THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 /
 
 \
 
 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES W. HECKETHORN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE SECRET 
 SOCIETIES OF ALL AGES," 
 " LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 A. WESSELS COMPANY 
 1900
 
 )4 3*1 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I, 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XI. 
 
 XII. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 PACK 
 
 GAMBLING-CLUBS AND HIGH PLAY - 1 
 
 WITTY WOMEN AND PRETTY WOMEN - -12 
 
 OLD LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES - 24 
 
 OLD M.P.S AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS - 35 
 
 FAMOUS OLD ACTORS - - - -47 
 
 OLD JUDGES AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS - 59 
 
 SOME FAMOUS LONDON ACTRESSES - - 71 
 
 QUEER CLUBS OF FORMER DAYS - - 82 
 
 CURIOUS STORIES OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE - 94 
 
 WITS AND BEAUX OF OLD LONDON SOCIETY - 105 
 
 LONDON SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES - 117 
 OLD LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 
 
 I. THE GALLERIED TAVERNS OF OLD LONDON - 135 
 
 II. OLD LONDON TEA-GAKDENS - - -158 
 WILLIAM PATERSON AND THE BANK OF ENGLAND- 173 
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS - - - -184 
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON - - - 2l6 
 
 ROGUES ASSORTED - - - - 253 
 
 BARS AND BARRISTERS - 265 
 THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKERS AND THE KIT-KAT 
 
 AND ROTA CLUBS - - - - 285 
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE AND ITS MASTERS - 300 
 
 625922
 
 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 i. 
 
 GAMBLING-CLUBS AND HIGH PLAY. 
 
 PHILOSOPHERS may argue, and moralists preach, 
 the former against the folly, and the latter 
 against the wickedness of gambling, but, as may 
 be expected, their remonstrances pass but as a gentle 
 breeze over the outwardly placid ocean of play, causing 
 the fishes — the familiars of the gambling world — lan- 
 guidly to raise their heads, and mildly to inquire : 
 ' What's all that row about ? Gambling is one of the 
 strongest passions in the human breast, and no warning, 
 no exhibition of fatal examples, will ever stop the in- 
 dulgence in the excitement it procures. It assumes 
 many phases ; in all men have undergone disastrous 
 experiences, and yet they repeat the dangerous and 
 usually calamitous experiments. In no undertaking 
 has so much money been lost as in mining ; prizes have 
 occasionally been drawn, but at such rare intervals as to 
 be cautions rather than encouragements ; and yet, even 
 at the present day, with all the experience of past 
 
 1
 
 2 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 failures, sanguine speculators fill empty shafts with 
 their gold, which is quickly fished up by the greedy 
 promoters. 
 
 Some of the now most respectable West End clubs 
 originally were only gambling-hells. They are not so 
 now ; but the improvement this would seem to imply is 
 apparent only. Our manners have improved, but not 
 our morals ; the table-legs wear frilled trousers now, 
 but the legs are there all the same, even the blacklegs. 
 But it is the past more than the present we wish to 
 speak of. 
 
 Early in the last century gaming was so prevalent 
 that in one night's search the Leefs Jury of West- 
 minster discovered, and afterwards presented to the 
 justices, no fewer than thirty-five gambling-houses. 
 The Society for the Reformation of Manners published 
 a statement of their proceedings, by which it appeared 
 that in the year beginning with December 1, 1724, to the 
 same date in 1725, they had prosecuted 2,506 persons 
 for keeping disorderly and gaming houses ; and for 
 thirty-four years the total number of their prosecutions 
 amounted to the astounding figure of 91,899. In 1728 
 the following note was issued by the King's order : ' It 
 having been represented to his Majesty that such felons 
 and their accomplices are greatly encouraged and har- 
 boured by persons keeping night-houses . . . and that 
 the gaming-houses . . . much contribute to the cor- 
 ruption of the morals of those of an inferior rank . . . 
 his Majesty has commanded me to recommend it, in his 
 name, in the strongest manner to the Justices of the 
 Peace to employ their utmost care and vigilance in the 
 preventing and suppressing of these disorders, etc."'
 
 GAMBLING-CLUBS AND HIGH PLAY 3 
 
 This warning was then necessary, though as early as 
 1719 an order for putting in execution an old statute 
 of Henry VIII. had been issued to all victuallers, and 
 others whom it might concern. The order ran : ' That 
 none shall keep or maintain any house or place of un- 
 lawful games, on pain of 40s. for every day, of forfeiting 
 their recognisance, and of being suppressed ; that none 
 shall use or haunt such places, on pain of 6s. 8d. for 
 every offence; and that no artificer, or his journeyman, 
 husbandman, apprentice, labourer, mariner, fisherman, 
 waterman, or serving-man shall play at tables, tennis, 
 dice, cards, bowls, clash, coiting, loggating, or any other 
 unlawful game, out of Christmas, or then out of their 
 master's house or presence, on pain of 20s. 1 
 
 There were thus many attempts at controlling the 
 conduct of the lower orders, but the gentry set them a 
 bad example. The Cocoa-Tree Club, the Tory choco- 
 late-house of Queen Anne's reign, at No. 64, St. James's 
 Street, was a regular gambling-hell. In the evening of 
 a Court Drawing-room in 1719, a number of gentle- 
 men had a dispute over hazard at that house ; the 
 quarrel became general, and, as they fought with their 
 swords, three gentlemen were mortally wounded, and 
 the affray was only ended by the interposition of the 
 Royal Guards, who were compelled to knock the parties 
 down with the butt-ends of their muskets indiscrimi- 
 nately, as entreaties and commands were disregarded. 
 Walpole, in his correspondence, relates : ' Within this 
 week there has been a cast at hazard at the Cocoa-Tree, 
 the difference of which amounted to o£ J 180,000. Mr. 
 O'Birne, an Irish gamester, had won =£1 00,000 of a 
 young Mr, Harvey, of Chigwell, just started from a 
 
 1—2
 
 4 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 midshipman into an estate by his elder brother's death. 
 O'Birne said : " You can never pay me. 11 " I can, 11 said 
 the youth ; " my estate will sell for the debt. 11 " No, 11 
 said O'Birne, " I will win ,£10,000 ; you shall throw for 
 the odd £90,000." They did, and Harvey won. 1 It is 
 not on record whether he took the lesson to heart. 
 The house was, in 1746, turned into a club, but its 
 reputation was not improved ; bribery, high play, and 
 foul play continued to be common in it. 
 
 Another chocolate-house was White's, now White's 
 Club, St. James's Street. As a chocolate-house it was 
 established about 1698, near the bottom of the west 
 side of St. James's Street ; it was burnt down in 1773. 
 Plate VI. of Hogarth's ' Rake's Progress ' shows a room 
 full of players at White's, so intent upon play as neither 
 to see the flames nor hear the watchmen bursting into 
 the room. It was indeed a famous gambling and 
 betting club, a book for entering wagers always lying 
 on the table ; the play was frightful. Once a man 
 dropped down dead at the door, and was carried in ; 
 the club immediately made bets whether he was dead 
 or only in a fit ; and when they were going to bleed 
 him the wagerers for his death interposed, saying it 
 would affect the fairness of the bet. Walpole, who 
 tells the story, hints that it is invented. Many a 
 highwayman — one is shown in Hogarth's picture above 
 referred to — there took his chocolate or threw his main 
 before starting for business. There Lord Chesterfield 
 gamed ; Steele dated all his love news in the Tatler 
 from White's, which was known as the rendezvous of 
 infamous sharpers and noble cullies, and bets were laid 
 to the effect that Sir William Burdett, one of its
 
 GAMBLING-CLUBS AND HIGH PLAY 5 
 
 members, would be the first baronet who would be 
 hanged. The gambling went on till dawn of day ; and 
 Pelham, when Prime Minister, was not ashamed to 
 divide his time between his official table and the piquet 
 table at White's. General Seott was a very cautious 
 player, avoiding all indulgence in excesses at table, 
 and thus managed to win at White's no less than 
 £200,000, so that when his daughter, Joanna, married 
 George Canning he was able to give her a fortune of 
 £100,000. 
 
 Another club founded specially for gambling was 
 Al mack's, the original Brooks's, which was opened in 
 Pall Mall in 1764. Some of its members were 
 Macaronis, the fops of the day, famous for their long 
 curls and eye-glasses. 'At Almack's,' says Walpole, 
 ' which has taken the pas of White's . . . the young 
 men of the age lose ,£10,000, £15,000, £20,000 in an 
 evening.' The play at this club was only for rouleaux 
 of £50 each, and generally there was £10,000 in gold 
 on the table. The gamesters began by pulling off their 
 embroidered clothes, and put on frieze garments, or 
 turned their coats inside out for luck. They put on 
 pieces of leather to save their lace ruffles ; and to guard 
 their eyes from the light, and to prevent tumbling 
 their hair, wore high-crowned straw hats with broad 
 brims, and sometimes masks to conceal their emotions. 
 Almack's afterwards was known as the ' Goose-Tree ' 
 Club — a rather significant name — and Pitt was one of 
 its most constant frequenters, and there met his 
 adherents. Gibbon also was a member, when the 
 club was still Almack's — which, indeed, was the name 
 of the founder and original proprietor of the club.
 
 6 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Another gaming-club was Brooks's, which at first 
 was formed by Almack and afterwards by Brooks, a 
 wine-merchant and money-lender. The club was opened 
 in 1778, and some of the original rules are curious : 
 '21. No gaming in the eating-room, except tossing up 
 for reckonings, on penalty of paying the whole bill of 
 the members present. 30. Any member of this society 
 that shall become a candidate for any other club 
 (old White's excepted) shall be ipso facto excluded. 
 40. Every person playing at the new quinze-table shall 
 keep fifty guineas before him. 41. Every person play- 
 ing at the twenty-guinea table shall keep no less than 
 twenty guineas before him. 1 According to Captain 
 Gronow, play at Brooks's was even higher than at 
 White's. Faro and macao were indulged in to an 
 extent which enabled a man to win or to lose a con- 
 siderable fortune in one night. George Harley Drum- 
 mond, a partner in the bank of that name, played 
 only once in his life at White's, and lost ,£20,000 to 
 Brummell. This event caused him to retire from the 
 bankimr-house. Lord Carlisle and Charles Fox lost 
 enormous sums at Brooks's. 
 
 At Tom's Coffee House, in Russell Street, Covent 
 Garden, there was playing at piquet, and the club con- 
 sisting of seven hundred noblemen and gentlemen, many 
 of whom belonged to the gay society of that day (the 
 middle of the last century), we may be sure the play 
 was high. 
 
 Arthur's Club, in St. James's Street, so named after 
 its founder (who died in 1761), was a famous gambling 
 centre in its day. A nobleman of the highest position 
 and influence in society was detected in cheating at
 
 GAMBLING-CLUBS AND HIGH PLAY 7 
 
 cards, and after a trial, which did not terminate in his 
 favour, he died of a broken heart. This happened in 
 1836. 
 
 The Union, which was founded in this century, was a 
 regular gambling-club. It was first held at what is 
 now the Ordnance Office, Pall Mall, and subsequently 
 in the house afterwards occupied by the Bishop of 
 Winchester. 
 
 In the early days of this century the most notorious 
 gambling-club was Crockford's, in St. James's Street. 
 Crockford originally was a fishmonger, and occupied the 
 old bulk-shop west of Temple Bar. But, having made 
 money by betting, ' he gave up, 1 as a recent writer on 
 ' The Gambling World 1 says, * selling soles and salmon, 
 and went in for catching fish, confining his operations 
 to gudgeons and flat-fish ' ; or, in other words, he estab- 
 lished a gambling-house, first by taking over Watier's 
 old club-house, where he set up a hazard bank, and won 
 a great deal of money ; he then separated from his 
 partner, who had a bad year and failed. Crockford 
 removed to St. James's Street, where he built the 
 magnificent club-house which bore his name. It was 
 erected at a cost of upwards of ,£100,000, and, in its 
 vast proportions and palatial decorations, surpassed 
 anything of the kind ever seen in London. To support 
 such an establishment required a large income ; yet 
 Crockford made it, for the highest play was encouraged 
 at his card-tables, but especially at the hazard -tables, 
 where Crockford nightly took his stand, prepared for 
 all comers. And he was successful, and became a 
 millionaire. When he died he left £700,000, and he 
 had lost as much in mining and other speculations. His
 
 8 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 death was hastened, it is said, by excessive anxiety over 
 his bets on the turf. He retired from the management 
 of the club in 1840, and died in 1844. The club was 
 soon after closed, and after a few years' 1 interval was re- 
 opened as the Naval, Military, and Civil Service Club. 
 It was then converted into dining-rooms, called the 
 Wellington. Later on it was taken by a joint-stock 
 company as an auction-room, and now it is again a 
 club-house, known as the Devonshire Club. 
 
 We referred above to Watier's Club. It was estab- 
 lished in 1 807, at the instigation of the Prince of Wales, 
 and high play was the chief pursuit of its members. 
 ' Princes and nobles,' says Timbs in his ' Curiosities of 
 London, 1 ' lost or gained fortunes amongst themselves. 1 
 But the pace was too fast. The club did not last under 
 its original patronage, and it was then, when it was 
 moribund, taken over by Crockford. At this club, also, 
 macao was the favourite game, as at Brooks 1 s. 
 
 One of the most objectionable results of promiscuous 
 gambling is the disreputable company into which it 
 often throws a gentleman. 
 
 ' That Marquis, who is now familiar grown 
 With every reprobate about the town. . . . 
 Now, sad transition ! all his lordship's nights 
 Are passed with blacklegs and with parasites. . . . 
 The rage of gaming and the circling glass 
 Eradicate distinction in each class ; 
 For he who scarce a dinner can afford 
 Is equal in importance with my lord.' 
 
 This is just what happened when gambling-hells were 
 openly flourishing in London, and what happens now, 
 when gambling- clubs abound, and are almost daily
 
 GAMBLING-CLUBS AND HIGH PLAY 9 
 
 raided by the police, when some actually respectable 
 people are found mixed up with the rascaldom which 
 supports these clubs. A perfect mania seems to have 
 seized the lower orders of our day to gamble; but 
 formerly, for instance, in Walpole's time, in the latter 
 half of the last century, the upper classes were the worst 
 offenders, of which the just-mentioned statesman and 
 epistolary chronicler of small-beer, which, however, by 
 long keeping has acquired a strong and lasting flavour, 
 gives us many proofs. ' Lord Sandwich,' he reports, 
 ' goes once or twice a week to hunt with the Duke [of 
 Cumberland], and, as the latter has taken a turn of 
 gaming, Sandwich, to make his court — and fortune — 
 carries a box and dice in his pocket ; and so they throw 
 a main whenever the hounds are at fault, upon every 
 green hill and under every green tree. 1 Five years later, 
 at a magnificent ball and supper at Bedford House, 
 ' the Duke was playing at hazard with a great heap of 
 gold before him. Somebody said he looked like the 
 prodigal son and the fatted calf both. 1 Under such 
 circumstances it could not fail that swindlers yar ex- 
 cellence sometimes found their way among the royal 
 and noble gamblers. There was a Sir William Burdett, 
 whose name had the honour of being inscribed in the 
 betting-room at White's as the subject of a wager that 
 he would be the first baronet who would be hanged. 
 He and a lady, ' dressed foreign, as a Princess \ e +1 ^ 
 House of Brandenburg, 1 cheated Lord Castledurrow 
 (Baron Ashbrook) and Captain Rodney out of a hand- 
 some sum at faro. The noble victim met the Baronet 
 at Ranelagh, and addressed him thus : ' Sir William, 
 here is the sum I think I lost last night. Since then I
 
 10 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 have heard that you are a professed pickpocket, and 
 therefore I desire to have no further acquaintance with 
 you. 1 The Baronet took the money with a respectful 
 bow, and then asked his Lordship the further favour to 
 set him down at Buckingham Gate, and without further 
 ceremony jumped into the coach. Walpole writes to 
 Mann, in 1750, that ' Jemmy Lumley last week had a 
 party of whist at his own house : the combatants, Lucy 
 Southwell, that curtseys like a bear, Mrs. Bijean, and 
 Mrs. Mackenzy. They played from six in the evening 
 till twelve next day, Jemmy never winning one rubber, 
 and rising a loser of i?2,000. . . . He fancied himself 
 cheated and would not pay. However, the bear had no 
 share in his evil surmises . . . and he promised a dinner 
 at Hampstead to Lucy and her sister. As he went to 
 the rendezvous his chaise was stopped, and he was advised 
 by someone not to proceed. But proceed he did, and 
 in the garden he found Mrs. Mackenzy. She asked him 
 whether he was going to pay, and, on his declining to 
 do so, the fair virago took a horsewhip from beneath 
 her hoop, and fell upon him with the utmost vehemence.'' 
 Members of clubs were fully aware of the nefarious- 
 ness of their devotion to gambling. When a waiter at 
 Arthur's Club was taken up for robbery, George Selwyn 
 said : ' What a horrid idea he will give of us to the 
 people in Newgate V Certes, some of the highwaymen 
 in that prison were not such robbers and scoundrels as 
 some of the aristocratic members of those clubs. When, 
 in 1750, the people got frightened about an earthquake 
 in London, predicted to happen in that year, ' Lady 
 Catherine Pelham, 1 Walpole tells us, ' Lady James 
 Arundel 1, and Lord and Lady Gal way ... go this
 
 GAMBLING-CLUBS AND HIGH PLAY 11 
 
 evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are 
 going to play at brag till five in the morning, and then 
 come back, I suppose, to look for the bones of their 
 husbands and families under the rubbish. 1 When the 
 rulers of the nation on such an occasion, or any other 
 occasion of public terror, possibly caused by their own 
 mismanagement of public affairs, hypocritically and 
 most impertinently ordered a day of fasting and humilia- 
 tion, the gambling-houses used to be filled with officials 
 and members of Parliament, who thus had a day off. 
 
 There was one famous gambling-house we find we 
 have not yet mentioned, viz., Shaver's Hall, which 
 occupied the whole of the southern side of Coventry 
 Street, from the Haymarket to Hedge Lane (now 
 Oxenden Street), and derived its name from the barber 
 of Lord Pembroke, who built it out of his earnings. 
 Attached to it was a bowling-green, which sloped down 
 to the south. The place was built about the year 1650, 
 and the tennis-court belonging to it till recently might 
 still be seen in St. James's Street.
 
 II. 
 
 WITTY WOMEN AND PRETTY WOMEN. 
 
