it was reprieved for this year ; but here- 1 There were two or three other Spring Gardens in other parts of London. WHITEHALL: ITS HISTORY, ETC. 295 after it shall be no common bowling-place. There was kept in it an ordinary for six shillings a meal, when the king's proclamation allows but two else- where : continual bibbing and drinking wine all day long under the trees, two or three quarrels every week. It was grown scandalous and unsufferable ; besides my Lord Digby being reprehended for striking in the king's garden, he answered that he took it for a common bowling-place, where all paid money for their coming in." A little farther west was the notorious Mulberry Garden. Evelyn refers to it in 1654 : " My Lady Gerrard treated us at Mulberry Garden, the only place of refreshment about the town for persons of the best quality to be exceedingly cheated at ; Cromwell and his partisans have shut up and seized upon Spring Garden, which till now had been the usual rendezvous for the ladys and gallants at this season ". One of Sedley's comedies is called The Mulberry Garden : the action takes place under the Common- wealth, but the manners depicted are as gross as they were under Charles. The Restoration and Revolution dramatists abound in references to this place as the favourite rendezvous of lovers. Buckingham Palace is supposed to stand upon the site, though some say Arlington Street covers it. The most extensive and important division of Whitehall was on the Thames side ; the royal and state apartments, the famous galleries, the privy gardens, over three acres in extent, set out formally 296 STREETS OF LONDON. in sixteen grass plots with a statue in the centre of each, and the royal seraglio, which far surpassed all the rest in splendour. King Street, which has just been pulled down, could boast of illustrious residents. Edmund Spenser died there in almost actual want, though his remains were carried to the abbey in great state. There lived Lord Howard of Effingham, High Admiral of the Fleet sent against the Spanish Armada ; the brilliant Earl of Dorset so frequently mentioned in these pages ; that delightful lyrist, Thomas Carew. Oliver Cromwell resided here in 1648, and his mother died in that same house it was at the north-west end after her son had attained almost regal power. The Bell Tavern was the headquarters of " The October Club," the members of which were 150 High Church Tory country gentle- men, who drank "old October" to "the king over the water"; it was established in opposition to the Mug Houses and Calves' Head Club, but was broken up after the death of Queen Anne. CHAPTER XVII. WESTMINSTER ABBEY AND PALACE, AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS THE THAMES AND ITS ASPECTS. BEYOND King Street was anciently a network of narrow streets and alleys, and the Broad Sanctuary still marks the site of the " Alsatia " and " Old Mint " of Westminster, a refuge alike for the criminal and the persecuted. In this maze, not far from the western door of the abbey, was Caxton's house, wherein the first book was printed in England. On the ground now covered by Vine Street, near Rochester Row, was the abbey vineyard. Gazing upon that noble pile, dedicated to St. Peter, it is difficult for imagination to carry us back to the days when Thorney Island was a desolate swamp, the haunt of the heron and the bittern, divided from the adjacent ground by the creeping sinuosities of the river. From the earliest days of Christianity in England the Cross had been rooted here, and when the Confessor laid the foundations of the abbey two churches had already preceded it. Something, but not much, remains of the saintly Edward's edifice, in which the last of the Saxon and the first of the Norman kings were crowned. Henry III. fashioned (297) 298 STREETS OF LONDON. what is to us the more ancient portion into its pre- sent form ; and Henry VII. completed the beautiful temple in which Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts and Hanoverians have been enthroned and many buried ;. and in which rest all that is mortal of so many mighty Englishmen. On the ground now known as Old and New Palace Yards stood the ancient Palace of Westminster, in which Cnut, the Danish usurper, resided, in which the Confessor died, in which Edward I. was born, and the walls of which were shadowed by the presence of all succeeding monarchs to Henry VIII. After that time Whitehall usurped its place. In the ancient palace sat all the ancient parliaments, and on its site have deliberated all the