 CERTAIN waves of sentiment or action, or both 
 combined, have at various times passed over the 
 face of European society. A thousand years ago 
 the Old Continent went madly crusading to snatch the 
 Holy Sepulchre from the grasp of the pagan Sultan, 
 who, sick man as he is, still holds it. The movement 
 had certain advantages : it cleared Europe of a good 
 deal of ruffianism, which never came back, as it perished 
 on the journey to Jerusalem, or very properly was killed 
 off by the justly incensed Turks, who could not under- 
 stand by what right these hordes of robbers invaded 
 their country. Then another phase of society madness 
 arose. Some maniac, clad in armour, on a horse similarly 
 accoutred, would appear, and challenge everyone to 
 admit that the Lady Gwendolyne Mousetrap, whom he 
 kept company with, and took to the tea-gardens on 
 Sundays, was the most peerless damosel, and that whoso 
 doubted it, would not get off by paying a dollar, but 
 would have to fight it out with him. Then another 
 mailed and belted chap would jump up, and maintain 
 that the Countess of Rabbit-Warren — who was the girl
 
 WITTY WOMEN AND PRETTY WOMEN 13 
 
 he was just then booming — was the finest woman going, 
 and that that slut Gwendolyne Mousetrap was no 
 better than she should be. Of course, as soon as the 
 King and Court heard of the shindy between the two 
 knights a day was appointed when they should fight it 
 out, the combatants being enclosed in a kind of rat-pit, 
 officially called lists, whilst the King, his courtiers and 
 their gentle ladies looked at the sport ; and if one of 
 the knights was killed, or perhaps both were killed, or 
 at least maimed for life, the Lady Gwendolyne and the 
 Countess of Rabbit- Warren, who, of course, both assisted 
 at the spectacle, received the congratulations of the 
 Court. Sometimes one of the knights would funk, and 
 not come up to the scratch ; then he was declared a 
 lame duck, and the lady whom he had left in the lurch 
 and made a laughing-stock of would erase his name 
 from her tablets, and shy the trumpery proofs of devo- 
 tion he had given her, a worn-out scarf or Brummagem 
 aigrette, out of an upper window. This was called the 
 age of chivalry. Then a totally different eruption of 
 the fighting mania — which is, after all, the universal 
 principle in human action — took place. A vagrant 
 scholasticus would appear in a University town, and 
 announce that he was ready to hold a disputation with 
 any professor, Doctor of Divinity, or Master of Arts, 
 on any mortal subject, the more subtle, and the more 
 incomprehensible, and the more mystical, the better. 
 Thus, one such scholasticus got into the rostrum at 
 Tubingen, and addressed his audience thus : ' I am 
 about to propound three theses : the answer to the first 
 is known to myself only, and not to you ; to the second, 
 the answer is known neither to you nor to me ; to the
 
 14 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 third, the answer is known to you only.' This was a 
 promising programme, and, indeed, proved highly edify- 
 ing. ' Now, the first question,' resumed the scholasticus, 
 ' is this : Have I got any breeches on ? You don't 
 know, but I do ; I have not. The second question, the 
 answer to which is known neither to you nor to me, is : 
 Shall I find in this town any draper willing to advance 
 on credit stuff enough to make me a pair? And the 
 third question, the answer to which is known to you 
 only, is : Will any of you pay a tailor's wages to make 
 me a pair? And now that the argument is clearly 
 before you, we may proceed to the consideration of the 
 parabolic triangulation of the binocular theorem ;' and 
 then he would bewilder them with a lot of jaw-breaking 
 words, which then, as now, passed for learning. This 
 was called the age of scholasticism. It was succeeded 
 by the Renaissance, which, after a good boil-up of its 
 intellectual ingredients, settled down into a literary 
 mud, an Acqui-la-Bollente, a Nile mud, pleasant to the 
 soul, and fertilizing to the mind, the protoplasm of 
 diarists and letter-writers, of whom — to mention but 
 three — Evelyn, Pepys, and Horace Walpole were pro- 
 minent patterns in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 turies. 
 
 It is with the latter, Horace Walpole, of Strawberry 
 Hill, we are chiefly concerned. Horace Walpole, after 
 enlarging a cottage into a Gothic castle, with lath and 
 plaster, and rough-cast walls, and wooden pinnacles, 
 filled it with literary and artistic treasures. But he 
 also gathered around him a select social circle, which 
 included Gairick, Paul Whitehead, General Conway, 
 George Sehvyn, Richard Bentley, the poet Gray, Sir
 
 WITTY WOMEN AND PRETTY WOMEN 15 
 
 Horace Mann, and Lords Edgcumbe and Strafford. 
 And of ladies there was no lack ; there were Mrs. Prit- 
 chard, Kitty Give, Lady Suffolk, the Misses Berry, and 
 — would you believe it ? — Hannah More ! It was the 
 age for chronicling small-beer and home-made wine, 
 gossip, scandal, and frivolity ; and Horace Walpole 
 enjoyed existence as a cynical Seladon or platonic Blue- 
 beard amidst this bevy of lively, gay-minded, frolicsome 
 beauties, young and old. Happily, or unhappily, for 
 him, he did not become acquainted with the Misses 
 Berry before 1788, when he was seventy-one years of 
 age. He took the most extraordinary liking to them, 
 and was never content except when they were with him, 
 or corresponding with him. When they went to Italy, 
 he wrote to them regularly once a week, and on their 
 return he installed them at Little Strawberry Hill, a 
 house close to his own, so that he might daily enjoy 
 their society. He appointed them his literary executors, 
 with the charge of collecting and publishing his writings, 
 which was done under the superintendence of Mr. Berry, 
 their father, who was a Yorkshire gentleman. When 
 Walpole had succeeded to the Earldom of Orford he 
 made Mary, the elder of the two sisters, an offer of his 
 hand. Both sisters survived him upwards of sixty years. 
 Little Strawberry Hill, which we just mentioned as 
 the residence of the Misses Berry, had, before their 
 coming to live in it, been occupied by Kitty Give, the 
 famous actress. Born in 1711, she made her first 
 appearance on the stage of Drury Lane, and in 1732 
 she married a brother of Lord Give, but the union 
 proved unhappy, and was soon dissolved. She quitted 
 the stage in 1769, leaving a splendid reputation as an
 
 16 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 actress and as a woman behind her, and retired to Little 
 Strawberry Hill, where she lived in ease, surrounded 
 by friends and respected by the world. Horace Walpole 
 was a constant visitor at her house, as were many other 
 persons of rank and eminence. It was said of her that 
 no man could be grave when Kitty chose to be merry. 
 But she must have been a woman of some spirit, too, 
 for when it was proposed to stop up a footpath in her 
 neighbourhood she placed herself at the head of the 
 opponents, and defeated the project. She died suddenly 
 in 1785, and Walpole placed an urn in the grounds to 
 her memory, with the inscription : 
 
 ' Here lived the laughter-loving dame ; 
 A matchless actress, Clive her name. 
 The comic Muse with her retired, 
 And shed a tear when she expired.' 
 
 The Mrs. Pritchard mentioned above was also an actress, 
 of great and well-deserved fame. She lived at an origin- 
 ally small house, called " Ragman's Castle," which she 
 much improved and enlarged. It had, after her, various 
 occupants, and was finally taken down by Lord Kil- 
 morey during his occupancy of Orleans House, near 
 which it stood. 
 
 Another of the constant visitors at Strawberry Hill 
 was Lady Suffolk, Pope's ' Chloe." 1 She was married to 
 the Hon. Charles Howard, from whom she separated 
 when she became the mistress of the Prince, afterwards 
 George II., who, as Prince, allowed her i?2,000 a year, 
 and as King d£3,200 a year, besides several sums at 
 various times. He gave her ^12,000 towards Marble 
 Hill, the mansion still facing the Thames, which became
 
 WITTY WOMEN AND PRETTY WOMEN 17 
 
 her residence. Her husband lived long enough to 
 become Earl of Suffolk, and dying, left her free to 
 marry, when she was forty-five, the Hon. George 
 Berkeley, who died eleven years after. She survived 
 him twenty-one years, and supplied her neighbour, 
 Horace Walpole, with Court anecdotes and scandal 
 during all that period. Walpole calls her remarkably 
 'genteel - ' — a favourite expression of his, though now 
 so vulgar ! — and, in spite of her antecedents, she was 
 courted by the highest in the land. Such were the 
 morals of those days. According to Horace Walpole, 
 her mental qualifications were not of a high order, but 
 she was gentle and engaging in her manners, and she 
 was a gossip with a good memory — and that answered 
 her host's purpose admirably. Pope also made great 
 use of her reminiscences. 
 
 Like Dr. Johnson, Horace Walpole liked to fill his 
 house with a lot of female devotees ; but whilst Johnson 
 seemed to prefer a parcel of disagreeable, ugly, and 
 cantankerous women, always quarrelling among them- 
 selves and with everybody else, Walpole liked his women 
 to be young and fair, full of life and mirth. By what 
 strange circumstance was the cynical and sarcastic 
 Walpole led into a sort of friendship with the mild and 
 pietistic Mrs. Hannah More ? It was in 1784 that 
 this queer friendship began. It appears that about 
 that date Hannah More had discovered at Bristol a 
 milk woman who wrote verses, just such verses as Hannah 
 More and Walpole — neither of whom had an idea of 
 poetry — would consider wonderful. A subscription 
 must be started for the benefit of the milkwoman, and 
 Hannah More applied to Horace Walpole, who set up 
 
 l 2
 
 18 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 for a Maecenas, though he always expressed the utmost 
 contempt for authors, for a contribution. Of course, 
 Hannah More did not make this application without a 
 dose of fulsome compliment to Horace Walpole's genius, 
 and he went into the trap, subscribed, and expressed his 
 admiration of the milkwomans poetry. The woman's 
 name was Yearsley ; she was quite ready to receive the 
 money, but, having evidently a very high opinion of her 
 own doggerel, she refused to listen to the literary advice 
 given to her by Horace Walpole and her patroness, with 
 whom she very soon quarrelled. Walpole condoled with 
 Hannah thus : ' You are not only benevolence itself, 
 but, with fifty times the genius of Dame Yearsley, you 
 are void of vanity. How strange that vanity should 
 expel gratitude ! Does not the wretched woman owe 
 her fame to you ? . . . Dame Yearsley reminds me of 
 the troubadours, those vagrants whom I used to admire 
 till I knew their history, and who used to pour out 
 trumpery verses, and flatter or abuse, accordingly as they 
 were housed and clothed, or dismissed to the next parish. 
 Yet you did not set this person in the stocks, after pro- 
 curing an annuity for her. 1 By this letter we see what 
 were Horace Walpole's ideas of patronage : flattery and 
 a pittance, independence and the stocks. Walpole was 
 open to flattery. Dr. Johnson was not — at least, not 
 from a woman ; he despised the sex too much to care 
 for their praise. When Hannah More laid it on very 
 thick in his case, he fiercely turned round on her and 
 said : ' Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to 
 his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery 
 is worth his having." 1 And, with all his admiration for 
 her character, Walpole could not help sneering at what
 
 WITTY WOMEN AND PRETTY WOMEN 19 
 
 he called her saintliness, and venting his sarcasm on her 
 silly ' Coelebs in Search of a Wife," the absurdity of which 
 has, indeed, been surpassed by a few modern novels of 
 the same tendency. The last we hear of their friendship 
 is that he made her a present of a Bible — fancy the 
 satyr's leer with which he must have presented it to her ! 
 She paid him out for the implied irony by wishing that 
 he would read it. 
 
 Among the ladies who were neighbours of Horace 
 Walpole, we must not omit Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu, who lived for some years in a house on the 
 south side of the road leading to Twickenham Common. 
 She may justly be considered as one of the witty, if not 
 of the pretty, women of Walpole's time. He detested 
 her. Probably he was somewhat jealous of her, for her 
 letters from Constantinople on Turkish life and society 
 earned her the sobriquet of the 'Female Horace Walpole. 1 
 He writes of her thus whilst she was living at Florence : 
 1 She is laughed at by the whole town. Her dress, her 
 avarice, and her impudence must amaze anyone. . . . 
 She wears a foul mob, that does not cover her greasy 
 black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled ; 
 an old mazarine blue wrapper, that gapes open and 
 discovers a canvas petticoat. Her face swelled violently 
 on one side, and partly covered with white paint, which 
 for cheapness she has bought so coarse that you would 
 not use it to wash a chimney. 1 In another letter he 
 describes her dress as consisting of ' a groundwork of 
 dirt, with an embroidery of filthiness. 1 When he wrote 
 of her then, she was about fifty years of age, and seems 
 to have retained none of the beauty which distinguished 
 her in her earlier years. She was not only coarse in 
 
 2—2
 
 20 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 looks, but in her speech and writings, which shock 
 modern fastidiousness. She was not the woman to 
 please Horace Walpole, who, even when in the seventies, 
 liked nothing better than acting as squire or cicerone 
 to fine ladies. Lady Mary was not one of them. She 
 was, in fact, what we now should call a regular Bohemian ; 
 and was it to be wondered at? She had been intro- 
 duced into that sort of life when she was a girl only 
 eight years old by her own father, Evelyn, Earl of 
 Kingston. He was a member of the Kitcat Club, whose 
 chief occupation was the proposing and toasting the 
 beauties of the day. One evening the Earl took it into 
 his head to nominate his daughter. She was sent for in 
 a chaise, and introduced to the company in dirty Shire 
 Lane in a grimy chamber, reeking with foul culinary 
 smells and stale tobacco-smoke, and elected by acclama- 
 tion. The gentlemen drank the little lady's health up- 
 standing ; and feasting her with sweets, and passing her 
 round with kisses, at once inscribed her name with a 
 diamond on a drinking - glass. 'Pleasure, 1 she says, 
 ' was too poor a word to express my sensations. They 
 amounted to ecstasy. Never again throughout my whole 
 life did I pass so happy an evening.'' Of course, the 
 child could not perceive the hideousness of the whole 
 proceeding and its surroundings : if the kisses were 
 seasoned with droppings of snuff from the noses above, 
 which otherwise were not always very clean — even at the 
 beginning of this century Lord Kenyon, Chief Justice 
 of the King's Bench, was an utter stranger to the luxury 
 of a pocket-handkerchief, and had no delicacy about 
 avowing it — it did not detract from the sweetness of 
 the bon-bons with which she was regaled.
 
 WITTY WOMEN AND PRETTY WOMEN 21 
 
 The founder of the Blue-Stocking Club, Mrs. Montagu, 
 nee Elizabeth Robinson, was another of Walpole's witty 
 and handsome lady friends. As a girl she was lively, 
 full of fun, yet fond of study. In 1742 she was married 
 to Edward Montagu, M.P., a coal-owner of great wealth. 
 As a girl the Duchess of Portland had called her ' La 
 Petite Fidget 1 ; but after her marriage she became more 
 sedate, and a great power in the literary world. She 
 established the Blue-Stocking Club, of which herself, 
 Mrs. Vesey, Miss Boscawen, Mrs. Carter, Lord Lyttelton, 
 Mr. Pulteney, Mr. Stillingfleet, and Horace Walpole 
 were the first members. The name originally came from 
 Venice, where, in 1400, the Academical Society (Idle calze 
 had been established, whence the name was transferred 
 to similar associations in France, there called Bus Bleus, 
 and from the latter country it was introduced into 
 England. Mrs. Montagu, having been left a widow 
 with P7,000 a year, built herself a mansion, standing 
 in a large garden at the north-west corner of Portman 
 Square, and there the Blue-Stocking Club continued to 
 hold its meetings for a number of years, including all 
 the persons of her time who were celebrated in art, 
 science, or literature, among whom may be mentioned 
 Boswell and Johnson, the latter of whom, in the presence 
 of ladies, somewhat modified his bearish habits. Mrs. 
 Montagu died in 1800, and the house she had built 
 eventually became the town residence of Viscount 
 Portman. 
 
 Of course, Horace Walpole was acquainted with the 
 Misses Gunning — ' those goddesses,' as Mary Montagu 
 styled them. They were nieces of the first Earl of Mayo, 
 and so got a ready introduction into London society,
 
 22 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 which literally went raving mad about them. Horace 
 Walpole tells us that even the ' great unwashed ' followed 
 them in crowds whenever they appeared in public : there 
 must have been an extraordinary appreciation of beauty 
 in the rabble — and what a rabble of ruffians it was ! — 
 of those days. But London then was no bigger than a 
 provincial town, compared with what it is now. The 
 two ladies speedily found husbands : the Duke of 
 Hamilton married Elizabeth, the younger, after an 
 evening spent in the society of the sisters and their 
 mother at Bedford House, and was in such a hurry 
 about it that he would wait for neither licence nor ring, 
 and, after with some difficulty satisfying the scruples of 
 the parson called upon to celebrate the extempore cere- 
 mony, they were married with the ring of a bed-curtain, 
 at half an hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel. 
 Three weeks afterwards Lord Coventry married her 
 sister, Maria. The Duke of Hamilton dying in 1758, 
 six years after the strange nuptials in Mayfair Chapel, 
 the widow in the following year married Jack Campbell, 
 afterwards Duke of Argyll. Lady Coventry did not 
 wear her coronet long ; in 1760 she died, it is said, in 
 consequence of her excessive use of white paint. Her 
 sister, ' twice duchessed/ survived her many years. 
 
 We have far from exhausted the list of the ladies 
 distinguished for wit and beauty who figure in Horace 
 Walpole's ' Letters,' but our space is exhausted. We 
 cannot, however, conclude without a few words on the 
 ' Letters ' in question. Their chief value consists in 
 the lively descriptions of public events; not as dry and 
 cold history records them, but by letting us have peeps 
 behind the scenes, so as to see the wire-pullers, the
 
 WITTY WOMEN AND PRETTY WOMEN 23 
 
 secret machinery, which set in motion the actors on the 
 political and social stage. They show us lords and ladies 
 in their negliges, and how the conceit of a hairdresser, 
 or the caprice of a lady's-maid, may make or mar the 
 destinies of a nation. This copious letter-writing forms 
 indeed an era in our literary history which will never 
 return or be renewed ; the prying reporter and the irre- 
 pressible interviewer now supply all the world with what 
 the letter-writer communicated to a few friends only. 
 This present age may be called the Age of Reminiscences: 
 everybody is writing his ; of making books there is no 
 end !
 
 A 
 
 III. 
 
 OLD LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES. 
 
 COMPARATIVELY small room, considering it 
 was one for public use, with clingy walls, a grimy 
 ceiling, a sanded floor, boxes with upright backs 
 and narrow seats, wooden chairs, liquor-stained tables, 
 lighted up in the evening with smoky lamps or gutter- 
 ing candles, the whole room reeking with tobacco like 
 a guard-room — such was the coffee-house of the later 
 Stuart and the whole Georgian periods. Its distinc- 
 tive article of furniture was spittoons. In such dens 
 did the noblemen, in flowing wigs and embroidered 
 coats, parsons in cassocks and bands, physicians in 
 sable suits and tremendous perukes, together with 
 broken-down gamesters, swindlers, country yokels, and 
 out-at-elbows literary and theatrical adventurers, meet, 
 not only for pleasure, but for business too. Dr. Rad- 
 cliffe, who in 1685 had the largest practice in London, 
 was daily to be seen at Garraway's, now demolished, 
 its site being included in Martin's bank ; and another 
 favourite resort of doctors hereby was Batson's, where, 
 as the ' Connoisseur ' says, ' the dispensers of life and 
 death flock together, like birds of prey watching for
 
 OLD LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES 25 
 
 carcases. I never enter this place but it serves as a 
 memento mor'i to me. . . . Batson's has been reckoned 
 the seat of solemn stupidity. 1 
 
 Coffee-houses, indeed, had their distinct sets of cus- 
 tomers. St. Paul's, for instance, was patronized by the 
 clergy, both by those with fat livings and by ' battered 
 crapes, 1 who plied there for an occasional burial or 
 sermon. Dick's was frequented by members of the 
 Temple, with whom, in 1737, Mrs. Yarrow and her 
 daughter, who kept the house, were great favourites ; 
 wherefore, when the Rev. James Miller brought out a 
 comedy, called ' The Coffee-House, 1 in which the ladies 
 were thought to be indicated — the engraver having un- 
 fortunately fixed upon Dick's Coffee - House as the 
 frontispiece scene — the Templars attended the first 
 representation, and hissed the piece off the boards. 
 Button's, in Covent Garden, was the resort of Addison 
 and Steele, of Pope and Swift, of Savage and Davenant 
 — in fact, of the wits of the time. At this house was 
 the lion's head through whose mouth letters were 
 dropped for the Tailers and Spectators. The head 
 was afterwards transferred to the Bedford Coffee-House, 
 under the Piazza, and eventually, in 1827, was pur- 
 chased by the Duke of Bedford, and is now at Woburn 
 Abbey. Bedford's was the successor of Button's, and is 
 described in the 'Memoirs' of it as having been sig- 
 nalized for many years as ' the emporium of wit, the 
 seat of criticism, and the standard of taste.' In 1659 
 was founded the Rota Club by James Charrington, a 
 political writer, and its members met at Miles's, in Old 
 Palace Yard. Pepys attended one of its meetings on 
 January 10, 1659-60. It was a kind of debating-
 
 26 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 society for the dissemination of Republican opinions. 
 Coffee-houses, indeed, at that period became important 
 political institutions. Nothing resembling the modern 
 newspaper then existed ; in consequence, these houses 
 were the chief organs through which the public opinion 
 vented itself, and so threatening to the Court did, in 
 course of time, their influence appear, that on Decem- 
 ber 29, 1675, the King and his Cabal Ministry issued a 
 proclamation for shutting up and suppressing all coffee- 
 houses, ' because in such houses, and by occasion of the 
 meeting of disaffected persons in them, diverse false, 
 malicious, and scandalous reports were devised and 
 spread abroad, to the defamation of his Majesty's 
 Government, and to the disturbance of the quiet and 
 peace of the realm.' The opinions of the judges were 
 taken on this ridiculous edict, and they sapiently 
 reported 'that retailing coffee might be an innocent 
 trade, but as it was used to nourish sedition, spread 
 lies, and scandalize great men, it might also be a 
 common nuisance. 1 On a petition of the merchants 
 and retailers of coffee and tea, permission was granted 
 to keep open the coffee-houses until June 24 next, 
 under an admonition that ' the masters of them should 
 prevent all scandalous papers, books, and libels from 
 being read in them.*' This, of course, was a huge joke 
 on the part of the Cabal, who thus constituted the con- 
 coctors and dispensers of ' dishes , — to use the hideous 
 word then employed — of coffee and tea censors and 
 licensers of books, and judges of the truth or falsehood 
 of political opinions and intelligence. After that no 
 more was heard of the matter, and the coffee-houses 
 remained political debating clubs, as is proved by the
 
 OLD LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES 27 
 
 remarks on them in the Spectator and similar publica- 
 tions. See, for instance, Nos. 403, 476, 481, 521, etc. 
 
 The first London coffee-house was set up by one 
 Bowman, coachman to Mr. Hodges, a Turkey mer- 
 chant. Others say that Mr. Edwards brought over 
 with him a Ragusa servant, Pasqua Rosee, who was 
 associated with Bowman in establishing the first coffee- 
 house in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill. But the 
 partners soon quarrelled. They parted, and Bowman 
 opened a coffee-house in St. Michael's Churchyard, 
 from which we may infer that the public took to the 
 new drink. Rosee issued handbills headed : ' The 
 vertue of the coffee-drink. First made and publicly 
 sold in England by Pasqua Rosee, at the sign of his 
 own head."' The original of one of them is preserved 
 in the British Museum. It is generally said that the 
 second coffee-house in London was that established as 
 the Rainbow (now a tavern) in Fleet Street, by one 
 Farr, a barber, in the year 1657. In the Mercurius 
 Politicus of September 30, 1658, an advertisement ap- 
 peared, setting forth the virtues of the then equally 
 new beverage, namely, tcha, or tay, or tee, which was 
 sold at the Sultaness Head Cophee-house, in Sweeting's 
 Rents, by the Royal Exchange. We thus see that as 
 early as 1658 there were already three coffee-houses in 
 London. But coffee met with opponents. The 
 vintners called it ' sooty drink '; lampooners said it 
 undermined virile power, and that to drink it was to 
 ape the Turks and insult one's canary - drinking 
 ancestors. Farr, the founder of the Rainbow, already 
 mentioned, was indicted for ' making and selling a sort 
 of liquor, called coffee, whereby in making it he
 
 28 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 annoyed his neighbours by evil smells, and for keeping 
 of fire for the most part night and day, to the great 
 danger and affrightment of his neighbours. 1 But Fan- 
 stood his ground, and in time became a person of 
 importance in the parish, and coffee-houses multiplied. 
 Cornhill and its purlieus were full of them. There 
 were the Great Turk, Sword Blade, Rainbow, Garra- 
 way, Jerusalem, Tom's, and Weston's Coffee-Houses in 
 Exchange Alley alone ; in St. Michael's Alley, close by, 
 there were, besides Rosee's, Williams's, and other coffee- 
 houses. They also, as we have seen, had been estab- 
 lished further west than the City, and they were also, 
 as already mentioned, places of rendezvous, where 
 appointments were made, where lawyers met clients, 
 and doctors patients, merchants their customers, clerks 
 their masters, where farce - writers, journalists, poli- 
 ticians, and literary hacks went to pick up ideas, and, 
 as it was then called, watch, and if they could, catch 
 the humours of the town. The Spectator, in his very 
 first number, acknowledges his indebtedness to coffee- 
 houses. ' There is no place of general resort, 1 he says, 
 ' wherein I do not often make my appearance. Some- 
 times I am seen thrusting my head into a round of 
 politicians at Will's (on the north side of Russell Street, 
 at the corner of Bow Street), and listening with great 
 attention to the narratives that are made in those little 
 circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's 
 (St. Paul's Churchyard), and whilst I seem attentive to 
 nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of 
 every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights at 
 St. James's (the famous Whig coffee-house from the 
 time of Queen Anne to late in the reign of George III.),
 
 OLD LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES 29 
 
 and sometimes join the little committee of politics in 
 the inner room, as one who comes there to hear and 
 improve. 1 
 
 There was another Will's in Serle Street, Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields, which was also a haunt of the Spectator, as 
 were the other coffee-houses in that neighbourhood. He 
 says in his ninety-ninth number : ' I do not know that 
 I meet in any of my walks objects which move both my 
 spleen and laughter so effectually as these young fellows 
 at the Grecian, Squire's, Searle's, and all other coffee- 
 houses adjacent to the law, who rise early for no other 
 purpose but to publish their laziness. 1 It appears that 
 it was usual to resort to the coffee-house as early as six 
 o'clock in the morning. In ' Mosers Vestiges, 1 Will's is 
 thus referred to : ' All the beaux that used to breakfast 
 in the coffee-houses and taverns appendant to the Inns 
 of Court struck their morning strokes in an elegant 
 deshabille, which was carelessly confined by a sash of 
 yellow, red, blue, green, etc., according to the taste of 
 the wearer. The idle fashion was not quite worn out 
 in 1765. We can remember having seen some of these 
 early loungers in their nightgowns, caps, etc., at Will's, 
 Lincoln's Inn Gate, about that period. 1 
 
 But the coffee-houses were not all for beer and skittles 
 only. In the City especially, the business of the City, 
 and of England, in fact, was transacted in them. Mer- 
 chants and other business people, professional men, 
 brokers, agents, had not then their private offices, which 
 could only be reached through the ante-den of quill- 
 driving cerberi, vidgo clerks. All the transactions of 
 daily life were then largely carried on in public, as they 
 are in all communities, until they arrive at a high state
 
 30 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 of civilization. Even now among the peasantry of 
 various European countries a man cannot have his child 
 christened without the ceremony being rendered a public 
 spectacle. And so here in England, in the barbarous 
 days of dingy and musty coffee-houses, they were con- 
 sulting-rooms, offices, counting-houses, auction-rooms, 
 and shops. When the business was done, or in order 
 to further it, refreshments of all sorts were handy, for 
 the coffee-house did not confine itself to that innocent 
 beverage, but supplied stronger stuffs ; it was, in fact, 
 a tavern, and many of the houses, now openly so called, 
 were formerly coffee-houses. And the business trans- 
 acted at them was, as may be imagined, of the most 
 varied character. Agents for the purchase or sale of 
 estates, houses and other property, instead of seeing 
 people at their offices, met them at coffee-houses. Thus 
 one Thomas Rogers advertised that he gave attendance 
 daily at the Rainbow by the Temple ; on Tuesdays at 
 Tom's, by the Exchange, and on Thursdays at Will's, 
 near Whitehall, for transacting agency business. This 
 was legitimate enough, but what of the sale of human 
 flesh at a coffee-house ? In 1708 an advertisement 
 appeared : ' A black boy, twelve years of age, fit to 
 wait on a gentleman, to be disposed of at Denis's Coffee- 
 house, in Finch-lane. 1 And again, in 1728 : ' To be 
 sold, a negro boy, aged eleven years. Enquire at the 
 Virginia Coffee-house, Threadneedle-street. 1 Sometimes 
 the keeper of the coffee-house sold goods on account of 
 others ; thus from an advertisement in the Postman, 
 January, 1705, we learn that Mr. Shipton, at John's 
 Coffee-house, in Exchange Alley, sold someone's famous 
 razor strops. The landlords of those places, indeed, seem
 
 OLD LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES 31 
 
 to have been very accommodating, especially in the taking 
 in of letters, thus anticipating the practice of modern 
 newspaper shops. And they were not squeamish as to 
 the advertisements, answers to which were to be sent to 
 them. Thus a gentleman (?) in the General Advertiser, 
 October, 1745, expressed a wish to hear from a lady he 
 had seen in one of the left-hand boxes at Drury Lane, 
 and who seemed to take particular notice of a gentleman 
 who sat about the middle of the pit (the advertiser, of 
 course). Letter to be left for ' P. M. F.\ at the Portugal 
 Coffee-house, near the Exchange. In 1762 a young 
 man advertised for his mother, ' who, in 1740, resided 
 at a certain village near Bath, where she was delivered 
 of a son, whom she left with a sum of money under the 
 care of a person in the same parish, and promised to 
 fetch him at a certain age, but has not since been heard 
 of ... if living, she is asked to send a letter to " J. E.", 
 at the Chapter Coffee-house, St. Paul's Churchyard 
 . . . this advertisement is published by the person 
 himself [i.e., the son, born near Bath] not from motives 
 of necessity, or to court any assistance (he being by a 
 series of happy circumstances possessed of an easy and 
 independent fortune)." It would, I fancy, be difficult 
 at the present day to find anyone, having a reputation 
 of any note to keep up, willing to receive answers to 
 such an advertisement, which, if it was not a fraud, 
 looked terribly like an attempt at one. It happened in 
 those days, as it occasionally does how, that the estates 
 of gentlemen who married late in life passed away to 
 remote branches ; the ' young gentleman ' had no doubt 
 reflected on this subject. The Turk's Head seems, to 
 judge by advertisements, to have been somewhat
 
 32 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 heathenish. Here is another advertisement, also from 
 the Morning Post, answers to which it took in : 
 ' Whereas there are ladies, who have ^2,000, ^3,000, 
 or i?4,000 at their command, and who, from not knowing 
 how to dispose of the same to the greatest advantage 
 . . . afford them but a scanty maintenance . . . the 
 advertiser (who is a gentleman of independent fortune, 
 strict honour and character, and above reward) acquaints 
 such ladies that if they will favour him with their name 
 and address ... he will put them into a method by 
 which they may, without any trouble, and with an 
 absolute certainty, place out their money, so as to pro- 
 duce them a clear interest of 10 or 12 per cent. . . . 
 on good and safe securities. Direct to " R. J., 11 Esq., 
 at the Turk's Head Coffee-house, Strand. 1 We pity 
 any lady who fell into the clutches of this ' gentleman 
 of independent fortune ' ! And how the Turk's Head 
 must have grinned when answers to ' R. J. 1 arrived ! 
 About the same time a gentleman advertised that he 
 knew a method, which reduced it almost to a certainty 
 to win a considerable sum by insuring numbers in the 
 lottery. For ten guineas the gentleman was prepared 
 to ' discover the plan. 1 Answers to be sent to the York 
 Coffee-house, St. James's Street. Another gentleman 
 is willing to lend oC3,000 to anyone having sufficient 
 interest to procure him a Government appointment, 
 worth i?200 or / J 300 per annum. Answers to this were 
 to be sent to the Chapter Coffee-house, St. Paul's. To 
 some of the coffee-houses it would seem porters were 
 attached, ready to run errands for customers, or the 
 outside public ; some of them seem to have earned a 
 reputation of a certain character. Thus Cynthio {Spec-
 
 OLD LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES 33 
 
 tator, No. 398) employs Robin, the porter, who waits 
 at Will's Coffee-house, to take a letter to Flavia. 
 ' Robin, you must know, 1 we are told, ' is the best man 
 in the town for carrying a billet ; the fellow has a thin 
 body, swift step, demure looks, sufficient sense, and 
 knows the town . . . the fellow covers his knowledge 
 of the nature of his messages with the most exquisite 
 low humour imaginable ; the first he obliged Flavia to 
 take was by complaining to her that he had a wife and 
 three children, and if she did not take that letter, which 
 he was sure there was no harm in, but rather love, his 
 family must go supperless to bed, for the gentleman 
 would pay him according as he did his business.'' He 
 would seem to have been a mild Leporello. 
 
 We find the cheapness of living at coifee-houses fre- 
 quently extolled in the publications and conversations of 
 the day in which they were most flourishing. An Irish 
 painter, whom Johnson knew, declared that £30 a year 
 was enough to enable a man to live in London, without 
 being contemptible. He allowed dCIO for clothes and 
 linen. He said a man might live in a garret at Is. 6d. 
 a week ; few people would inquire where he lodged, and 
 if they did, it was easy to say : ' Sir, you will find me at 
 such and such a place , — just as nowadays impecunious 
 swells, who live in garrets, manage to keep up their 
 club subscription, and give as their address that of the 
 club. By spending threepence at a coffee-house, John- 
 son's Irish painter further argued, a man might be for 
 some hours every day in very good company ; he might 
 dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread-and-milk for a 
 penny, and do without supper. On clean-shirt day the 
 painter went out to pay visits, as Swift also did. 
 
 3
 
 34 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 With regard to the persons employed in a coffee- 
 house, we learn from one advertisement : ' To prevent 
 all mistakes among gentlemen of the other end of the 
 town, who come but once a week to St. James's Coffee- 
 house, either by miscalling the servants, or requiring 
 such things from them as are not properly within their 
 respective provinces, this is to give notice that Kidney, 
 keeper of the book-debts of the outlying customers, and 
 observer of those who go off without paying, having 
 resigned that employment, is succeeded by John Sowton, 
 to whose place of caterer of messages and first coffee- 
 grinder William Bird is promoted, and Samuel Bardock 
 comes as shoe-cleaner in the room of the said Bird.' 
 
 Well, the coffee-houses are things of the past ; a few 
 survive as taverns. What may be considered as their 
 successors are called coffee-shops, patronized by working- 
 men chiefly, but the ' humours ' are of the tamest 
 description ; they may supply statistics to temperance 
 apostles, but no literary entertainment to the public.
 
 IV. 
 
 OLD M.P.S AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS. 
 
 SOMEBODY has said that, on making inquiry after 
 a man you have not seen for a number of years, 
 you may find him either in the hulks or in Parlia- 
 ment. This somebody evidently was a bit of a philo- 
 sopher, who knew how to put the possibilities of human 
 life in a nutshell. He understood that the same cause 
 may have totally different effects : the same heat which 
 softens lead hardens clay, the same abilities which may 
 send a man to penal servitude may elevate him to the 
 dignity of an M.P. And thus it happened that some 
 queer people got into Parliament, which, no doubt, was 
 the fact which gave rise to somebody's wise saw, and 
 which was not to be wondered at in the good old days, 
 before Reform and Corrupt Practices Prevention Acts, 
 and similar humbugging interferences with the liberty 
 of the subject, were dreamt of. In those good old days 
 of rotten and pocket boroughs men had Parliamentary 
 honours thrust upon them nolcntes volentes. Thus, a 
 noble lord, who owned several such boroughs, was asked 
 by the returning officer whom he meant to nominate. 
 Having no eligible candidate at hand, he named a waiter 
 
 3—2
 
 36 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 at White's Club, one Robert Mackreth ; but, as he did 
 not happen to be sure of the Christian name of his 
 nominee, the election was declared to be void. Nothing 
 daunted, his lordship persisted in his nomination. A 
 fresh election was therefore held, when, the name of the 
 waiter having been ascertained, he was returned as a 
 matter of course, and Robert Mackreth, Esq., took his 
 seat in St. Stephen's. This was possible in the days of 
 Eldon and Perceval ; in fact, in the early part of this 
 century, 306 members, more than half of the House of 
 Commons, were returned by 160 persons, and in 1830 it 
 was admitted that, though there were men of ability in 
 the Cabinet, such as Brougham, Lansdowne, Melbourne, 
 Palmerston, the members of the House were 'persons 
 of very narrow capacities, of small reputation for talent, 
 and without influence with the people." 1 
 
 However, the Reform Bill was passed in 1832, and 
 pocket boroughs were abolished. There had been thirty- 
 seven places returning members with constituencies not 
 exceeding fifty electors, and fourteen of those places 
 had not more than twenty electors. There were three 
 boroughs each containing only one =£?10 householder. 
 One of the boroughs only paid in assessed taxes ^3 9s., 
 another £16 8s. 9d., a third =£40 17s. Id. But, luckily 
 for the public, the Reform Bill did not abolish the fun 
 of the flags, music, beer, and jokes of elections. The 
 delicate attentions which could still be paid to candidates 
 remained in full swing. Thus, we remember an election 
 in the Isle of Wight : The father of one of the candidates 
 for Parliamentary distinction, in the Conservative in- 
 terest, had, in his youthful days, married a lady who, 
 in a peripatetic manner, dealt in oysters. His rival, a
 
 OLD M.P.S AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS 37 
 
 Radical, paid him the compliment of sending him daily 
 barrows and truck-loads of oyster-shells, which were, 
 with his kind regards, discharged in front of the hotel 
 where his committee was established, and from whose 
 windows he addressed the electors. It was splendid fun, 
 and calculated to impress the intelligent foreigner. It 
 showed how highly the British public appreciated their 
 elective franchise. Pleasantries had, indeed, always been 
 the rule at election-time. When Fox, in 1802, canvassed 
 Westminster, he asked a shopkeeper on the opposite side 
 for his vote and interest, when the latter produced a 
 halter, and said that was all he could give him. Fox 
 thanked him, but said he could not think of depriving 
 him of it, as no doubt it was a family relic. At an 
 election at Norwich in 1875 the committee-room of the 
 Conservative candidate was attacked, but the agent kept 
 up the fire and had red-hot pokers ready, which, stand- 
 ing at the top of the stairs, he offered to his assailants, 
 but they would not take them ! In the same town the 
 Liberals held a prayer-meeting, at which the Conserva- 
 tives presented each man with one of Moody and 
 Sankey's hymn-books, with something between the leaves. 
 In fact, the Reform Bill had not made elections pure. 
 William Roupell obtained his seat for Lambeth by the 
 expenditure of £1 0,000, 'and, 1 said a man well able to 
 judge of the truth of his assertion, 'if he were released 
 from prison (to which he was sent for life for his forgeries) 
 and would spend another ^10,000, he would be re- 
 elected, in spite of his having proved a criminal."' 
 
 Money carried the day at elections. According to 
 a speech made by Mr. Bright at Glasgow in 1866, a 
 member had told him that his election had cost him
 
 38 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 £9,000 already, and that he had £3,000 more to pay. 
 At a contest in North Shropshire in 1876, the expenses 
 of the successful candidate, Mr. Stanley Leighton, 
 amounted to £1 1,727, and of the defeated candidate, 
 Mr. Mainwaring, to £10,688. At the General Election 
 of 1880, in the county of Middlesex, the expenses of 
 the successful candidates, Lord George Hamilton and 
 Mr. Octavius Coope, were £11,506. The cost of the 
 Gravesend election, and the petition which followed 
 and unseated the candidate returned, was estimated at 
 £20,000. But the most expensive contest ever known 
 in electioneering was that for the representation of 
 Yorkshire. The candidates were Viscount Milton, son 
 of Earl Fitzwilliam, a Whig ; the Hon. Henry Lascelles, 
 son of Lord Harewood, a Tory ; and William Wilber- 
 force, in the Dissenting and Independent interest. The 
 election was carried on for fifteen days, Mr. Wilberforce 
 being at the head of the poll all the time. It terminated 
 in his favour and in that of Lord Milton. The contest 
 is said to have cost the parties near half a million 
 pounds. The expenses of Wilberforce were defrayed by 
 public subscription, more than double the sum being 
 raised within a few days, and one moiety was afterwards 
 returned to the subscribers. When Whitbread, the 
 brewer, first opposed the Duke of Bedford's interest at 
 Bedford, the Duke informed him that he w r ould spend 
 £50,000 rather than that he should come in. Whit- 
 bread replied that was nothing, the sale of his grains 
 would pay for that. Now, John Elwes, the miser, knew 
 better than that. Though worth half a million of 
 money, he entered Parliament, by the interest of Lord 
 Craven, at the expense of Is. 6d., for which he had a
 
 OLD M.P.S AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS 39 
 
 dinner at Abingdon. From 1774 he sat for the next 
 twelve years for Berkshire, his conduct being perfectly 
 independent, and in his case there had been no bribery 
 that could be brought home to him. He was a great 
 gambler, and, after staking large sums all night, he 
 would, in the morning, go to Smithfield to await the 
 arrival of his cattle from his farms in Essex, and, if not 
 arrived, would walk on to meet them. He wore a wig ; 
 if he found one thrown away into the gutter, he would 
 appropriate and wear it. In those days members occa- 
 sionally wore dress-swords at the House. One day a 
 gentleman seated next to Elwes was rising to leave his 
 place, and just at that moment Elwes bent forward, so 
 that the point of the sword the gentleman wore came 
 in contact with Elwes's wig, which it whisked off and 
 earned away. The House was instantly in a roar of 
 laughter, whilst the gentleman, unconscious of what he 
 had done, calmly walked away, and Elwes after him to 
 recover his wig, which looked as if it was one of those 
 he had picked up in the gutter. 
 