modern. In the burning of old St. Stephen's, in 1834, much that remained of the mediaeval structure was destroyed. Fortunately the flames spared the crypt, and the glorious hall, founded by Rufus and rebuilt by Richard II. And in that same hall the unhappy son of the Black Prince was arraigned, and centuries afterwards another unhappy monarch. Here, also, Stafford, Duke of Buckingham,. Protector Somerset, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Thomas More, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Essex, the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, the great Strafford, the-, seven bishops, the Jacobite lords of '45, Warren Hastings to mention only a few have stood as- culprits. But more pleasant memories are associated with Westminster Hall. It was the scene of many a. WESTMINSTER ABBEY AND PALACE, ETC. 299 coronation banquet ; kings sometimes kept Christ- mas there. There Henry V. received the congratula- tions of the citizens on the victory of Agincourt ; and Anne Boleyn came thither in great pomp. The particulars of all which you will find in Stow. All the kings and queens, soldiers, statesmen, lawyers, orators, all the makers of England's glory for cen- turies have stood beneath that roof, world-famous for its beauty. No spot in Europe, at least out of Rome, is so crowded with historic interest, so haunted by the mighty shadows of the past as that small area that lies between Dean's Yard and the Thames. In the ancient school generations of great Englishmen have been educated : among others Ben Jonson, Cowley, Dryden, George Herbert, Giles Fletcher, Prior, Cowper, Southey, Sir Christopher Wren, Earl Russell, Gibbon, Froude, Locke, Warren Has- tings. On the beams of the old schoolroom, that almost vies with that of Eton in fame, are carved in autograph the names of Dryden, Hakluyt, Cowper, Wren, Locke, and many another known to fame. Four years ago the bicentenary of the death of the renowned master, Dr. Busby, as notable for flogging as for imparting learning, was duly honoured. At the hour of evening prayer there is preserved, in the great hall, a custom that goes back to the monastic days. A boy called the " Monos" cries the hour in Latin, in a high clear voice, that presently 3oo STREETS OF LONDON. subsides into a whisper, like the muezzin of the Mahomedan. At the summons the scholars hurry in, and when all is silent a voice calls " Oremus ! " and the Latin prayers are repeated, much as they were by the Benedictine monks, who once reigned supreme here. It is difficult to tear oneself away from so fasci- nating a spot, so replete with stories, but their very abundance renders selection almost impossible, and with one more glance at the Thames I must bend my pilgrim's steps in another direction. Standing upon Westminster Bridge, one thinks of Wordsworth's fine sonnet, and especially of the lines : Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty. The stories of the river might rival the stories of the streets in interest ; they go back to the time when, unconfined by any artificial bank, the silver Thames flowed in, north and south, over meadow and morass that have now for centuries been covered with buildings, and so on to the days when patrician mansions and fair gardens lined the Middlesex side, and the Surrey shore was all grassy meads, rising into wooded hills, with one little cluster of town on the bankside ; when the river was alive with gilded barges and stately processions of court and city state, and with boats conveying gallants and ladies to the Globe or the Blackfriars, or to Paris Garden, to see WESTMINSTER ABBEY AND PALACE, ETC. 301 the bear baiting. 1 There was only one bridge across the Thames in those days and for long afterwards. Westminster Bridge was not built until past the middle of the eighteenth century ; the only means of crossing the river between Westminster and London Bridge being by the Horseferry, still kept in remem- brance by Horseferry Road. It was not such scenes as these that Wordsworth gazed upon ; mansions and gardens and meads had long since given place to hideous tumble - down wharves, and mud banks, to all the wretched sordid- ness that then marked the river's bank and still offends the eye on the Surrey side. What would he say now to our splendid Embankment, with its back- ground of stately buildings, its beautiful gardens, its umbrageous boulevard and broad roadway ? But it must be remembered that the grandeur and beauty that the great poet saw was not an outward but an inward vision, the " ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples " were but symbols of the mighty city's- life, and even the dirt and ugliness of the river's side was to his vision but the soiled garment of that 1 John Taylor, "the water poet," in his petition to King James (1615) for the suppression of all theatres on the Middlesex side of the Thames, states that such was the number of watermen who plied for hire between Windsor and Gravesend, half of whom had been called into existence by the bankside theatres (of which there were several)- and other places of amusement, which visitors always approached by the Thames, that he estimated that, including the families of the breadwinners, some 40,000 persons were dependent upon these sources, for a living. 302 STREETS OF LONDON. commerce to which London owes so much of its greatness. The grand old river has many aspects, mostly sombre, yet mostly picturesque. Passing over Lon- don Bridge on a spring or autumn evening, towards sunset, I have often been struck by Rembrandtish effects of massive shadows and subdued lights. To the east land, water and sky have been blended indistinguishably in one grey gloom, through which the Tower and Tower Bridge and the wharves and buildings loomed ghostly, like faded silhouettes or faint pictures in sepia. To the west a lurid crimson, blurred sun, framed in a sulphurous halo, flecked with smoky red, has glared from purplish - black clouds, and cast shafts of sullen fire upon the dome of St. Paul's, upon the roofs of buildings, upon the water, upon boat and bridge and barge, veiled in shrouding grey, through which more distant objects appeared as seen through a glass darkly. On summer evenings the light is brighter, and a saffron glow suffuses the west ; yet always subdued by that gauzy film, never absent from the London atmosphere, and which causes such varied refractions of light. But to see London in its most beautiful aspects you should stroll along the length of the Embankment, when, through a clear air the full moon glitters and shimmers upon the rippling water, when the long rows of light blend in the distance into a line of white fire which, by the windings of the banks and the lamps on the bridges, seems to cross and WESTMINSTER ABBEY AND PALACE, ETC. 303 re-cross the river in chains of luminous points, while the cold electric blue from the hotels and railway stations falls upon tree and turf and roadway with a lustre as brilliant as that of Luna herself. Had he looked upon this scene Wordsworth might indeed have exclaimed : Earth has not anything to show more fair. CHAPTER XVIII. THE HAYMARKET ST. JAMES'S SQUARE PALL MALL ALMACK'S. WHEN Sir John Vanbrugh, in 1704, proposed to build a theatre at the bottom of the Hay market, all to the north of it was pasture land, and it was argued that the city. the Inns of Court, and the middle part of the town, from which came the chief supporters of the theatre, would be beyond the reach of an easy walk, and coach hire would be too hard a tax upon the pit and gallery. Houses, however, had been erected close by in Charles II.'s time, and in 1692 the roadway was formed on its present lines, but the air was still so pure that laundresses bleached their linen upon the hedges of Hedge Lane, which stretched from what is now Pall Mall East to Tyburn Road ; and the farmers of Kensington and Chelsea sold their hay there three times a week, as they had done since the days of the Tudors. The Queen's Theatre, however, as it was called until the accession of George I., when it became The King's, was built and opened in 1/05. But it proved such a disastrous failure at first that it was let to Owen? Svviney for .5 a night ! After oscillating for a while: (304) THE HAYMARKET ST. JAMES'S SQUARE, ETC. 305 between drama and opera, in spite of the ridicule and opposition of such potent publications as The Spectator against this exotic species of entertainment, it finally settled down to an opera-house. Vanbrugh's great theatre was burned down in 1739, set on fire, it was believed, by the leader of the orchestra out of revenge. It was a dull, heavy building of red brick, roofed with black glazed tiles, and with a frontage only thirty-five feet wide, in which were three circular-headed doors and windows. Upon its site rose the building which many of us remember, first opened in 1791, to fall a prey to the flames in 1867. It was rebuilt two years later ; but the history of the third house was one of disaster and finally of degradation until its demolition. A handsome new theatre, bearing