 Bribes were expected and given, as we have seen. Of 
 course, the thing was not done openly. Tricks were 
 practised, understood by all parties. The agent would 
 sit in a room in an out-of-the-way place. A voter would 
 come in ; the agent would say, ' How are you to-day P 1 
 and hold up three fingers. ' I am not very well, 1 the 
 answer would be, when the agent would accidentally 
 hold up his hand, upon which the voter would say that 
 he thought fresh air would do him good, and look out 
 of the window as if examining the sky. In the mean- 
 time the agent would place five sovereigns on the table, 
 and also go to look at the weather. His back being
 
 40 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 turned to the table, the voter would quietly slip the 
 cash into his pocket, and, saying ' Good-morning,' 1 take 
 his departure. And how could any bribery be proved ? 
 But occasionally the people expecting bribes were nicely 
 taken in. Lord Cochrane, when he first stood for 
 Honiton, refused to give bribes, and the seat was secured 
 by his opponent, who gave £5 for every vote. On this 
 Cochrane sent the bellman round to announce that he 
 would give to every one of the minority who had voted 
 for him 10 guineas. At the next election no questions 
 were asked, and Cochrane was returned by an over- 
 whelming majority. Those who had voted for him then 
 intimated that they expected some acknowledgment for 
 their support. He declined to give a penny, and when 
 he was reminded that, after the former election, he had 
 given 10 guineas to every one of the minority, he coolly 
 replied that this was for their disinterestedness in refusing 
 his opponent's £5, and that to pay them now would be 
 acting in violation of his principle not to bribe. And 
 the disinterested voters marched off with faces as long- 
 as those of horses. 
 
 The Reform Bill of 1832, which was highly objection- 
 able to old-fashioned Conservatives, was accused by 
 them of having introduced some very queer and curious 
 members into the House. Through this Bill the bone- 
 grubber, as Raike calls him, W. Cobbett, was returned 
 for Oldham, and Brighton, under the very nose of the 
 Court, returned two rampant Radicals, who openly 
 talked of reducing the allowance made to the King and 
 Queen. Nay, John Gully, a prize-fighter, was returned 
 to the House for Pontefract, and was re-elected at the 
 next election. He at one time kept the Plough Inn in
 
 OLD M.P.S AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS 41 
 
 Carey Street, which was pulled down just before the 
 erection of the new Law Courts. Eventually he resigned 
 his seat on account of ill-health, as he averred ; but as 
 he became a great patron of racing, and was a constant 
 attendant at the various race-courses, his ill-health was 
 probably only a pretence for quitting a sphere for which 
 he felt himself unfit. On his first election the following 
 epigram appeared against him : 
 
 ' If anyone ask why should Pontef ract sully 
 Its name by returning to Parliament Gully, 
 The etymological cause, I suppose, is 
 He's broken the bridges of so many noses.' 
 
 Another member who may be reckoned among the 
 curiosities who have sat in the House was William 
 Roupell. He was the illegitimate son of Richard 
 Palmer Roupell, a wealthy lead merchant, who invested 
 a large sum in the purchase of land, to which he gave 
 the name of the Roupell Park Estate. William was 
 his favourite son, though he had other legitimate 
 children ; and it was not till a few days before his 
 father's death that he learnt the secret of his own birth. 
 The former had made a will, by which he left this 
 property to William, on condition of his making annual 
 payments to his brothers and sisters ; but as this would 
 have brought to light the forgeries he had already com- 
 mitted during his father's lifetime, to the amount of 
 about dfl 50,000, he, on his father's death, managed to 
 get hold of the will, which eventually he destroyed, 
 substituting a forged one, leaving all to his wife and 
 William ; and the latter quickly persuaded his mother 
 to confer the greater part of the estates on him by deed
 
 42 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 of gift. He soon obtained the social position the great 
 wealth he now possessed usually commands; he stood 
 for Lambeth, and by the expenditure of i?l 0,000, as 
 already mentioned, he obtained the seat. But Roupell 
 was not only a rogue, but a fool. By gambling and 
 extravagance he soon ran through the fortune he had 
 obtained by crooked means. Finding the detection of 
 his crimes inevitable, he fled to Spain, but eventually 
 returned, and gave himself up to justice, confessing the 
 forgeries he had committed. Of course, the persons 
 who had purchased property then became aware that 
 the deeds by which they held it were worthless. The 
 court considered his offences so serious that in 1862 it 
 condemned him to penal servitude for life ; but he was 
 released after an imprisonment of fourteen years. In 
 1876 he left Portland a free man again. But it is with 
 Roupell as a member of Parliament we are chiefly 
 concerned. In that capacity he did not shine. He 
 remained in the House long enough to prove that he 
 was disqualified to represent a large borough like 
 Lambeth. He took no part in the debates, nor did he 
 appear to be able to grapple with and master any 
 question connected with politics. Being asked one 
 evening at the Horns, when meeting his constituents, 
 why he did not speak in the House of Commons, he 
 replied : ' Because I do not want to make a fool of 
 myself. 1 Next morning the Times made merry with 
 this confession. He was consequently regarded as a 
 cipher, but he was supported by his supposed wealth. 
 But soon suspicious murmurs began to be heard, and 
 he prepared for his flight to Spain ; and he decamped 
 without making any application for the Chiltern
 
 OLD M.P.S AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS 43 
 
 Hundreds, so that for a considerable time his place in 
 Parliament could not be filled up. Advertisements in 
 GaUgnani apprised him of the omission, and at length 
 the application was made. He did not meet with 
 much pity, either from the public or the press ; squibs 
 without end appeared against him in the papers. We 
 append a specimen of a short one : 
 
 1 Now, the Lambeth folks this wealthy gent 
 As their member did decide on, 
 But little they knew he'd happened to do 
 
 Some things he didn't oughter ; 
 For he'd forged a will and several deeds. . . . 
 
 ' And the public said : " Well, this here Roupell 
 Has got no more than he oughter." 
 So there was an end of the wealthy gent 
 As was member from over the water.' 
 
 Lambeth appears to have been unfortunate in the 
 selection of its Parliamentary candidates. In 1852 the 
 parochial party, wishing for a local man, formed them- 
 selves into a committee to secure the election of Mr. 
 Joseph Harvey, of Lambeth House, a drapery estab- 
 lishment in the Westminster Bridge Road. Mr. 
 Harvey had never taken an active part in public 
 matters ; his tastes lay not that way. He shrank 
 from public life, and had no training or aptitude for 
 addressing large meetings. However, he was forced 
 forward ; but when he spoke at the Horns — the speech 
 was written for him by someone else — his total in- 
 capacity for the position thrust on him became so 
 apparent that he gave up the contest, but not before 
 he had afforded plenty of food to the squib-writers. 
 
 Parliament is not above the use of nicknames, either
 
 44 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 by way of praise or in scorn. Cobbett\s talent for 
 fastening such names on anyone he disliked was very 
 great. He invented ' Prosperity Robinson,' ' iEolus 
 Canning,'' ' Pink-nosed Liverpool, 1 ' unbaptized, button- 
 less blackguards,'' or Quakers. Lord Yarmouth, from 
 the colour of his whiskers, and from the place which 
 gave him his title, was known as ' Red Herrings. 1 
 Lord Durham so often opposed his colleagues in the 
 Cabinet that he was called the ' Dissenting Minister. 1 
 Thomas Duncombe was so popular that he was always 
 spoken of as ' Honest 1 or ' Poor 1 Tom ; his French 
 friends called him ' Cher Tonne.' John Arthur Roe- 
 buck had a habit of bringing forward, in a startling way, 
 facts he had got hold of, and thus raising opposition ; 
 and from a passage in a speech he made at the Cutlers 1 
 Feast, at Sheffield, in 1858, obtained the nickname of 
 'Tear 'em.' He had just paid a visit to Cherbourg, 
 and returned home with feelings very unfriendly to the 
 then ruler of France, to which he gave expression at 
 the feast, excusing himself at the same time for using 
 such language towards a neighbour by saying : ' The 
 farmer who goes to sleep, having placed the watch-dog, 
 Tear 'em, over his rick-yard, hears that dog bark. He 
 bawls out of the window : " Down, Tear 'em, down I 11 
 And Tear 1 em does not again disturb his sleep, till he 
 is woke up by the strong blaze of his corn and hay 
 ricks. I am Tear "em. Beware ! Cherbourg is a 
 standing menace to England. 1 Michael Angelo Taylor 
 was known by the sobriquet of ' Chicken 1 Taylor. On 
 some points of law he had answered the great lawyer 
 Bearcroft, but not without apologizing for his ven- 
 turing, he being but a chicken in the law, on a fight
 
 OLD M.P.S AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS 45 
 
 with the cock of Westminster Hall. Charles Wynn 
 was brother to Sir Watkin Wynn, and from a peculi- 
 arity in the utterances of the latter, and the shrillness 
 of Charles's voice, the two went by the nicknames of 
 ' Bubble and Squeak." Sir Watkin was also known as 
 ' Small Journal 1 Wynn, from his extensive knowledge 
 of Parliamentary rule. William Cowper, falsely accused 
 of having married a second wife whilst his first was still 
 alive, was known as ' Will Bigamy." 1 
 
 Strangers formerly were not allowed to be present at 
 the deliberations of the House ; now they are admitted 
 to the Strangers"' Gallery, but never to the floor of the 
 House. Yet sometimes there will be an intruder. 
 Once Lord North, when speaking, was interrupted by 
 the barking of a dog which had crept in. He turned 
 round, and said : ' Mr. Speaker, I am interrupted by a 
 new member. 1 The dog was driven out, but got in 
 again, and recommenced barking, when Lord North, in 
 his dry way, said : ' Spoke once." 1 
 
 We are near the limits of our space. Let us con- 
 clude with recording a few of the strange designations 
 given to Parliaments. The Parliament de la Bonde 
 was a Parliament in the reign of Edward II., to which 
 the Barons came armed against the Spencers, with 
 coloured bands, or ' bonds, 1 upon their sleeves, by way 
 of distinction. The Diabolical Parliament was one held 
 at Coventry in the thirty-eighth year of Henry VI.'s 
 reign, and in which Edward, Earl of March, afterwards 
 King, and several of the nobility, were attainted. The 
 Unlearned Parliament, held at Coventry in the sixth 
 year of the reign of Henry IV., was so called by way 
 of derision, because, by a special precept to the sheriffs
 
 46 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 in their several counties, no lawyers were to be admitted 
 thereto. The Insane Parliament, which was held at 
 Oxford in the forty-first year of the reign of Henry III., 
 obtained this name from the extraordinary proceedings 
 of the Lords, who came with great retinues of armed 
 men, ' when contention grew very high, and many 
 things were enacted contrary to the King's prerogative. 1 
 We might add to the list, but the gas is being turned 
 off; so vale!
 
 V. 
 
 FAMOUS OLD ACTORS. 
 
 / ""]i~" v HERE is a boom just now in the theatrical world. 
 -*■ New theatres are springing up, not only in 
 London proper, but in all its suburbs, yet it is 
 only history repeating itself. From 1570 to 1629 no 
 less than seventeen playhouses had been built in London, 
 and London then extended only from the Tower to 
 Westminster, and from Oxford Street to Blackman 
 Street in the Borough. The first London theatre was 
 the Fortune,* opened about the year 1600, a large 
 round, brick building between Whitecross Street and 
 Golding — now Golden — Lane, which was burnt down 
 on December 9, 1621 . The town was then full of actors, 
 for besides those playing at the various theatres, there 
 were royal comedians. Many noblemen kept companies 
 of players, nay, the lawyers acted in the Inns of Court, 
 and there were actors of note among them. But the 
 inevitable reaction ensued. Amidst the storms of the 
 Revolution the stage was neglected. Even Shakespeare 
 
 * The Curtain is said to have been erected in 1570, on the 
 site of the present Curtain Road, but the date is doubtful, and 
 it was more of an inn than a playhouse.
 
 48 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 had to take a back-seat till Garrick brought him into 
 fashion again, though it is chiefly to the learned and 
 enthusiastic criticism and appreciation of German 
 students of Shakespeare that the revival of his plays on 
 the stage is due. His reputation was ' made in Ger- 
 many ,' and the Germans we have to thank for a Shake- 
 speare who is presentable to a modern audience, which 
 the original writer was not ; his plays were only fit to 
 be acted before the savages who delighted in bull and 
 bear baiting. This estimate of the Shakespearian drama 
 is not in accordance with the prevailing sentiment, but 
 we have a right to our opinions and the courage to 
 express them. However, this is only incidental to our 
 theme, which deals more with actors and acting than 
 with the plays they took parts in. 
 
 There is a general opinion abroad that the realistic 
 play is of quite modern date, probably brought on the 
 stage in * LTAssommoir. 1 In a publication of July, 
 1797, I find it stated that 'our managers some time 
 ago conceived it would be proper to introduce realities 
 instead of fictions. Hence we have seen real horses 
 and real bulls on the stage, gracing the triumphal entry 
 of some hero. Hence, too, real water has been supplied 
 in such quantities that Harlequin's leap into the sea 
 would now really be no joke. . . . The introduction of 
 water will, no doubt, facilitate the introduction of real 
 sea-fights, provided we can get real admirals and sea- 
 men.'' But the writer seems to have been oblivious of 
 the fact that, in the middle of the last century, already 
 the water of the New River had been carried under the 
 flooring of Sadler's Wells Theatre, the boards being 
 removed, for the exhibition of aquatic performances.
 
 FAMOUS OLD ACTORS 49 
 
 And as to this century, long before the more recent 
 realistic plays, we have seen in the sixties a real cab 
 with a real horse brought on to the stage to give the 
 heroine, who is about to elope, the opportunity of 
 uttering the pun : ' Now, four-wheeler, wo P (for weal 
 or woe !). And a very good pun it is. 
 
 The formation of the English drama is chiefly due to 
 the ' Children of Paul, 1 or pupils of St. Paul's School, 
 in those days nicknamed the 'Pigeons of St. Paul. 1 
 The dramatic celebrity of these juvenile performers goes 
 back as far as the year 1378. Originally they confined 
 themselves to ' moralities, 1 but in the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth, before whom they acted on various occasions, 
 they appeared in the regular drama with considerable 
 applause. They exhibited burlesque interludes and 
 farcical comedies. Their schoolroom, which stood behind 
 the Convocation House near St. Paul's, was their stage ; 
 but about the year 1580 the citizens, bent on driving all 
 players out of the city, caused it to be removed. The 
 plague had, as usual, caused great ravages in London, 
 and it was thought that the actors were great means 
 of spreading it, wherefore their performances were 
 altogether prohibited. When the ' Children of Paul 1 
 performed out of their own premises, it was generally 
 the Blackfriars Theatre they resorted to. When they 
 performed in the school-house the admission was 2d. 
 This charge was made to keep the company select, and 
 according to a passage in ' Jacke Drum's Entertainment, 1 
 first printed in 1601, it was select : 
 
 ' Sir Edward : I saw the " Children of Paul's " last 
 night, and troth, they pleased me prettie, prettie well. 
 The apes in time will do it handsomely. 
 
 4
 
 50 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 ' Planet : I like the audience that frequenteth there 
 with much applause. A man shall not be choked with 
 the stench of garlick, nor be passed to the barmy jacket 
 of a beer brewer. 1 
 
 The stage did not attain a dignified position till the 
 time of Shakespeare. He and his fellow-actors — Burbage, 
 Heminge, Condell, Taylor, Kemp, Sly — ennobled it, 
 and since then the roll of English actors who have 
 gained distinction on the boards is very long, and our 
 limited space allows us to refer to but a few of them, 
 and then only to some characteristic traits. 
 
 Let us commence with a defence of Garrick's conduct 
 towards Johnson. When the latter was preparing his 
 edition of ' Shakespeare, 1 Garrick offered him the use 
 of his choice library. But, entering the room, he found 
 Johnson, according to his usual habit, pulling the books 
 off the shelves, breaking their backs, more easily to 
 read them, and throwing them carelessly on the floor. 
 Garrick naturally grew very angry, for which he has 
 been much abused, charged with ' having acted in 
 abominably bad taste . . . without any true gentle- 
 manly feeling . . . that knowing his friend's character 
 . . . Garrick ought to have been prepared for any slight 
 unfavourable consequences. He ought to have known 
 that much might be excused in so great a man, 1 etc. 
 Now, this is most undeserved censure on a man of 
 greater parts than Johnson ever could boast of. The 
 only thing he ever wrote which will live is his Dictionary. 
 As to his greatness, if unabashed bounce and a dictatorial 
 jaw constitute greatness, he certainly, judging him by 
 Bozzy's account, could lay claim to such. Garrick's 
 generosity induced him to offer a bear the use of his
 
 FAMOUS OLD ACTORS 51 
 
 books. Still, he had a right to expect that even a bear, 
 who professed to admire and practise literature, would 
 know how to treat books. But the bear remained a 
 bear everywhere. He treated Mr. Thrale's books no 
 better. But Garrick was generous in other ways. He 
 was often visited at his villa, near Sunbury, by a gentle- 
 man with whom he used to have lone; and violent argu- 
 ments on various matters, the visitor generally differing 
 from, and contradicting, his host. One day Garrick, at 
 the gentleman's request, readily lent him i?100. Their 
 discussions continued, but the visitor was no longer so 
 violent in his arguments, nor did he contradict Garrick 
 as he had done formerly. On one occasion, when 
 Garrick had reintroduced an argument his friend had 
 always violently combated, but now mildly conceded, 
 Garrick, who liked a lively discussion, jumped up and 
 exclaimed : ' Pay me my hundred pounds, or contradict 
 me I 1 Garrick's generous nature broke forth in that 
 exclamation, and he did not wish his friend to feel 
 under an obligation. That his character was gentle 
 and chivalrous is proved by the fact that his wife and 
 he were considered the fondest pair ever known, though 
 the lady was a woman with plenty of spirit. Her letter 
 of remonstrance against Keaifs Abel Drugger was brief: 
 ' Dear Sik, — You don't know how to play Abel Drugger. 1 
 To which Kean courteously, yet wittily, replied : ' Dear 
 Madam, — I know it." 1 She must have been very sprightly, 
 too, for when at the age of ninety-eight, and about two 
 months before her death (November, 1822), she visited 
 Westminster Abbey, she asked the clergyman who 
 attended her if there would be room for her by the 
 side of her David — ' not, 1 she said, ' that I think I am 
 
 4—2
 
 52 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 likely soon to require it, for I am yet a mere girl P She 
 was a Viennese danseuse, Madame Violette, when Garrick 
 married her, and Horace Walpole reports that it was 
 whispered at the time that she had been sent over to 
 England by no less a person than the Empress-Queen, 
 Maria Theresa, to be out of the way of that somewhat 
 jealous lady's husband. Apprehensive that he might 
 be ridiculed for marrying a dancer, Garrick got some 
 friend to satirize him publicly beforehand. But we 
 have seen that the marriage turned out a very happy 
 one. Garrick had been the pupil of Johnson, when 
 the latter kept, or attempted to keep, a school near 
 Lichfield, and he and his two fellow-pupils (he never 
 had more than two) used to peep through the keyhole 
 of his bedroom that they might turn into ridicule the 
 doctor's awkward fondness for Mrs. Johnson, who was 
 by many years her husband's senior, and elephantine in 
 her figure, with swollen cheeks and a red complexion, 
 produced by paint and the liberal use of cordials. In 
 after-years Garrick used to exhibit her, by his exquisite 
 talent of mimicry, so as to excite the heartiest bursts 
 of laughter. This may seem ungenerous, but Johnson 
 paid Garrick back in the same coin. Vexed at Garrick's 
 great success in his profession, he made it his business 
 always to express the greatest contempt for actors. 
 