the old name, now occupies its site. No spot in Europe can show a grander record of lyric genius than that south-west corner of the Hay- market ; every great singer from Nicolini, the male soprano, to Tamberlik and Mario, from Faustina and Cuzzoni to Christine Nillson and Titiens, has sung there ; the operas of every celebrated composer, from Handel to Verdi and Gounod, have been heard there ; every famous ballerina from Mile. Salle, who first introduced the opera ballet into London in 1734, to Taglioni, Ellsler and Rosati have pirouetted there. That spot has echoed to the notes of the wonderful Farinelli, for whose powers of execution no composer could write passages difficult enough, for whom, while he was singing, the orchestra forgot to play, over- 20 306 STREETS OF LONDON. \vhelmed by his genius ; to the bravura andjioturi of Catalani, who could leap two octaves ; to the voice of that transcendent artiste, Pasta, of whom in her decay Viardot said : " She is like the Cenacolo of Da Vinci at Milan, a wreck of a picture but that picture is the greatest in the world ; " to the wonderful B flat of the incomparable Rubini, which he once gave forth with such vigour that he fractured his collar-bone ; to the thunderous bass of Lablache. Here was the scene of the Jenny Lind furore ; and have not many of us the glorious notes of Titiens and the dulcet, silvery ring of Nillson's voice still echoing in our ears ? Who in the present day can realise that dancing, vulgarised as it is now, was ever the poetry of motion ? Yet what could have been more poetical than the ethereal grace of Taglioni, the intoxicating sorcery of the divine Ellsler, the ideality of Lucille Grahn, the dazzling brilliancy of Carlotta Grisi, the fascinating verve of Cerito. When Lumley announced that Taglioni, Grahn, Grisi and Cerito would appear together in a pas-de- quatre, all fashionable Europe was in a flutter. But, oh, what a team of fillies for any man to control ! At the final rehearsal they all but broke away. The last pas was ceded to Taglioni, but the crux was the first, each of the other three flatly refused to begin, and each desired to come immediately before Taglioni. Perrot, the ballet master, rushed to Lumley's room in despair; it was all over, the thing was impossible. The manager pondered until a happy thought flashed THE HAYMARKET ST. JAMES'S SQUARE, ETC. 307 across his mind. " Let the oldest take her unquestion- able right to the envied position," he said. Perrot chuckled with delight, and bounded back to the stage. Lumley's judgment was as subtle as that of Solomon, no one of the three was inclined to accept the position on that count, and left it to the ballet master. The pas-de-quatre was performed ; every night the house was crowded to suffocation ; it was the one absorbing topic of conversation, and foreign newspapers teemed with stories of its wonders. In 1720 a small, wooden theatre, which with all appliances cost only ^1500, was built on the eastern side of the street and came to be known as "the little theatre in the Haymarket ". First opened by a French company, it passed into the hands of mounte- banks and rope-dancers, until Harry Fielding under- took it, in 1730, and produced his own comedies, burlesques and farces, one of which, for holding Sir Robert Walpole up to ridicule, brought about, in 1737, the stringent Theatrical Licensing Act, by which the London theatres were restricted to two, Drury Lane and Covent Garden. From that time until 1766, when Samuel Foote obtained a patent to open the house during the summer months, 1 the little theatre led only 1 How Foote obtained the licence is a curious story. At a country house at which he and the Duke of York were staying, His Royal High- ness for a practical joke mounted the comedian, who could not ride, upon a spirited horse, with the result that he was thrown and his leg broken. Foote at that time rented the Haymarket, and was driving the proverbial coach and four through the Act of Parliament ; as a compensation for the injury, the duke got him a patent legally to keep open the house six months in the year. 308 STREETS OF LONDON. a vagabond existence, its managers and actors being more than once arrested for breaking the law. After being repaired, patched, renovated, the original building, or rather all that remained of it, was pulled down in 1820, and the theatre of Webster and Buck- stone took its place, which, though greatly altered by the Bancrofts, remains practically the same. It is probably a unique circumstance in the history of theatres that the Haymarket, during the hundred and seventy-eight years of its existence has never suffered from fire, and only once from any serious accident on the occasion of the visit of George III. to the house, February, 1794, when the crush at the pit door was so great that fifteen people were killed and twenty seriously injured. But theatrical riots have been by no means uncom- mon at the little theatre. The most curious of these occurred in 1805. Dowton announced for his bene- fit an old burlesque, " The Tailors," which had been brought out by Foote ; it was a satire upon the sartorial craft, who convened an indignation meeting of its members, and resolved to oppose the performance with might and main. A letter was sent to the benefidaire signed DEATH, warning him that 17,000 tailors would attend to hiss the piece, and that 10,000 more could be found if wanted. The actors laughed. But on the evening the knights of the needle contrived to secure, with few exceptions, every seat in the house, while a mob of tailors clamoured round the doors. When Dowton appeared, some one threw a pair of shears at THE HAYMAKKET ST, JAMES'S SQUARE, ETC. 309 him, then the whole audience bellowed and roared, and the crowd outside answered with bellows and roars and attempted to storm the house. Magistrates were summoned, special constables called out, but all were helpless against the overwhelming odds ; so formidable did the riot become that it was only quelled by a detachment of the Life Guards, who after taking sixteen prisoners put the rest of the mob to flight. The Haymarket was the last theatre which was lit by candles, gas not being introduced there until 1837, the first year of Webster's tenancy. The Haymarket, in addition to its two theatres, was always noted for exhibitions, notorious among which was Mother Midnight's Oratory (1750), a sort of Bar- num's show of monstrosities and trained animals. 1 Monkeys and dogs did acrobatic performances and danced a minuet ; a bear beat a drum ; birds spelled names and told the time by the clock ; turkeys exe- cuted a country dance ; there was a cats' concert, to ridicule the opera, by which the inventor cleared thousands ; a man who smoked out of a red-hot pipe and ate burning sulphur; giants, dwarfs, ventrilo- quists, dancing bears. At the Cock Tavern, in Suffolk Street, the notorious Calves' Head Club held many of its meetings, on the 3Oth of January, to insult the memory of Charles I. According to Ned Ward the club was founded by Mil- ton, and consisted of Independents and Anabaptists. 1 See " Horace Walpole to George Montagu," gth January, 1752, for a full account of the oratory. 310 STREETS OF LONDON. They dined on a dish of calves' heads, to typify the late king and his friends ; a copy of the Icon Basilike was burned ; a calves' skull was filled with wine and passed round for the guests to drink to the pious memory of " those worthy patriots who had killed the tyrant". Even forty years ago, and less, the Haymarket, after midnight, was considered by fast young men to be one of the sights of London, though by day it was one of the shabbiest and drowsiest of thoroughfares. Until noon most of its inhabitants slumbered ; and until night the half-awake attendants in the shops and taverns regarded a stray customer with heavy-eyed surprise and indifference ; some of the proprietors did not trouble to take down their shutters before the shades of evening began to fall. Then the young ladies behind counters and bars rouse themselves and go away to take their hair out of curl papers, and change their " frocks," to reappear as transformed as the fairy of the footlights is from the fairy of the stage door ; while slovenly waiters, who have been crawling and yawning all day, suddenly develop spotless shirt fronts and become as brisk as harlequins. Twelve o'clock ! The opera ballet is just over ; Ellsler has performed her last pirouette, or Taglioni her \astflas, or graceful Cerito has brought down the curtain with thunders of applause ; out rush the swells and every bar is quickly crammed with them clamouring for drinks, and in a great hurry to get into the Haymarket Theatre to see Ned Wright in a farce he is paid THE HAYMARKET ST. JAMES'S SQUARE, ETC. 311 a week to appear after midnight. And a very good bargain Buckstone makes of it, as he frequently takes i$o a week after the witching hour. The little theatre gives you plenty for your money ; it begins at 7 P.M. and closes about i A.M. Sometimes you have a good long comedy and a