 Quin, the contemporary of Garrick, and his rival, was 
 employed by Prince Frederick to instruct the Royal 
 children in elocution, and when he was informed of the 
 graceful manner in which George III. had delivered his 
 first speech from the throne, he proudly said : ' Aye, it 
 was I who taught the boy to speak . 1 Quin could be 
 witty. Disputing concerning the execution of Charles L,
 
 FAMOUS OLD ACTORS 53 
 
 and his opponent asking, ' But by what laws was he 
 put to death P 1 Quin replied : ' By all the laws he had 
 left them. 1 When playing at Bath, he was at an 
 evening party, where the transmigration of souls was 
 being discussed. A lady, remarkable for the whiteness 
 of her neck and bust, asked him what animal he would 
 wish to be transformed into. Quin, looking sharply at 
 a fly then travelling over her white neck, with an arch 
 glance at her, said : ' A fly !' On another occasion to 
 Lady Berkeley, a celebrated beauty, he said : ' Why, 
 your ladyship is looking as charming as the spring. 1 
 The season was spring, but the day was raw and cold, 
 and Quin, seeing he had paid the lady but a poor com- 
 pliment, corrected himself by adding : ' Or, rather, I 
 wish the spring would look a little more like your lady- 
 ship. 1 
 
 In Clare Street, Clare Market, there is a public-house 
 called the Sun. John Rich, the harlequin and lessee of 
 the Duke's Theatre in Portugal Street (long since taken 
 down), returning from the theatre in a hackney-coach, 
 ordered to be driven to the Sun. On arriving there, he 
 jumped out of the coach, and through the window into 
 the public-house. The coachman thought his fare was 
 a 'bilk*; but whilst he was still looking up and down 
 the street, Rich again jumped into the coach, and told 
 the driver to take him to another public-house. On 
 reaching it, Rich offered to pay the coachman, but the 
 latter refused the money, saying : ' No, none of your 
 money, Mr. Devil ; though you wear shoes, I can see 
 your hoofs '; and he drove off' as quickly as possible. 
 The theatre called the Duke's Theatre, in Portugal 
 Street, was rebuilt by Christopher Rich, the father of
 
 54 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 the above-mentioned John, but he died before the 
 building was quite finished, and it was opened by 
 John ; and it is in this theatre that the modern stage 
 took its rise, and here the earliest Shakespearian re- 
 vivals took place. Quin was one of the performers 
 there ; and there the ' Beggar's Opera ' was first pro- 
 duced, and acted on sixty-two nights in one season, 
 causing the saying that it made Gay rich and Rich 
 gay. The opera was written under the auspices of the 
 Duchess of Queensberry, who agreed to indemnify Rich 
 in all expenses if the daring speculation should fail. 
 
 Rich, in 1731, built himself a new theatre — the 
 Covent Garden Theatre — on a site granted by the 
 Duke of Bedford, at a ground-rent of i?100 per 
 annum. When a new lease was granted, in 1792, 
 the ground-rent was raised to £94:0 per annum. When 
 Thomas Killigrew was manager of the theatre in Bear 
 Yard, Clare Market, he was a great favourite with 
 Charles II. This King at times showed great indiffer- 
 ence to the business of the State, and refused to attend 
 the Council. One day, when he had been long ex- 
 pected, Lord Lauderdale went to his apartments, but 
 was refused admission. His lordship complained to 
 Nell Gwynne, upon which she wagered him £100 that 
 the King; would that evening attend the Council. 
 Then she sent for Killigrew, and asked him to dress 
 as if for a journey, and to enter the King's rooms 
 without ceremony, with further instructions what he 
 was to do then. As soon as the King saw him, he 
 said : 
 
 ' What, Killigrew ! Where are you going ? Did I 
 not give orders that I was not to be disturbed T
 
 FAMOUS OLD ACTORS 55 
 
 ' I don't mind your orders, and I am going as fast as 
 I can. -1 
 
 ' Why, where are you going P 1 
 
 'To hell,' replied the jester in a sepulchral tone. 
 
 ' What are you going to do there ?' asked the King, 
 laughing. 
 
 ' To fetch back Oliver Cromwell, to take some care 
 of the national affairs, for I am sure your Majesty takes 
 none.'' 
 
 And the King went to the Council. 
 
 Another famous comedian of that day was Joe 
 Haines, who was an Oxford M.A., but a scamp of the 
 first order, who managed to cheat even the rector of 
 the Jesuit College in Paris out of cP40 by a pretended 
 note from the Duke of Monmouth. Not long after, 
 meeting with a simple-minded clergyman, he told him 
 that he was one of the patentees of Drury Lane, and 
 appointed him his chaplain, instructing him at the 
 same time to go to the theatre with a large bell, to 
 ring it, and call out : ' Players, come to prayers P 
 Which the clergyman did, till he found he had been 
 hoaxed. In the reign of James II., this Haines turned 
 Roman Catholic, and told Sunderland that the Virgin 
 Mary had appeared, and said to him : ' Joe, arise P To 
 this Sunderland dryly replied that she should have said 
 ' Joseph, 1 if only out of respect for her husband. 
 
 The greatest actor at the time of Charles II. was 
 undoubtedly Thomas Betterton. He joined the com- 
 pany of Sir William Davenant in 1662. Pepys fre- 
 quently went to see him. In those days the pay of 
 actors was not what it is now ; Betterton, in spite of 
 the position he held in public estimation, never had
 
 56 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 more than =£5 a week, including £1, by way of pension, 
 to his wife, who retired in 1694. In 1709 he took a 
 benefit, at which the money taken at the doors was 
 £15, but he received also more than £4*50 in compli- 
 mentary guineas ; and in the following year he had 
 another benefit, by which he netted about iP^OOO. Of 
 course, according to modern notions, these are but 
 small receipts ; but they are better than what seems 
 to have been the standard of theatrical payments in 
 1511 — judging from a bill of that year, without name 
 of place where the acting took place, but which states 
 that it was performed on the feast of St. Margaret 
 (July 20). According to legend, the devil, in the shape 
 of a dragon, swallowed St. Margaret, but she speedily 
 made her escape, and was thus considered to possess 
 great powers of assisting women in childbirth. The 
 bill runs thus : 
 
 ' To musicians, for three nights, £0 5s. 6d. ; for 
 players in bread and ale, £0 3s. Id. ; for decorations, 
 dresses, and play-books, £1 0s. Od. ; to John Hobbard, 
 priest, and author of the piece, £0 2s. 8d. ; for the 
 place in which the presentation was held, £0 Is. Od 
 for furniture, £0 Is. 4d. ; for fish and bread, £0 0s. 4d 
 for painting three phantoms and devils, i?0 0s. 6d 
 and for four chickens for the hero, £0 0s. 4d.'' We see 
 here the author received only 2s. 8d. for writing the 
 play. Matters have improved since then ; Sheridan 
 realized i?3,000 by the sale of his altered play of 
 ' Pizarro.'' In the early part of this century authors 
 of successful pieces received from the theatre from o^250 
 to d^SOO, and from the purchaser of the copyright for 
 publication from d(?100 to <i?400. Then actors received
 
 FAMOUS OLD ACTORS 57 
 
 i?30 a week ; favourite performers — stars, as we should 
 now call them — were paid ci?50 a night. Actors have 
 at times found very generous friends. When, in 1808, 
 Covent Garden Theatre, then under the management 
 of John P. Kemble, was burnt down, the loss was 
 immense, and the insurances did not exceed i?50,000. 
 The then Duke of Northumberland offered Kemble the 
 sum of X J 10,000 as a loan on his simple bond. The 
 offer was accepted, and the bond given. On the day 
 appointed for laying the first stone, the bond was 
 returned cancelled ! 
 
 Italian opera-singers have made large fortunes in 
 England. When Owen McSwiney was lessee of the 
 Haymarket, circa 1708, he engaged one Nicolini, a 
 Neapolitan, who really was a splendid actor and a mag- 
 nificent-looking man, with a voice which won universal 
 admiration, at a salary of eight hundred guineas for 
 the season — at that time an enormous sum. Nicolini 
 left the stage in 1712, and returned to Italy, where he 
 built himself a fine villa, which, as a testimony of his 
 gratitude to the nation which enriched him, he called 
 the English Folly. In 1721 a company of French 
 comedians occupied the Haymarket, to the disgust of 
 native actors. Aaron Hill, the dramatic author and 
 opera-manager, consequently had occasion to write to 
 John Rich : ' I suppose you know that the Duke of 
 Montague and I have agreed that I am to have that 
 house half the week, and the "French vermin 11 the 
 other half.' International courtesies were at some 
 discount at the time ! 
 
 A few theatrical anecdotes may close these lucubra- 
 tions. Actors sometimes are strangely affected by
 
 58 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 their own parts. Betterton, although his countenance 
 was ruddy, when he performed Hamlet, through the 
 violent and sudden emotion of horror at the presence 
 of his father's spectre, instantly turned as white as his 
 collar, whilst his whole body was affected by a strong 
 tremor. When Booth the first time attempted the 
 ghost, when Betterton acted Hamlet, that actor's look 
 at him struck him with such horror that he became 
 disconcerted to such a degree that he could not speak 
 his part. Of Mrs. Siddons, it was said that by the 
 force of fancy and reflection, she used to be so wrought 
 up in preparing to play Lady Constance in ' King John, 1 
 that, when she set out from her own house to the theatre, 
 she was already Constance herself. 
 
 Smith — better known as ' Gentleman Smith 1 — married 
 a sister of Lord Sandwich. For some time the union 
 was kept concealed, but an apt quotation of Charles 
 Bannister elicited the truth : 
 
 ' " Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague I 11 ' said 
 Bannister, when Foote bantered Smith on the subject. 
 The latter was not proof against the sally, and acknow- 
 ledged the marriage. ' Well, 1 said Bannister, ' I rejoice 
 that you have got a Sandwich from the family ; but if 
 ever you get a dinner from them, Til be hanged. 1 The 
 prophecy proved true. 
 
 Michael Kelly was an English opera-singer, a musical 
 composer, and at one time Sheridan's manager at Drury 
 Lane. He then went into the wine trade, when Sheridan 
 advised him to put over his door : ' Michael Kelly, 
 composer of wine, and importer of music. 1
 
 VI. 
 
 OLD JUDGES AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS. 
 
 WHEN I was a little boy I drew most of my 
 notions of life and mankind from the picture- 
 books for my use and instruction. I thought 
 that Kings and Queens wore their crowns and sceptres 
 all day long, and took them to bed with them, for I 
 had thus seen them in the pictures in the books. One 
 engraving, I remember, I saw of a severe-looking gentle- 
 man, who had thrown a gray doormat over his head, 
 and sat behind a little desk everlastingly writing away 
 with an enormous quill pen. It was this quill pen 
 which specially riveted my attention. I was always 
 given a steel pen in my writing-lessons. Why not a 
 quill ? I asked my mother who the man was, and was 
 told he was a judge, and that what I took for a door- 
 mat was a wig which he wore to look dignified, and the 
 great weight of which was, moreover, intended to prevent 
 his great legal learning from evaporating through the 
 pores of his skull, which was bald, but compelled it to 
 come out through his mouth only. 
 
 He used a quill pen to take notes of what was said 
 by the parties contending before him, because that,
 
 60 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 being a natural production, could not possibly tell lies 
 whereas a steel pen, as an artificial contrivance, could 
 not be depended on for veracity ; wherefore, in all law 
 proceedings, even at the lowest police court, quill pens 
 only could be used, for the law on morality and public 
 policy grounds strongly objects to lies ; it is itself so 
 truthful ! Of course, I believed all my mother told 
 me ; children are so easy of belief if you only look 
 serious when you tell them crammers. But I know better 
 now, and crowns no longer represent to me sovereignty, 
 nor wigs wisdom. Of another delusion, too, I have 
 been cured. When I was a young man I was told that 
 English law was the perfection of human wisdom. I 
 believed this then, for I was only a bigger child without 
 experience. But when I arrived at years of discretion — 
 that is, when I began to observe and reflect — I could 
 come to no other conclusion than that the axiom of the 
 law's wisdom was a delusion. There are many ways of 
 proving this, but one argument presents itself, which 
 renders all further proofs unnecessary. Can a code 
 which comprises a number of laws, the interpretation 
 of whose import is liable to be declared by one judge 
 to mean ' Yes, 1 whilst another as positively maintains it 
 means ' No,' be called the perfection of human wisdom ? 
 The ever-growing frequency of appeals alone is sufficient 
 to show that the existing laws are ambiguous in expres- 
 sion, and lend themselves to the idiosyncrasies of every 
 individual judge, which is very far from perfection. 
 Laws should be as precise in their definitions as mathe- 
 matical formulas. To substantiate my reasoning, let 
 me quote an actual case : Some twelve or thirteen years 
 ago, the captain of a cargo steamer belonging to a
 
 OLD JUDGES 61 
 
 London firm, while loading maize at Odessa, signed 
 bills of lading which were ante-dated. Between the 
 false date and the real one, a few days after, of loading, 
 there was a considerable fall in the price of maize, and 
 the consignees, who were the sufferers by it, brought an 
 action against the owners of the steamer, they — the 
 consignees — having discovered the ante -dating, and 
 recovered dC437 damages, which the shipowners paid. 
 On the captain's return to England, he made a claim 
 of J?190 for wages, which claim was admitted by the 
 firm, but they set up a counter-claim for the damages 
 they had had to pay to the consignees, through the 
 captain's negligence and breach of duty in signing the 
 ante-dated bills. The case went to trial before Mr. 
 Justice Field and a jury, and was decided in the captain's 
 favour, both as to his wages and the counter-claim. The 
 owners appealed, and the Divisional Court, consisting 
 of Grove, Denman, and Wills, ordered the judgment 
 to be set aside, and a new trial granted. The Appeal 
 Court ordered the original judgment in favour of the 
 captain to be restored. The owners then took the cause 
 into the House of Lords, where Lords Watson, Black- 
 burn, and Fitzgerald restored the order of the Divisional 
 Court in favour of the owners, with all the costs they 
 had incurred. Now, here was a case of breach of duty 
 as plain as it could be, yet it took four trials, the costs 
 amounting to about £4<,000, to decide the question. 
 This is but one of a hundred similar cases which might 
 be cited. With what wisdom can laws be framed which 
 can give rise to so many judicial contradictory decisions? 
 And the fault of this lies not with the judges, but with 
 the legislators, whose only wisdom seems to consist in
 
 62 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 surrounding plain matter-of-fact with a network of 
 sophistry, chicanery, and hair-splitting subtleties — a 
 system which is constantly regretted by the judges 
 themselves, who are ever ready to warn the public 
 against indulgence in litigation, for English judges, as 
 a rule, are straightforward, honourable men, who are 
 inclined to take common-sense and impartial views, 
 except when a political or theological bias gives a twist 
 to their judgment. Nor can it be left out of our con- 
 sideration that men educated in the legal schools of the 
 Inns of Court, and by teachers strongly impressed with 
 the dignity and importance of their pursuit, should 
 adhere to it with cast-iron rigidity, thus opposing, as 
 much as possible, the introduction of new, and in their 
 estimation, revolutionary and destructive opinions. It 
 is due to this adherence to, and maintenance of, the 
 principles of a barbarous and an arbitrary regime that 
 the judges still possess the tremendous power of com- 
 mitting for contempt of court any person who may 
 make a remark displeasing to them, however innocently 
 that remark may have been made. Years ago I defended 
 an action brought against me by a tradesman for certain 
 goods he alleged he had supplied me with. The action 
 was tried in a County Court. The plaintiff made his 
 statement, which introduced several particulars which 
 were as new to me as they were false. But my solicitor 
 whom I had brought with me could not know they were 
 so. I turned towards the judge, and stated that I could 
 prove in two minutes that there was not a word of truth 
 in the plaintiff's statements. But the judge turned 
 quite savagely towards me, saying : 
 
 ' You must not speak to me. You have your solicitor 
 here.''
 
 OLD JUDGES 63 
 
 ' But,' I replied, ' my solicitor cannot know that these 
 assertions are false P 
 
 ' Be silent I 1 thundered the judge. ' If you say another 
 word I shall commit you for contempt. 1 
 
 Of course I said no more, but, like the parrot, thought 
 a lot. I knew that a judge, a mere County Court judge, 
 who passes his life amidst the most sordid and depressing 
 scenes of wretchedness, had the power of sending me to 
 prison, and to keep me there till I made the most abject 
 apology for a speech which was never intended to be 
 offensive. Persons have been kept in prison for twenty 
 years by the mere order of a judge, who was plaintiff', 
 jury, and judge in every such case. This is scarcely in 
 accordance with our ideas of justice. But this relic of 
 a barbarous age will be abolished in time, as the Courts 
 of Doctors' 1 Commons, or the Palace Court, where a 
 number of sleepy old gentlemen 
 
 ' Were sittin' at their ease, 
 A-sendin' of their writs about, 
 And drorin' in their fees,' 
 
 have been abolished. And there is no doubt that our 
 modern judges are superior in talent, adroitness, and 
 acuteness to those of former days. They are men of 
 high-breeding, combining in their characteristics those 
 of the courtier and of the lawyer. Judges of the past 
 were different; in fact, some of the old judges were 
 noted for their eccentricities. Lord Thurlow was one 
 of them. When he was still an aspirant for forensic 
 fame, he was one evening at Nando's Coffee-house — 
 now a hairdressers shop, opposite Chancery Lane, falsely 
 called the palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey.
 
 64 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Arguing keenly about a celebrated case then before the 
 courts, he was heard by some lawyers, who were so 
 pleased with his handling of the matter that next day 
 they appointed him junior counsel, and the cause won 
 him a silk gown. This was in 1754. It is asserted that 
 he was singularly ugly, and that when his portrait was 
 shown to Lavater, the physiognomist said : ' Whether 
 that man is on earth or in another place, which shall 
 be nameless, I know not ; but wherever he is, he is a 
 born tyrant, and will rule if he can. 1 And the opinion 
 thus formed was a correct one, for Lord Thurlow was 
 fierce and overbearing as a statesman, and was more 
 feared than any other member of the Cabinet. In 1778 
 he had become Lord Chancellor, and been raised to the 
 Peerage. His ugliness must have been a fact, for the 
 Duke of Norfolk, who had at Arundel Castle a fine 
 breed of owls, named one of them, on account of its 
 ugliness, Lord Thurlow. Great fun was caused by a 
 messenger coming to the Duke in the Lobby of the 
 House of Peers with the news that Lord Thurlow had 
 laid an egg. 
 
 In 1785 Lord Thurlow purchased Brockwell Green 
 Farm, and other lands in the neighbourhood of Dulwich 
 and Norwood, and chose Knight's Hill as a suitable site 
 for a house. The house was finished, but Lord Thurlow 
 considered it too dear — it is said to have cost ^30,000 
 — and would never live in it, but remained in a smaller 
 house, called Knight's Hill Farm. As he was coming 
 from the Queen's Drawing-room, a lady asked him 
 when he was going into his new house. ' Madam, 1 he 
 replied, 'the Queen has just asked me that impudent 
 question, and, as I would not tell her, I will not tell
 
 OLD JUDGES 65 
 
 you. 1 Both the mansion and the farmhouse disappeared 
 long ago. 
 