drama and about three farces. After roaring at the irresistible Wright for three-quarters of an hour or so Edmund Yates used to say that Wright made him laugh until he was a helpless mass the swells again crowd oyster and restaurant bar, or perform wild gallops with their lady friends up and down roadway and pavement, or order a keg of gin to be brought into the open and serve the liquor out to their friends and every passer-by, beggar or loafer, that chooses to partake of it. It is a veritable pande- monium of shrieks and laughter, and language unfit for ears polite. And the demons scarcely relax their fury until daylight dims the gas and the traffic of a new day commences. Pall Mall when first formed was named after Charles II.'s Queen, Catherine Street. But as early as 1666 Pepys writes of it as " Pell Mell ". At this time only a few houses were dotted here and there, in open country. Nell Gwynne lived for a time on the north side, but later on removed to the south. Evelyn relates in one of the entries of his Diary, 1671, how, while walking through St. James's Park, he saw and heard a very familiar discourse between (the king) and Mrs. Nellie, she looking out of her garden on the top of the wall and (the king) standing on the green walk under 312 STREETS OF LONDON. it. " Thence the king walked to the Duchess of Cleve- land's" who also lodged in Pell Mell. In the house just referred to, now No. 79, " poor Nelly," the best of a bad lot, died in 1687, and was buried in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. The Army and Navy Club stands upon the site of her first dwelling, and I understand that a looking-glass that must have often reflected her saucy face, taken with the old house, is still preserved there. Schomberg House, the eastern wing of which was rebuilt for the War Office, is associated with many notable people. Originally inhabited by William of Orange's famous general, it passed to Culloden Cumberland. After his death it was divided into tenements and became a haunt of artists ; here lived John Astley, a noted portrait painter ; Conway, the miniature painter, and Gainsborough, who died here. On the western side of Schomberg House lived Mrs. Fitzherbert, the wife of George IV., of whom I shall have much to say anon. Notable among the residents of Pall Mall was that charming, delightful comedienne of the Garrick period, Mrs. Abington, the original Lady Teazle. Like all theatrical managers Garrick was a martyr to the ladies of his company, but Fanny Abington was the greatest plague of all, the most capricious and unreasonable. How full of mischief and espieglerie is the face that still peeps at you out of Sir Joshua's canvas ; it is Miss Prue herself, just as Congreve conceived her. Mrs. Abington associated with ladies of the highest THE HAVMARKET ST. JAMES'S SQUARE, ETC. 313 rank, and her devotion to cards in her old age was worthy of the time in which she lived. Not even in the summer months could she tear herself away from the pasteboard ; to keep up appearances she shut up her house, pretended to leave London, but was really in lodgings in the immediate neighbourhood, where she kept up her nightly rubbers. Yet in spite of this sedentary life she attained the age of eighty-four. Two celebrated houses, Marlborough and Carlton, the one still flourishing, the other a thing of the past, remain to be mentioned. The first was built for the conqueror of Blenheim, by Sir Christopher Wren, in 1709, on the site of a religious house, the Friary. To economise expense the parsimonious hero had the bricks brought over from Holland as ballast and un- loaded at Westminster, Dutch bricks being smaller and much cheaper than English ; six large mirrors being required for its adornment, his careful Grace petitioned the States-General of Holland that these might be exported free of charge from that country, and the petitioner was too powerful to be refused. Though he died worth a million and a half of money, he would in his old age walk through the most inclement night to save a sedan hire. Before his death Marlborough fell into a state of dotage, and the mighty victor of Ramillies, Malplaquet, Blen- heim became a whimpering old man who could walk only by the support of two servants. Marlborough House remembers him in his greatness, when crowds gathered about its walls to applaud the conquering 3 14 STREETS OF LONDON. hero ; remembers him senile, tottering, crying, in second childhood ; remembers that grand lying in state of the dead soldier, that splendid funeral cortege, than