 The romantic marriage of Lord Eldon, then plain 
 Mr. John Scott, of the Northern Circuit, forms a 
 pleasant episode in legal history. Bessie Surtees was 
 the daughter of Aubone Surtees, a banker and gentle- 
 man of honourable descent at Newcastle. Scott had 
 met and danced with her at the assemblies in that town, 
 and his pretensions were at first favoured by her family; 
 but Sir William Blackett, a patrician but aged suitor, 
 presenting himself, Bessie was urged to throw over Scott 
 and become Lady Blackett. But Bessie was faithful, 
 and one night descended from a window into her lover's 
 arms, and they were married at Blackshiels, North 
 Britain. The future Lord Eldon came to London with 
 his young and pretty wife, and settled in a humble, small 
 house in Cursitor Street. Their housekeeping at first 
 must have been on a somewhat restricted scale, for Lord 
 Eldon, in after-life, used to relate that, in those days, 
 he frequently ran into Clare Market for sixpennyworth 
 of sprats. It was probably owing to these privations 
 in the early days of their married life that her husband 
 had afterwards to complain of her stinginess and her 
 repugnance to society. In fact, she seems to have ruled 
 him rather sternly, for we read of his often stealing into 
 the George Coffee House, at the top of the Haymarket, 
 to get a pint of wine, as Lady Eldon did not permit 
 him to enjoy it in peace at home. Cyrus Redding, who 
 tells us this, did not like Eldon either as a Tory or as a 
 man. ' His words, 1 he writes, ' were no index to his real 
 feelings. He had a sterile soul for all things earthly, 
 except money, doubts, and the art of drawing briefs." 1 
 
 5
 
 66 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Cyrus Joy, who was present at the funeral of Lord 
 Gifford, who was buried in the Rolls Chapel, relates 
 that Lord Eldon and Lord Chief Justice Abbott were 
 placed in a pew by themselves, and that he saw Lord 
 Eldon, who was very shaky during the most solemn 
 part of the service, touch the Chief Justice, evidently 
 for his snuff-box, for the box was produced, and he took 
 a large pinch of snuff, but the moment he had taken it 
 he threw it away. ' I was astonished,' says Joy, ' at the 
 deception practised by so great a man, with the grave 
 yawning before him. 1 Whilst Lord Eldon held the 
 Great Seal, in 1812, a fire occurred at Encombe, his 
 country seat in Dorsetshire. As soon as it broke out, 
 Lord Eldon buried the Seal in the garden whilst the 
 engine played on the burning house. All the men- 
 servants were helping to supply it with water. ' It was, 1 
 wrote Lord Eldon, ' a very pretty sight, for all the maids 
 turned out of their beds, and formed a line from the 
 water to the fire-engine, handing the buckets. They 
 looked very pretty, all in their shifts. 1 When the fire 
 was subdued, Lord Eldon had forgotten where he had 
 buried the Seal, and all the gardeners and maids who 
 had looked so pretty by firelight were set to work to 
 dig up the garden till the Seal was found. Lord Eldon 
 could be very rude at times. He and the Archbishop 
 dined with George III., when he said : ' It is a curious 
 fact that your Majesty's Archbishop and your Lord 
 Chancellor married clandestinely. I had some excuse, 
 certainly, for Bessie Surtees was the prettiest girl in 
 all Newcastle ; but Mrs. Sutton was always the same 
 pumpkin-faced thing that she is at present. 1 The King 
 was much amused, as we are told.
 
 OLD JUDGES 67 
 
 Lord Eldon's brother, Sir William Scott, had a strange 
 matrimonial experience. His brother eloped with a 
 man's daughter, and thus entered the wedded state 
 somewhat illegally. Sir William may be said to have 
 entered it, in the true sense of the word, legally — that 
 is, as a result of his legal status. He and Lord Ellen- 
 borough presided at the Old Bailey at the trial of the 
 young Marquis of Sligo for having, while in the Mediter- 
 ranean, lured into his yacht two of the King's sailors, 
 for which offence he was fined £5,000, and sentenced to 
 four months' imprisonment in Newgate. Throughout 
 the trial his mother sat in the court, hoping that her 
 presence would rouse in the bench or the jury feelings 
 favourable to her son. When the above sentence was 
 pronounced, Sir William accompanied it by a long moral 
 jobation on the duties of a citizen. The Marchioness 
 sent a paper full of satirical thanks to Sir William for 
 his good advice to her son. Sir William read it as he 
 sat on the bench, and, having looked towards the lady, 
 received from her a glance and a smile which sealed his 
 fate. Within four months he was tied fast (on April 10, 
 1813) to a voluble, shrill termagant, who rendered him 
 miserable and contemptible. He removed to his wife's 
 house in Grafton Street, and, ever economical in his 
 domestic expenses, brought with him his own door-plate 
 from Doctor's Commons, and placed it under the pre- 
 existing plate of Lady Sligo. Jekyll, the punster of 
 the day, condoled with Sir William at having to ' knock 
 under.' Sir William had the plates transposed. 
 
 ' You see, I don't knock under now,' he said to Jekyll. 
 ' Not now,' replied the punster ; ' now you knock up.' 
 This was said with reference to his advanced age. 
 
 5—2
 
 68 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Lord Erskine, another famous judge, when dining 
 one day at the house of Sir Ralph Payne, afterwards 
 Lord Lavington, found himself so indisposed as to be 
 obliged to retire after dinner to another room. When 
 he returned to the company, Lady Payne asked how he 
 found himself. Erskine took out a piece of paper and 
 wrote on it : 
 
 1 'Tis true I am ill, but I cannot complain, 
 For he never knew pleasure who never knew Payne.' 
 
 After he had ceased to hold the Seals as Lord 
 Chancellor — and the time he held the office was one 
 year only — he met Captain Parry at dinner, and asked 
 him what he and his crew lived on in the Frozen Sea. 
 Parry replied that they lived on seals. ' And capital 
 things too, seals are, if you only keep them long enough,' 1 
 was Erskine's reply. Being invited to attend the Minis- 
 terial fish dinner at Greenwich when he was Chancellor, 
 ' To be sure,"' he answered ; ' what would your dinner be 
 without the Great Seal P 1 When Erskine lived at Hamp- 
 stead he was asked at a dinner-party he attended, ' The 
 soil is not the best in that part of Hampstead where 
 your seat is ? ' No, 1 he answered, ' very bad ; for 
 though my grandfather was buried there as an Earl 
 near a hundred years ago, what has sprouted from it 
 since but a mere Baron T Erskine married when very 
 young, and had four sons and four daughters. When a 
 widower and getting old he married a second time, 
 and his latter days were passed in a state bordering on 
 indigence. He died in 1823, in poverty. On July 17, 
 1826, a woman, poorly dressed, was brought before the 
 Lord Mayor by a chimney-sweep as a person deserving
 
 OLD JUDGES 69 
 
 assistance. The woman, being interrogated, declared 
 herself to be Lady Erskine. The Lord Mayor con- 
 ducted her into his private room, where he heard her 
 sad story. She had lived with Lord Erskine several 
 years before he married her, which he did in Scotland, 
 whereby their children (four) were legitimatized. His 
 death left her destitute, though she had been promised 
 a pension from Government of twelve shillings a week, 
 which had been paid very irregularly, and finally with- 
 drawn altogether, because she would not be parted from 
 her youngest child. The others had been taken care of 
 by Government-. She had for years endeavoured to 
 maintain herself by female labour, but now she was 
 totally destitute and actually starving. The Lord 
 Mayor liberally supplied her present wants, and promised 
 to intercede for her with Government, with what result 
 we have been unable to ascertain. It was Mr. H. 
 Erskine, brother of Lord Erskine, who, after being pre- 
 sented to Dr. Johnson by Boswell, slipped a shilling 
 into the latters hand, whispering that it was for show- 
 ing him his bear. Erskine could mould a jury at his 
 pleasure, yet in Parliament he was not successful as an 
 orator. But when pleading he was always ready with 
 repartee. Once, when insisting on the validity of an 
 argument before Lord Mansfield, the latter said : ' I 
 disproved it before you were born I 1 ' Yes, my Lord,' 
 replied Erskine, ' because I was not born."' Lord Erskine 
 owned that the most discreditable passage in his life was 
 his becoming Lord Chancellor. Some other judges 
 seem to have had no faith in their own works. Lord 
 Campbell was seated one day next to Chief Baron 
 Pollock, when they were both Members of the House of
 
 70 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Commons, and said : * Pollock, we lawyers receive the 
 highest wages of an infamous profession.'' 
 
 Sir Nicholas Bacon was so learned in the law that he 
 was appointed attorney in the Court of Wards, and 
 made a Privy Councillor and Keeper of the Great Seal 
 under Elizabeth. When the Queen visited him at 
 Redgrave, she observed, alluding to his corpulence, that 
 he had built the house too little for himself. ' Not so, 
 madam,'' he answered ; ' but your Majesty has made me 
 too big for my house. 1 A man was brought before Sir 
 Nicholas accused of a crime which, under the Draconian 
 laws then in force, involved the penalty of death. He 
 was found guilty, and, asked whether he had anything 
 to say for himself, appealed to the judge's compassion, 
 seeing that he was a kind of relation to him, his name 
 being Hogg. ' True,' replied Bacon ; ' but Hog is not 
 Bacon till it's hung. 1 And hung, or hanged, to speak 
 correctly, he was, and thus did not save his bacon. But 
 the jest was a cruel one.
 
 VII. 
 SOME FAMOUS LONDON ACTRESSES. 
 
 ~^\ISTANCE lends enchantment to the view, but the 
 *-** view frequently does not return it, a common 
 practice with borrowers ! Distance alone invests 
 the East with a halo of romance and beauty, to which 
 it really can lay no claim. The romance is the inven- 
 tion of Western imagination, and the beauty, if not 
 tawdry, is monstrous. In no respect is this excess of 
 imagination over the reality more apparent than in the 
 eidolon the European forms in his mind of Eastern 
 female beauty. He hears or reads of houris, and nautch- 
 girls, and bayaderes, and the dancing- women of Japan 
 and Burmah ; but if ever he sees any of them he will be 
 disenchanted, for awkward figures they are, wrapped up 
 in clothes like so many sacks, twisted and tied over one 
 another — if not old, at least middle-aged women with 
 rings in their noses. Pooh ! enough of them ! The 
 real beauties the European never gets a sight of, they 
 are shut up in harems. But still he thinks the East the 
 region of beauty, and longs for it, even when he sees 
 beauty in perfection in the West, where alone it is to 
 be found, because in Western lands alone physical and
 
 72 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 intellectual or perfect beauty exists in combination. 
 And this combination is most frequently seen, as may 
 be surmised from the nature of her avocation, in the 
 actress. Women first appeared on the English stage in 
 1660. On December 6 in that year, at the perform- 
 ance of ' Othello , at the Duke's Theatre, Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields, the prologue spoken is entitled : ' A prologue to 
 introduce the first woman that came to act on the 
 stage.' Pepys went to see ' The Beggar's Bush ' at the 
 same theatre on January 3, 1661, and reports : ' Here 
 the first time that ever I saw a woman come upon the 
 stage.' But the Queen had long before then, namely, 
 in 1633, acted in a pastoral given at Court. The prac- 
 tice having, however, been introduced at the Duke's 
 Theatre, was continued, to the disgust of moralists, who 
 looked upon the ' enormous shamefulness ' of female 
 acting as a sinful practice. Even the intelligent and 
 generally liberal-minded Evelyn speaks of the drama as 
 abused to ' an atheistical liberty,' by the circumstance 
 of women being suffered to become performers. In his 
 Diary, October 18, 1666, he writes: 'This night was 
 acted my Lord Broghill's tragedy, called " Mustapha," 
 before their Majesties at Court, at which I was present, 
 very seldom going to the public theatres for many 
 reasons now, as they were abused to an atheistical 
 liberty, foul and indecent women now (and never till 
 now) permitted to appear and act, who, inflaming several 
 young noblemen and gallants, became their misses, and 
 to some their wives, witness ye Earl of Oxford, Sir R. 
 Howard, P. Rupert, the Earl of Dorset, and another 
 greater person than any of them, who fell into their 
 snares, to ye reproach of their noble families, and ruin
 
 SOME FAMOUS LONDON ACTRESSES 73 
 
 of both body and soul. 1 By ' another greater person, 1 
 Evelyn no doubt intended the King himself, Charles II., 
 who had at least three avowed mistresses taken from the 
 stage — Madam Davis, Mrs. Knight, and Nell Gwynne. 
 Miss Davis was, according to Pepys, a natural daughter 
 of the Earl of Berkshire. He went to see her perform 
 on March 7, 1666, in 'The English Princess, 1 and 
 ' little Miss Davis did dance a jigg after the end of the 
 play, and there telling the next day's play, so that it 
 came in by force only to see her dance in boy's clothes. 1 
 Mrs. Knight was a famous singer. Kneller painted her 
 portrait. Of Nell Gwynne we shall have occasion to 
 speak further on. At the same theatre Mrs. Daven- 
 port, the lady who played the part of Roxalana in 
 'The Siege of Rhodes, 1 was taken to be the Earl of 
 Oxford's misse, as at this time they began to call lewd 
 women, as Evelyn says. But Evelyn evidently was 
 badly informed. Mrs. Davenport for a long time refused 
 the Earl of Oxford's presents and overtures, but, on his 
 offering to marry her, she consented. The ceremony 
 was performed, and they lived together for some time, 
 and then the Earl informed her that the marriage was a 
 sham, and that the mock parson was one of his trum- 
 peters. In vain the deluded woman appealed to the 
 laws, in vain she threw herself at the King's feet to 
 demand justice. She might consider herself lucky to 
 obtain a pension of i?300. Pepys saw her afterwards at 
 the theatre, and says : ' Saw the old Roxalana in the 
 chief box, in a velvet gown, as the fashion is, and very 
 handsome, at which I was glad. 1 
 
 Moll Davies was another of the King's favourites, and 
 he is said to have fallen in love with her through her
 
 74 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 singing ' My Lodging is on the Cold Ground ' in ' The 
 Rivals, 1 a play altered by Davenant from Beaumont and 
 Fletcher's ' The Two Noble Kinsmen. 1 Pepys frequently 
 mentions her as a rival to Nell Gwynne. She had one 
 daughter by Charles, who was christened Mary Tudor, 
 and was married in 1687 to the son of Sir Francis 
 Ratcliff, who became Earl of Derwentwater. When the 
 King grew tired of her he settled a pension on her of 
 J?1,000 a year. It was as a descendant of this Earl 
 that the lady who called herself Amelia, Countess of 
 Derwentwater, in 1868 took possession of the old 
 baronial castle of Devilstone, or Dilston, claiming it 
 and the estates belonging thereto, but then and now 
 vested in Greenwich Hospital, as hers. But the Lords 
 of the Admiralty, in 1870, defeated her claim, and she 
 disappeared from public view. 
 
 Another famous actress in the days of Charles II. was 
 Margaret Hughes, of whom Prince Rupert became 
 enamoured. At first she pretended to be fiercely 
 virtuous, so as to secure a higher price for her favours. 
 And, in fact, the Prince settled on her Brandenburgh 
 House, near Hammersmith, in which she lived about 
 ten years. The house afterwards became the residence 
 of Queen Caroline, who died there, shortly after which 
 it was demolished. 
 
 Whatever may be said against women appearing on 
 the stage, there is something more repulsive in men and 
 boys taking female parts in a play, at least, so it seems 
 to our moral feelings, and aesthetically the practice is 
 still more objectionable. Male performers can never 
 represent the spontaneous grace, melting voice, and 
 tender looks of a female, and the ludicrous contretemps
 
 SOME FAMOUS LONDON ACTRESSES 75 
 
 the custom frequently caused further showed its ab- 
 surdity. Thus, on one occasion, Charles II. inquired 
 why the commencement of the play was delayed. The 
 manager stepped forward and craved his Majesty's 
 indulgence, as the queen was not yet shaved. And 
 whatever Prynne might say in his ' Histrio Mastix , 
 against female actors, the practice caught on and 
 became general. Of course, the opposition did not 
 cease at once ; even in France it raised its head as late 
 as 1733. A speaker against the stage spoke thus at the 
 Jesuits 1 College in Paris : ' They (the actresses) do not 
 form the deadly shafts of Cupid, but they level them 
 with the eye, and shoot with the utmost dexterity and 
 skill. Such women I mean as represent destructive love 
 characters. . . . How artfully do they hurl the most 
 inconsiderable dart ! What multitudes are wounded by 
 a single one I 1 And, indeed, what multitudes have our 
 Nancy Oldfields, Bracegirdles, Gwynnes, Kitty Gives, 
 Perditas, Meltons, and the whole galaxy of theatrical 
 beauties not only wounded, but conquered, and some- 
 times killed ! 
 
 The life of an actress had many ups and downs — as it 
 has now — in former days. There was the eccentric 
 Charlotte Charke, daughter of Colley Cibber, who for 
 some mysterious reason for many years went in male 
 attire, and who acted on the stage if she could get 
 employment. There was then in Bear Yard, Clare 
 Market, a theatre, occasionally used as a tennis-court 
 and as an auction-room. ' Thither,'' she says in her 
 Memoirs, ' I adventured to see if there was any character 
 wanting — a custom very frequent among the gentry 
 who exhibited in that slaughter-house of dramatic
 
 76 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 poetry. One night, I remember, the "Recruiting 
 Officer" was to be performed. . . . To my unbounded 
 joy Captain Plume was so unfortunate that he came at 
 five o'clock to say that he did not know a word of his 
 part. . . . The question being put to me, I immediately 
 replied that I could do such a thing, but was . . . 
 resolved to stand upon terms . . . one guinea paid in 
 advance, which terms were complied with. 1 
 
 We mentioned above that the life of an actress has 
 many ups and downs even now. In justification of that 
 statement let us quote from the Star of September 12, 
 1S96 : ' A pathetic story of an aged lady, who had been 
 a popular actress, but upon whom evil days had come, 
 and who was found dead in a poorly-furnished bedroom 
 in a third-floor back at Whitfield Street, Tottenham 
 Court Road, was told yesterday to the coroner. The 
 old lady was Louisa Marshall, aged seventy, sister of a 
 celebrated clown at Drury Lane, who died before her. 
 She used to teach the piano, and had a small pension 
 from the Musical and Dramatic Sick Fund. The 
 contents of her room, an old piano and some theatrical 
 dresses, were said to be worth fifty shillings at most.'' 
 But, as Byron says, let us lay this sheet of sorrow on 
 the shelf, and speak of lively, joyous Nell Gwynne, who 
 drove that amorous Pepys nearly mad. His Diary is 
 full of her. First she is simply 'pretty, witty Nell' 
 (April 3, 1 665). On January 23, 1666, Nelly is brought 
 to him in a box at the theatre. ' A most pretty 
 woman. ... I kissed her, and so did my wife, and a 
 mighty pretty soul she is. 1 On March 2, in the same 
 year, 'Nell . . . comes in like a young gallant, and 
 hath the motions and carriage of a spark the most that
 
 SOME FAMOUS LONDON ACTRESSES 77 
 
 ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I confess, 
 admire her.'' On May 1, 1667, he writes: 'To West- 
 minster. In the way many milkmaids with their gar- 
 lands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before 
 them, and saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodging's 
 door in Drury Lane, in her smock sleeves and bodice, 
 looking upon one. She seemed a mighty pretty crea- 
 ture. 1 But, according to her ardent admirer, this ' mighty 
 pretty creature ' could use mighty strong language too, 
 for he says of her (October 5, 1667) : ' But to see how 
 Nell cursed for having so few people in the pit was 
 strange.'' And again, on October 26, he reports : 
 ' Nelly and Beck Marshall (one of the great Presby- 
 terian's daughters) falling out the other day, the latter 
 called the other my Lord Buckhurst's mistress. Nell 
 answered her : " I was but one man's mistress, though I 
 was brought up in a disreputable house to fill strong 
 waters to the gentlemen, and you are a mistress to three 
 or four, though a Presbyter's praying daughter." ' And 
 Nell may have been right, for Beck Marshall seems to 
 have been a trifle fast. Pepys says, on May 2, 1668 : 
 ' To the King's (play) house, where . . . the play being 
 over, I did see Beck Marshall come dressed off the 
 stage, and look mighty fine and pretty, and noble ; and 
 also Nell, in her boy's clothes, mighty pretty. But, 
 Lord ! their confidence, and how many men do hover 
 about them as soon as they come off the stage, and how 
 confident they are in their talk !' Pepys, in the end, 
 seems to have cooled in his devotion to pretty Nell, for 
 on January 7, 1669, he wrote in his Diary : ' My wife 
 and I to the King's play-house. . . . We sat in an 
 upper box, and the jade Nell came and sat in the next
 
 78 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 box, a bold, merry slut, who lay laughing there upon 
 people, and with a comrade of hers, of the Duke's house, 
 that came in to see the play. 1 
 
 Coal Yard, Drury Lane, seems to have been Nell 
 Gwynne's birthplace, a low, disreputable locality, and she 
 died in a fine house on the south side of Pall Mall. 
 Previously to that, she had lived in a house on the north 
 side, whose site is now occupied by the Army and Navy 
 Club. Though Drury Lane in the days of Nell Gwynne 
 was a fashionable locality, it would seem that only to 
 the southern division this epithet could be applied ; the 
 northern end, towards Holborn, had a low and mean 
 character, and Coal Yard consisted of miserable tene- 
 ments. It has recently been rebuilt, and is now called 
 Goldsmith Street. Nell Gwynne died in 1691, and was 
 pompously interred in the parish church of St. Martins- 
 in-the-Fields, Dr. Tennison, the then Vicar, and after- 
 wards Archbishop of Canterbury, preaching her funeral 
 sermon. This sermon was afterwards brought forward 
 at Court to impede the doctor's preferment ; but Queen 
 Mary, having heard the objection, answered: 'Well, 
 what then ? This I have heard before, and it is a proof 
 that the unfortunate woman died a true penitent, who 
 through the course of her life never let the wretched 
 ask in vain. 1 This was certainly as noble an answer to 
 give on the part of a Queen as it was mean on the part 
 of King Charles II. to say on his deathbed : ' Don't let 
 poor Nelly starve. 1 Was it not in his power to make 
 provision for her, instead of leaving her to the charity 
 of the world ? 
 
 Another both fortunate and unfortunate actress was 
 Mrs. Montford, whose husband was murdered as he had
 
 SOME FAMOUS LONDON ACTRESSES 79 
 
 come to escort Mrs. Bracegirdle, after Captain Hill's 
 attempt at abducting this lady, on her leaving the 
 theatre, of which more hereafter. On Mrs. Montford, 
 or Mountfort — the name is found spelt both ways — 
 Gray wrote his ballad of ' Black-eyed Susan.' Lord 
 Berkeley's partiality for her was so great that at his 
 decease he left her dP300 a year, on condition that she 
 did not many ; he also purchased Cowley, near Uxbridge, 
 for her — the place had been the summer residence of 
 Rich, the actor — and from time to time made her 
 presents of considerable sums. She fell in love with a 
 Mr. Booth, a then well-known actor, but, not wishing 
 to lose her annuity, she did not many him, though she 
 gave him the preference over many others of her suitors. 
 Mrs. Montford had an intimate friend, Miss Santlow, a 
 celebrated dancer ; but, through the liberality of one of 
 her admirers, she became possessed of a fortune, which 
 rendered her independent of the stage, upon which 
 Mr. Booth proposed to her, and was accepted. This so 
 affected Mrs. Montford that she became mentally 
 deranged, and was brought from Cowley to London to 
 have the best advice. As she was not violent and had 
 lucid moments, she was not rigorously confined, but 
 suffered to go about the house. One day she asked her 
 attendant what play was to be performed that evening, 
 and was told it was ' Hamlet.' In this piece, whilst she 
 was on the stage, she had always appeared as Ophelia. 
 The recollection struck her, and with the cunning always 
 allied with insanity, she found means to elude the 
 watchfulness of her servants, and to reach the theatre, 
 where she concealed herself till the time when Ophelia 
 was to appear, when she rushed on the stage, pushing
 
 80 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 the lady who was to act the character aside, and ex- 
 hibited a more perfect representation of madness than 
 the most consummate mimic art could produce. She 
 was, in truth, Ophelia herself, the very incarnation of 
 madness. Nature having made this last effort, her vital 
 powers failed her. On going off, she prophetically 
 exclaimed : ' It is all over V As she was being conveyed 
 home, ' she," in Gray's words, ' like a lily drooping, 
 bowed her head and died. 1 
 
 Lovely Nancy Oldfield, who quitted the bar of the 
 Mitre, in St. James's Market, then kept by her aunt, 
 Mrs. Voss, became, towards the end of the seventeenth 
 century, the great attraction at Drury Lane. Her 
 intimacy with General Churchill, cousin of the great 
 Duke of Marlborough, obtained for her a grave in West- 
 minster Abbey. Persons of rank and distinction con- 
 tended for the honour of bearing her pall, and her 
 remains lay in state for three days in the Jerusalem 
 Chamber ! 
 
 We referred above to the attempt made by Captain 
 Hill to carry off Mrs. Bracegirdle. Hill had offered 
 her his hand and had been refused. He determined to 
 abduct her by force. He induced his friend Lord 
 Mahun to assist him. A coach was stationed near the 
 Horseshoe Tavern in Drury Lane, with six soldiers to 
 force her into it, which they attempted to do as she 
 came down Drury Lane about ten o'clock at night, 
 accompanied by her mother and brother, and a friend, 
 Mr. Page. The attempt was resisted, a crowd collected, 
 and Hill ordered the soldiers to let the lady go, and she 
 was escorted home by her friends. She then sent for 
 her friend Mr. Montford, who soon after turned the
 
 SOME FAMOUS LONDON ACTRESSES 81 
 
 corner of Norfolk Street, where Hill challenged him, as 
 he attributed Mrs. Bracegirdle's rejection of him to 
 her love for Montford, which suspicion, however, was 
 groundless, and ran him through the body before he 
 could draw his sword. Hill made his escape ; Montford 
 died from his wounds. 
 
 Even in more recent days actresses have made good 
 matches. Miss Anna Maria Tree, of Covent Garden, 
 in 1825 married James Bradshaw, of Grosvenor Place ; 
 in 1831, Miss Foote, the celebrated actress, became 
 Countess of Harrington ; Miss Farren, Countess of 
 Derby ; Miss Brunton, Countess of Craven ; Miss Bolton 
 became Lady Thurlow ; Miss O'Neill married a baronet ; 
 Miss Kitty Stephens became Countess of Essex ; Miss 
 Campion was taken off the stage by the aged Duke of 
 Devonshire. The list might be greatly extended, even 
 to our own times ; but the instances quoted are suf- 
 ficient to show the prizes ladies may draw in the 
 theatrical matrimonial lottery ; and there are as good 
 fish in the sea as ever came out of it.
 
 VIII. 
 
 QUEER CLUBS OF FORMER DAYS. 
 
 THE Virtuoso Club was established by some 
 members of the Royal Society, and held its 
 meetings at a tavern in Cornhill. Its professed 
 object was to ' advance mechanical exercises, and pro- 
 mote useful experiments ' ; but, according to Ned Ward, 
 their discussions usually ended in a general shindy, and 
 results not to be described by a modern writer. The 
 club claimed the merit of the invention of the barometer; 
 but, for all that, its proceedings afforded fine sport to 
 the satirists : thus, the members were said to aim at 
 making beer without water, living like princes on three- 
 halfpence a day, producing a table by which a husband 
 may discover all the particulars of the tricks his wife 
 may play him. The ridicule showered on the club at 
 last reduced it to a little cynical cabal of half-pint 
 moralists, who continued to meet at the same tavern. 
 Convivial ly-disposed members of other learned societies 
 have occasionally formed themselves into clubs. Thus 
 some antiquaries, many years since, formed a club styled 
 * Noviomagians.' Mr. Crofton Croker was its president
 
 QUEER CLUBS OF FORMER DAYS 83 
 
 more than twenty years, and many other distinguished 
 men were members. 
 
 A number of roistering companions used to hold a 
 club at the Golden Fleece in Cornhill, after which they 
 named their club. Each member on his admission had 
 a characteristic name assigned to him — as Sir Nimmy 
 Sneer, Sir Talkative Do-little, Sir Rumbus Rattle. 
 They eventually adjourned to the Three Tuns, South- 
 ward 
 
 The No-Nose Club, whether it ever existed or not, 
 was a horrible idea in itself ; it flourished only during 
 the lifetime of its founders. 
 
 The Club of Beaus was what its name implies — a club 
 of fops and idiots. The only merit they seem to have 
 had was that their habits were always scrupulously 
 clean, though their language usually was filthy. Their 
 meetings were held at an inn in Covent Garden. 
 
 The Quacks'' Club, or Physical Society, was really 
 an offshoot of the College of Physicians, which met 
 at a tavern near the Exchange, where they discussed 
 medical matters. The College of Physicians at that 
 time was in Warwick Lane, where it remained till 
 removed, in 1825, to Trafalgar Square. 
 
 The Weekly Dancing Club, or Buttock Ball, was held 
 at a tavern in King Street, St. Giles, and was patronized 
 by bullies, libertines, and strumpets ; footmen who had 
 robbed their masters and turned gentlemen ; chamber- 
 maids who had stolen their mistresses' 1 clothes and set 
 up for gentlewomen. Though called a club, it was not 
 really a close assembly, but everyone was admitted on 
 the payment of sixpence, and no questions asked. The 
 Dancing Academy was first established about the year 
 
 6—2
 
 84 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 1710 by a dancing-master over the Coal Yard gateway 
 into Drury Lane, and was so successful that it was 
 removed to the more commodious premises mentioned 
 above. But at last it became such a nuisance that the 
 authorities shut it up. The Coal Yard above men- 
 tioned, the last turning on the north-east side of Drury 
 Lane, is said to have been the birthplace of Nell 
 Gwynne. 
 
 A club cultivating a certain filthy habit, which I can 
 only indicate as one practised by the French peasantry, 
 and as described in one of Zola's novels, was established 
 at a public-house in Cripplegate. The manner in which 
 the proceedings of the club are set forth by their 
 chronicler is as hideous and repulsive as the writer can 
 make it ; it could not be reproduced in any modern 
 publication without risk of prosecution, which, indeed, 
 would be well deserved. But the manners of the 
 eighteenth century were excessively coarse. 
 
 The Man-Killing Club, besides admitting no one to 
 membership who had not killed his man, also bound 
 itself to resist the Sheriff's myrmidons on their making 
 any attempt to serve a writ on or seize one of them. It 
 was founded in the reign of Charles II. by a knot of 
 bullies, broken Life-Guardsmen, and old prize-fighters. 
 Its meetings were held at a low public-house on the 
 back-side of St. Clement's. The good old times ! 
 
 The Surly Club was chiefly composed of master 
 carmen, lightermen, and Billingsgate porters, who held 
 their weekly meetings at a tavern near Billingsgate 
 Dock, where City dames used to treat their journeymen 
 with beakers of punch and new oysters. The object of 
 their meetings was the practice of contradiction and of
 
 QUEER CLUBS OF FORMER DAYS 85 
 
 foul language, that they might not want impudence to 
 abuse passengers on the Thames. This society first 
 established the thumping - post at Billingsgate, to 
 harden its members by whipping never to bridle their 
 tongues from fear of corporeal punishment. Billings- 
 gate language was, as may be supposed, much improved 
 by them. 
 
 The Atheistical Club met at an inn in Westminster, 
 and its name sufficiently indicates its object, namely, to 
 take the devil's part. A trick was played on them by 
 a man disguising himself in a bear's skin and making 
 them believe he was the devil, which occurrence, it is 
 said, broke up the club. Similar societies were dis- 
 covered in Wells Street, and at the Angel, in St. Martin's 
 Lane, and the members arrested ; but, it turning out 
 that in these cases the devil was less black than he was 
 painted, the charges against them had to be withdrawn. 
 The societies, in fact, were more political, with republican 
 tendencies, inspired by the French Revolution, which 
 was just then at its height, and the worship of Reason 
 seems to have been one of their principles. 
 
 The Split-farthing Club held its weekly meetings at 
 the Queen's Head in Bishopsgate Street, and was sup- 
 posed to be composed chiefly of misers and skinflints. 
 If any smoker among them left his box behind him, 
 and wanted to borrow a pipe of tobacco of a brother, it 
 would not be lent without a note of hand, which was 
 generally written round the bowl of a pipe so as to 
 prevent the waste of paper. 
 
 The Club of Broken Shopkeepers held its meetings at 
 the sign of Tumble-Down Dick, a famous boozing den 
 in the Mint in Southwark, a sanctuary of knaves, sots,
 
 86 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 and bankrupts, honest or swindling, against arrest for 
 debt. The sign of Tumble-Down Dick was set up in 
 derision of Richard Cromwell, the allusion to his fall 
 from power, or ' tumble-down,"* being very common in 
 the satires published after the Restoration. There was 
 a house with the same sign at Brentford. Of course, 
 the professed object of the meetings of the broken shop- 
 keepers was that of driving away and forgetting care ; 
 and any new-comer among them, if he had any cash 
 left, was liberally allowed to expend it for the further- 
 ance of the club's object. 
 
 The Man-Hunting Club was composed chiefly of young 
 limbs of the law ; uncultivated youths, though they were 
 law students, formed themselves into an association to 
 hunt men over Lincoln's Inn Fields and the neighbour- 
 hood whom they might happen to meet crossing them 
 at ten or eleven o'clock at night. They would be con- 
 cealed upon the grass in one of the borders of the fields 
 till they heard some single person coming along, when 
 they would spring up with their swords drawn, run 
 towards him, and cry : ' That's he ; bloody wounds, 
 that's he !' Usually the person so attacked would run 
 away, when they would pursue him till he took refuge 
 in an alehouse in some neighbouring: street. But if the 
 man-hunters encountered a person of courage, ready to 
 fight them, they would sneak off, like the curs they 
 really were. Their meeting-place was at a tavern close 
 to Bear Yard, Clare Market. 
 
 The Yorkshire Club held its meetings on market-days 
 at an inn in Smithfield. It was composed of sharp 
 country-folk, who assumed the innocence of yokels. 
 The most flourishing members among them, says one
 
 QUEER CLUBS OF FORMER DAYS 87 
 
 authority, were needle-pointed innkeepers; nick and 
 froth victuallers, honest horse chaunters, pious Yorkshire 
 attorneys ; the rest good, harmless master hostlers, two 
 or three innocent farriers, who had wormed their masters 
 out of their shops, and themselves into them. When 
 met for business, their deliberations were about horse- 
 flesh, blind eyes, spavins, bounders and malinders, and 
 how to disguise defects and get rid of the animals. 
 
 The Mock-Heroes Club met at an alehouse in Bald- 
 win's Gardens, and was composed chiefly of attorneys 1 
 clerks and young shopkeepers. On admission the new 
 member assumed the name of some defunct hero, and 
 ever afterwards was at the meetings called by that name ; 
 and as the club held its meetings in the public room, 
 though at a separate table specially reserved for them, 
 this formal and ridiculous way of addressing one another 
 caused no slight amusement to the other persons fre- 
 quenting the room. In other respects their language 
 was high-flown. Thus, one would face about to his 
 left-hand neighbour, with his right hand charged with 
 a brimming tankard, saying : ' Most noble Scipio, the 
 love and friendship of a soldier to you. The thanks of 
 a brother to my valiant friend Hannibal, whom I cannot 
 but value, though I had the honour to conquer.' 1 ' My 
 respects to you, brave Caesar, 1 cries one opposite, * re- 
 membering the battle of Pharsalia. 1 And so on, till 
 they had drunk themselves under the table. 
 
 The Lying Club, which held its meetings at the Bell 
 Tavern, in Westminster, is said to have been established 
 in 1669. Every member was to wear a blue cap with a 
 red feather in it ; before admittance he had to give 
 proof of his powers of mendaciloquence ; during club
 
 88 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 hours, that is, from four to ten p.m., no true word was 
 to be uttered without a preliminary ' By your leave ' to 
 the chairman ; and if any member told a ' whopper ' 
 which the chairman could not beat with a greater, the 
 latter had to surrender his office for that evening. Ned 
 Ward gives some exquisite specimens of the ' whoppers , 
 told by members. 
 
 The Beggars' Club held its weekly meetings at a 
 boozing ken in Old Street. All the sham cripples, 
 blind men, etc., belonged to it, and there discussed the 
 various stratagems they had adopted to excite public 
 compassion, or intended to adopt for that purpose. 
 
 About 1735 a number of young gentlemen, who were 
 pretenders to wit, formed themselves into a society, 
 which met at the Rose Tavern, Covent Garden, and 
 which they christened the Scatter-wit Society. But 
 their literary performances were poor specimens of wit, 
 contributed nothing to the reputation of the Rose 
 Tavern as the resort of ' men of parts, 1 and con- 
 sequently is not frequently mentioned in the literature 
 of that day. 
 
 Bob Warden was the younger brother of Mr. Warden, 
 a gentleman who, ' after having given a new turn to 
 Jackanapes Lane, and promoted many useful objects 
 for the good of the public, was undeservedly hanged.'' 
 We may explain here that Jackanapes Lane was the 
 original name of Carey Street, north of the Law Courts, 
 and the new turn Mr. Warden gave to it is the western 
 bend connecting it with Portugal Street. Bob Warden, 
 after his brother's death, was apprenticed to a painter, 
 but, thinking more of his palate than his palette, he 
 dropped the latter, and with some money left to him,
 
 QUEER CLUBS OF FORMER DAYS 89 
 
 established a convivial club at the Hill, in the Strand, 
 where all sorts of queer characters, such as ruined 
 gamesters, petticoat-pensioners, Irish captains, sharpers 
 and cheats were welcome. As the meetings took place 
 in a cellar, the club became known as the Cellar Club, 
 and was the forerunner of the Coal Hole and the Lord 
 Chief Baron Nicholson. Bob, amidst his roistering 
 customers, drank himself to death. 
 
 For about ten years the Mohawks, or Mohocks, kept 
 London in a state of alarm, though they seldom 
 ventured into the City, where the watch was more 
 efficient, but confined themselves chiefly to the neigh- 
 bourhood of Clare Market, Covent Garden, and the 
 Strand. The Spectator says of them : ' Some of them 
 are celebrated for dexterity in tipping the lion upon 
 them, which is performed by squeezing the nose flat to 
 the face and boring out the eyes with their fingers. 
 Others are called the dancing-masters, and teach their 
 scholars to cut capers by running swords through their 
 legs. ... A third sort are the Nimblers, who set 
 women on their heads and commit . . . barbarities 
 on them. 1 Their conduct in the end became so alarm- 
 ing that a reward of dflOO was offered by royal 
 proclamation for the apprehension of any one of them. 
 Curious stories were current at various times as to the 
 origin of this society. In the ' Memoirs ' of the Marquis 
 of Torcy, Secretary of State to Louis XIV., and a famous 
 diplomatist (born 1665, died 1746), the Duke of Marl- 
 borough is said to have suggested to Prince Eugene ' to 
 employ a band of ruffians ... to stroll about the 
 streets by night . . . and to insult people by passing 
 along, increasing their licentiousness gradually, so as to
 
 90 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 commit greater and greater disorders . . . that when 
 the inhabitants of London and Westminster were 
 accustomed to the insults of these rioters, it would 
 not be difficult to assassinate those of whom they might 
 wish to be freed, and to cast the whole blame on the 
 band of ruffians. 1 This project the Prince is reported 
 to have rejected. Swift, in his ' History of the Four 
 Last Years of Queen Anne,' attributes the scheme to 
 the Prince himself on his visit to this country, through 
 his hatred of Treasurer Harley. He proposed that 
 ' the Treasurer should be taken off . . . that this 
 might easily be done and pass for an effect of chance, 
 if it were preceded by encouraging some proper people 
 to commit small riots in the night. And in several 
 parts of the town a crew of ruffians were accordingly 
 employed about that time, who probably exceeded 
 their commission . . . and acted inhuman outrages 
 on many persons, whom they cut and mangled in the 
 face and arms and other parts of their bodies. . . . 
 This account . . . was confirmed beyond all contra- 
 diction by several intercepted letters and papers.' It 
 is just possible that popular panic exaggerated the 
 doings of the Mohawks. Perhaps they did not exceed 
 in savagery the drunken frolics then customary at 
 night-time. 
 
 The Hell Fire Club was an institution of a character 
 similar to that of the Mohawks. It was abolished by 
 an order of the Privy Council in 1721, ' against certain 
 scandalous clubs,' but it must have been revived in the 
 country, for John Wilkes, about 1750, was a notorious 
 member of a club with the above name at Medmenham 
 Abbey, Bucks.
 