which, for solemn grandeur and military pomp, England has seen the like but once since, when as great a Captain and a far nobler man was carried to the tomb, To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation. The Duchess, a woman who was as destitute of all goodness as her lord, and without his genius to com- pensate, survived the duke twenty years. Avaricious to the last, though her income was ^"40,000 a year, she was always heaping acre upon acre, and wearied the Treasury by petitions for a few hundreds per annum that she believed herself entitled to as Ranger of Windsor Park. She lived to the age of eighty-four. Marlborough House was leased from the crown, and when the lease expired, between sixty and seventy years ago, it was greatly enlarged for the Princess Charlotte on her marriage. And there her widowed husband continued to reside until he was called to the throne of Belgium. Queen Adelaide was its next occupant, and after her death the Vernon Gallery pictures were exhibited there. At the marriage of the Prince of Wales it again became a royal residence. Carlton House was erected in the same year as Marlborough, 1709, by the Earl of Burlington. Twenty-one years afterwards it was purchased for the father of George III. But Frederick preferred Leicester House, and it is with the last of the Georges SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH. 316 STREETS OF LONDON. that the former is more especially identified. Old Carlton House was but a mean building, and it was practically reconstructed for George of Wales in the classical style popular at the time. The centre was adorned by six Corinthian pillars, which now suppo:t the portico of the National Gallery, and this was flanked by two wings. Carlton House has furnished as much material, true and false, for the Chroniqucs Scandaleuses of the regency as Le Pare aiix Cerfs did for those of Louis XV. Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, in Memoirs of My Own Tiint\ describes the banquets that were given here to cele- brate Fox's victory in the Westminster election, 1784 for the Prince of \Vales was as noted a radical as George IV. was an unbending Tory one of which lasted from the noon of one day to the morning of the next. A separate repast was served for the ladies : "On whom, in the spirit of chivalry, His Royal High- ness and the gentlemen present waited while they were seated at table. It must be owned that on these .occasions, for which he seemed peculiarly formed, the Prince appeared to great advantage. Louis XIV. him- self could scarcely have eclipsed the son of George III. in a ballroom, or when doing the honours of his palace, surrounded by the pomps and attributes of luxury and royal state." At Carlton House the Prince gathered about him all the men identified with the days of the Regency Fox,Brummell, Moore, Sheridan, Colman, Kelly. Here the Princess Charlotte was born, apropos of whom the THE HAYMARKET ST. JAMES'S SQUARE, ETC. 317 Hon. Amelia Murray tells a good story. The engage- ment of the heiress presumptive to the English throne with the Prince of Orange was so disagreeable to Russia, that the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg made a journey to London to break it off, not by any direct means but by the usual Muscovite weapons, treachery and intrigue. Taking a house in Piccadilly the duchess gave a grand dinner party and ball ; to the first the Prince of Orange was invited, to the second \\\sfiana'e. The duchess set the young man next to herself at table, and continually plied him with cham- pagne, which it was impossible for a gentleman to decline under the circumstances ; so that when he entered the ballroom, and solicited the princess's hand for a dance, he was very drunk indeed, and not being by any means good-looking or distingue was rather a disgusting spectacle in the eyes of a young girl of seventeen. Close at hand our intriguante had the handsomest and most fascinating young prince in Europe, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, to whom the princess was introduced, and who made such good use of his chance that soon afterwards the Orange was sent packing and was secured by our grand duchess for her own sister. And that was how the Princess Charlotte became the wife of Prince Leopold. It was rather a curious coincidence that her present majesty should also marry a Saxe-Coburg, a nephew of Leopold, both princesses being likewise cousins and heiresses to the throne of England. Gronow describes the Princess Charlotte as a young 3i