 QUEER CLUBS OF FORMER DAYS 91 
 
 The Calves" Head Club for a time had its head- 
 quarters at The Cock, an inn long since demolished, 
 in Suffolk Street, Pall Mall. It was one of the many 
 inns at which Pepys was ' mighty merry. 1 The club is 
 said to have been originated by Milton and other 
 partisans of the Commonwealth ; and the author of the 
 ' Secret History of the Calves 1 Head Club ' — probably 
 Ned Ward — gives an account of the melodramatic and 
 diabolical ceremonies observed at their banquets. An 
 axe was hung up in their club-room as a sacred symbol 
 — the destroyer of the tyrant. But the eating and 
 drinking, for which, as Addison says, clubs were in- 
 stituted, were not neglected by the members. At the 
 banquet held in 1710 there was spent on bread, beer, 
 and ale the sum of £3 10s. ; on fifty calves 1 heads, 
 £5 5s. ; on bacon, £1 10s. ; on six chickens and two 
 capons, £1 ; on three joints of veal, 18s. ; on butter 
 and flour, 15s. ; on oranges, lemons, vinegar, and spices, 
 £1 ; on oysters and sausages, 15s. ; on the use of pewter 
 and linen, £1 ; and on various other items additional 
 sums, bringing the total up to i?18 6s. No wine, it 
 will be noticed, is included in the above bill, but there 
 is no doubt a considerable amount for this item should 
 be added to it. 
 
 Early in the last century street clubs became common 
 in various parts of London, that is to say, clubs in which 
 the inhabitants of one or two streets met every night to 
 discuss the affairs of the neighbourhood. Oat of these, 
 we suppose, arose the Mug House Club, in Long Acre, 
 which soon found imitators in other parts of London. 
 The members — gentlemen, lawyers, and tradesmen — met 
 in a large room. A gentleman nearly ninety years of
 
 92 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 age was their president. A harp played at the lower 
 end of the room, and now and then a member rose and 
 treated the company to a song. Nothing was drunk 
 but ale, and every gentleman had his own mug, which 
 he chalked on the table as it was brought in. 
 
 In 1770 some young gentlemen, on returning from 
 the grand tour it was then customary to make after 
 leaving college — a tour which was supposed to lick the 
 young cubs into shape and refine their manners, of 
 course an illusion, since, whilst abroad, they associated 
 chiefly with the scum of English society then swarming 
 on the Continent — some of these young gentlemen, on 
 their return, established in St. James's Street the Savoir 
 V ivre Club, where they held periodical dinners, of which 
 macaroni was a standing dish. This club was the 
 nursery of the Macaronis, a phalanx of mild Hyde 
 Park beaux, who were distinguished for nothing but 
 the ridiculous dress they assumed. An unfinished copy 
 of verses found among Sheridan's papers, and which 
 Thomas Moore considered as the foundation of certain 
 lines in the ' School for Scandal,' delineates the 
 Macaronis in a few masterly strokes : 
 
 ' Then I mount on my palfrey as gay as a lark, 
 And, followed by John, take the dust in Hyde Park. 
 In the way I am met by some smart Macaroni, 
 Who rides by my side on a little bay pony ; 
 ... as taper and slim as the ponies they ride, 
 Their legs are as slim, and their shoulders no wider,' etc. 
 
 The Savoir Vivre Club did not outlive the reign of 
 the Macaronis, which lasted about five years, and the 
 club ended its days — the chairmen and linkmen never 
 having understood its foreign appellation — as a public-
 
 QUEER CLUBS OF FORMER DAYS 93 
 
 house bearing the name and sign of The Savoy Weavers. 
 There were, in the last century especially, no end of 
 small clubs, whose objects in most cases were trivial and 
 ridiculous. Short notice is all they deserve. 
 
 The Humdrum Club was composed of gentlemen of 
 peaceable dispositions, who were satisfied to meet at a 
 tavern, smoke their pipes, and say nothing till mid- 
 night. The Twopenny Club was formed by a number 
 of artisans and mechanics, who met every night, each 
 depositing on his entering the club-room his twopence. 
 If a member swore, his neighbours might kick him on 
 the shins. If a member's wife came to fetch him, she 
 was to speak to him outside the door. In the reign of 
 Charles II. was established the Duellists' 1 Club, to which 
 no one was admitted who had not killed his man. The 
 chronicler of the club naively says : ' This club, consist- 
 ing only of men of honour, did not continue long, most 
 of the members being put to the sword or hanged. 1 
 
 The Everlasting Club, founded in the first decade of 
 the last century, was so called because its hundred 
 members divided the twenty-four hours of day and 
 night among themselves in such a manner that the 
 club was always sitting, no person presuming to rise 
 till he was relieved by his appointed successor, so that 
 a member of the club not on duty himself could always 
 find company, and have his whet or draught, as the 
 rules say, at any time. 
 
 The tradespeople and workmen of the past seem to 
 have had a passion for clubs ; but there is this to be 
 said in their favour, theirs were only drinking clubs. 
 Our modem patrons of low-class clubs establish them 
 for the worse pursuits of gambling and betting.
 
 IX. 
 
 CURIOUS STORIES OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE. 
 
 TN the Weekly Journal of January 2, 1719-20, can be 
 "■■ read : ' It was the observation of a witty knight 
 many years ago, that the English people were 
 something like a flight of birds at a barn-door. Shoot 
 among them and kill ever so many, the rest shall return 
 to the same place in a very little time, without any 
 remembrance of the evil that had befallen their fellows. 1 
 The pigeons at Monte Carlo, whom the cruel-minded 
 idiots who fire at them have missed, instead of flying at 
 once and for ever from the murderous spot, perch on the 
 cage in which their fellows are kept, and are easily 
 caught again, to be eventually killed. ' Thus the 
 English, 1 the Weekly Journal concludes, ' though they 
 have had examples enough in these latter times of 
 people ruined by engaging in projects, yet they still fall 
 in with the next that appears. 1 And thus the Stock 
 Exchange flourishes. That desolation-spreading upas- 
 tree was planted in the mephitic morass of the national 
 debt. It is considered deserving of blame in an in- 
 dividual to get into debt, yet sometimes his doing so is 
 unavoidable — his means are insufficient for his wants.
 
 STORIES OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE 95 
 
 But a nation has no excuse for taking credit and getting 
 into debt. There is wealth enough in the country to 
 pay cash for all it requires ; and if it borrows money 
 merely to subsidize foreign tyrants to enchain their own 
 subjects, it commits a criminal act. But nearly the 
 whole of our national debt has such an origin, and its 
 poisonous produce is the Stock Exchange. The word 
 ' stock-jobber'' was first heard in 1688, when a crowd 
 of companies sprang into existence, and it was then 
 that the Stock Exchange was first established as an 
 independent institution at Jonathan's Coffee-house, in 
 Change Alley, in or about 1698. Before then tl*e 
 brokers had carried on their business in the Royal 
 Exchange. London at that time abounded — at what 
 time does it not? — with new projects and schemes, 
 many of them delusory, consequently the legitimate 
 transactions of the Royal Exchange were inconveniently 
 interfered with by the presence of so many jobbers and 
 brokers — that pernicious spawn of the public funds, as 
 Noortbouck calls them — and they were ordered to leave 
 the Exchange. They just crossed the road and went to 
 Jonathan's, ' and though a public nuisance, they serve 
 the purposes of ministers too well, in propagating a 
 spirit of gaming in Government securities, to be exter- 
 minated, as a wholesome policy would dictate." 1 There, 
 at Jonathan's, ' you will see a fellow in shabby clothes, 1 
 as we read in the ' Anecdotes of the Manners and 
 Customs of London,' * selling ^10,000 or .£12,000 in 
 stock, though perhaps he may not be worth at the 
 same time 10s., and with as much zeal as if he were a 
 director, which they call selling a bear-skin.' Thus this 
 latter expression seems very old. The business of stock-
 
 96 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 jobbing increased, in spite of some feeble repressive 
 attempts on the part of Government in 1720, the House 
 of Commons passing a vote ' that nothing can tend 
 more to the establishment of public credit than prevent- 
 ing the infamous practice of stock-jobbing"'; and also 
 passing at the same time an Act enabling persons who 
 had been sufferers thereby to obtain an easy and 
 speedy redress.* In spite of this the brokers contrived 
 to thrive to such an extent that they found it necessary 
 to take a more commodious room in Threadneedle 
 Street, to which admission was obtained on payment of 
 sixpence. The Bank Rotunda was at one period the 
 place where bargains in stocks were made ; but there 
 the brokers were as great a nuisance as they had been 
 at the Royal Exchange, and were turned out. It was 
 then they took the room in Threadneedle Street, and 
 in the year 1799 they raised i?13,150 in 1,263 shares of 
 d£?50 each, and purchased a site in Capel Court, com- 
 prising Mendoza's boxing-room and debating forum and 
 buildings contiguous, on which the present Stock Ex- 
 change was erected, and opened in 1801. Capel Court 
 was so called from the London residence of Sir William 
 Capel, Lord Mayor of London in 1504. Within the 
 last decade the building has been considerably enlarged 
 and beautified. 
 
 Stockbrokers are supposed to lead very harassed and 
 restless lives — yes, if they speculate on their own account 
 and with their own money, a folly which no experienced 
 
 * An Act passed in 1734 forbade time bargains under a penalty 
 of £500 on brokers and their clients, and of £100 for contracting 
 for the sale of stock of which the person was not possessed. 
 Both these statutes were repealed circa I860.
 
 STORIES OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE 97 
 
 broker ever thinks of committing. He speculates for 
 other people, and with their money, and, well, if before 
 the official hour of opening — viz., eleven o'clock — a 
 chance presents itself of a deal with a customer's stock 
 on the broker's account, by which a little benefit accrues 
 to the latter, the customer knows nothing about it, and 
 what you are ignorant of does not hurt. The broker is, 
 in this respect, very much like the lawyer. Neither the 
 broker nor the lawyer can be expected to share their 
 clients 1 anxieties concerning investments or disputed 
 interests, and they don't. When either of them leaves 
 his office for his suburban villa or Brighton breezes, he 
 leaves all thoughts of business behind him in the office, 
 considering that the freedom from care he enjoys at home 
 is honestly earned, and no doubt it is — in his estimation. 
 
 Until within the first quarter of this century a singular 
 custom concerning the admission of Jews to the Stock 
 Exchange was in existence. The number of Jew brokers 
 was limited to twelve, and these could secure the privi- 
 lege only by a liberal gratuity to the Lord Mayor for 
 the time being. During the Mayoralty of Wilkes, one 
 of the Jew brokers was taken seriously ill, and Wilkes 
 is said to have speculated pretty openly on the advan- 
 tage he would derive from filling up the vacancy. The 
 son of the broker, meeting the Lord Mayor, reproached 
 Wilkes with wishing his father's death. ' My dear 
 fellow, 1 replied Wilkes, with the sarcastic humour 
 peculiar to him, ' you are in error, for I would rather 
 have all the Jew brokers dead than your father. - ' 
 
 The funds are much affected by political events ; that 
 goes without saying. Their rise or fall may be very 
 rapid. It was exceptionally so in the early period of 
 
 7
 
 98 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 the French revolutionary war. In March, 1792, the 
 Three per Cents, were at 96, in 1797 they were as low 
 as 48, the lowest they ever fell to. The possession of 
 prior or exclusive intelligence enables persons to specu- 
 late with great success. A broker who casually became 
 acquainted with the failure of Lord Macartney's 
 negotiation with the French Directory, made £16,000 
 while breakfasting at Batson's Coffee-house, Cornhill, 
 and had he not been timid, might have gained half a 
 million, so great was the fluctuation, owing to the news 
 being entirely unexpected. 
 
 But the magnates of the money market did not rely 
 on casual intelligence. They left no stone unturned to 
 obtain reliable information in advance even of Govern- 
 ment. Thus Sir Henry Furnese, a bank director, paid 
 for constant despatches from Holland, Flanders, France 
 and Germany. He made an enormous haul by his early 
 intelligence of the surrender of Namur in 1695. King 
 William gave him a diamond ring as a reward for earlv 
 information; yet he was not above fabricating false 
 news, and he had his tricks for influencing the funds. 
 If he wished to buy, his brokers looked gloomy, and, the 
 alarm spread, they concluded their bargains. Marl- 
 Ljrough had an annuity of £6,000 from Medina, the 
 Jew, for permission to attend his campaigns. During 
 the troubles of 1745, when the rebels advanced towards 
 London, stocks fell terribly. Sampson Gideon, a famous 
 Jew broker, managed to have the first news of the 
 Pretender's retreat. He hastened to Jonathan's, bought 
 all the stock in the market, spending all his cash, and 
 pledging his name for more. This stroke of business 
 made him a millionaire.
 
 STORIES OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE 99 
 
 During the last years of the French wars a difference 
 of 8 per cent., and even 10 per cent., would occur within 
 an hour, and thus great fortunes might be won or lost 
 within that short time. It was also a period of gigantic 
 frauds, but of these later on. 
 
 Of all the sons of Maier Amschel Rothschild, Nathan, 
 born in 1777, was undoubtedly the most prominent. 
 Inheriting his father's spirit, he left his home at the early 
 age of twenty-two, and in 1798 opened a small shop as 
 a banker and money-lender at Manchester. He had 
 left Frankfurt, where his father's house had just been 
 knocked into ruins by the bombardment of Marshal 
 Kleber, with only a thousand florins in his pocket. But 
 the cotton interest was just then beginning to develop 
 itself, and Nathan took such clever advantage of the 
 opportunities this offered him, that at the end of five 
 years he came from Manchester to London with a 
 fortune of =£200,000, where he became the son-in-law of 
 Levi Barnett Cohen, one of the Jewish City magnates. 
 The report of his Manchester successes had preceded 
 him to the Capital, and he immediately engaged largely 
 in Stock Exchange speculations. Whilst houses of the 
 oldest standing were tottering or falling, owing to the 
 State loan of 1810 having turned out a failure, and the 
 fortunes of the Peninsular War seemed most doubtful, 
 some drafts of Wellington to a considerable amount 
 came over here, and there was no money in the Ex- 
 chequer to meet them. Nathan Rothschild, satisfied as 
 to England's final victory, purchased the bills at a large 
 discount, and finally found the means of redeeming them 
 at par. It was a splendid speculation, which resulted 
 in his entering into closer intercourse with the Ministry, 
 
 7—2
 
 100 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 and he was chiefly employed in transmitting the sub- 
 sidies which England furnished — most foolishly indeed 
 — to the Continental Powers. The circumstance that 
 Nathan was supplied by his brothers at Frankfurt and 
 elsewhere with the earliest and most reliable intelligence, 
 and his trustworthy connections and arrangements in 
 London, enabled him to turn such knowledge to imme- 
 diate and profitable account. But there being then 
 neither railways nor telegraphs, news was slow in coming. 
 Nathan trained carrier pigeons, and organized a staff of 
 agents, whose duty it was to follow the march of the 
 armies, and daily and hourly to send reports in cipher, 
 tied under the wings of the pigeons. His agents, by 
 means of fast-sailing boats, taking the shortest routes, 
 indicated by Nathan himself — the mail-boats between 
 Folkestone and Boulogne of the present day follow one 
 of these routes — carried large sums between the coasts 
 of Germany, France, and England. And when events 
 on the Continent were coming to a crisis, Nathan on 
 more than one occasion hurried over to the Continent 
 to watch the course of affairs. It is said that Nathan 
 Rothschild, on June 18, 1815, was on the field of 
 Waterloo,* and watched the battle till he saw the 
 French troops in full retreat, when he immediately rode 
 back to Brussels, whence a carriage took him to Ostend. 
 The sea was stormy ; in vain Nathan offered 500 francs, 
 
 * To an article I wrote twenty-five years ago on this topic I 
 find appended the following note : 'We give the following on 
 the authority of Martin, but must add that a private friend, 
 who formerly filled an office of trust in the firm of Rothschild 
 Brother?, delares the whole to be a fiction.' But who this friend 
 was we cannot now remember.
 
 STORIES OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE 101 
 
 600 francs, 800 francs, to carry him across; at last a 
 poor fisherman risked his life for 2,000 francs, and his 
 frail barque, which carried Caesar and his fortunes, 
 landed Nathan in the evening- at Dover. When he 
 appeared on June 20, leaning against his usual pillar in 
 the Stock Exchange, everything and everybody looked 
 gloomy. He whispered to a few of his most intimate 
 friends that the allied army had been defeated. The 
 dismal news spread like wildfire, and there was a 
 tremendous fall in the funds. Nathan's known agents 
 sold with the rest, but his unknown agents bought every 
 scrap of paper that was to be had. It was not till the 
 afternoon of June 21 that the news of the victory of 
 Waterloo became known. Nathan was the first to 
 inform his friends of the happy event, a quarter of an 
 hour before the news was given to the public. The 
 funds rose faster than they had fallen, and Nathan still 
 leant against his pillar in the southern corner of the 
 Stock Exchange, but richer by about a million sterling. 
 From that day the career of Nathan was one of ever- 
 increasing prosperity ; his firm became the agents of all 
 European Governments ; he made bargains with the 
 Czar of Russia and with South American Republics, 
 with the Pope and the Sultan. About the morality of 
 the Waterloo episode the less said the better, but peers 
 and princes of the blood, bishops and archbishops, 
 partook of his sumptuous banquets, whilst he calculated 
 to a penny on what a clerk could live ! 
 
 Another financier, who almost rivalled Rothschild as 
 a speculator, was Abraham Goldsmid, who was ruined 
 by a conspiracy. He, in conjunction with a banking 
 establishment, had taken a large Government loan.
 
 102 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 The conspirators managed to cause the omnium stock 
 to fall to 18 discount. The result was Goldsmid's 
 failure and eventually his suicide, whilst the con- 
 spirators made a profit of about i?2,000,000. 
 
 Among other notable stockbrokers we must not omit 
 Francis Bailey, F.S.A., President of the Royal Astro- 
 nomical Society, who retired from the Stock Exchange 
 in 1825. In 1851 he repeated at his house in Tavistock 
 Place, Russell Square, the Cavendish experiment of 
 weighing the earth, and calculating its bulk and 
 figure, and at the same time verifying the standard 
 measure of the British nation, and rectifying pendulum 
 experiments. In the garden of the house a small 
 observatory was erected for those purposes, and is, we 
 believe, still standing. 
 
 We alluded a little while ago to some gigantic frauds 
 in Stock Exchange operations. One of the most extra- 
 ordinary and elaborate of such frauds was that carried 
 out by De Berenger and Cochrane- Johnstone in 1814. 
 Napoleon's military operations against the allies had 
 greatly depressed the funds. On February 21, 1814, 
 about one o'clock a.m., a violent knocking was heard 
 at the door of the Ship Inn, then the chief hotel at 
 Dover. When the door was opened, a person in a 
 richly-embroidered scarlet uniform announced himself 
 as an aide-de-camp of Lord Cathcart (who was aide-de- 
 camp to the Duke of Wellington in 1815), and as the 
 bearer of important news. The allies had gained a 
 great victory, and entered Paris ; Napoleon had been 
 captured and killed by Cossacks, who had cut his body 
 into a thousand pieces. Immediate peace was now 
 certain. The stranger ordered a post - chaise, and
 
 STORIES OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE 103 
 
 departed for London, but before leaving, he sent a 
 note containing the news to the Port Admiral, who 
 received it about four a.m. ; but the morning being 
 foggy, the telegraph could not be worked. The sham 
 aide-de-camp — really De Berenger, an adventurer, after- 
 wards a livery stable-keeper — dashed along the road, 
 throwing napoleons to the post - boys whenever he 
 changed horses. At Bexley Heath it was clear to him 
 that the telegraph could not have worked, so he 
 moderated his pace, spreading at the same time the 
 news of Napoleon's defeat and death. At Lambeth 
 he entered a hackney-coach, telling the post-boys to 
 spread the news, which reached the Stock Exchange 
 about ten o'clock, in consequence of which the funds 
 rose, but fell again when it was found that the Lord 
 Mayor had had no intelligence. But about twelve 
 o'clock three persons, two of whom were dressed as 
 French officers, drove in a post-chaise over London 
 Bridge ; their horses were bedecked with laurels. The 
 officers scattered papers among the crowd, announcing 
 the death of Napoleon and the fall of Paris. They 
 then paraded through Cheapside and Fleet Street, 
 passed over Blackfriars Bridge, and drove rapidly to 
 the Marshgate, Lambeth, got out, changed their 
 cocked hats for round ones, and disappeared as 
 mysteriously as their confederate, De Berenger, had 
 done a few hours earlier. 
 
 The funds now rose again, but when, after hours of 
 anxious expectation, it was discovered that the news, 
 on which many bargains had been made, was false, 
 there was, of course, wailing and gnashing of teeth. 
 A committee was appointed by the Stock Exchange to
 
 104 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 track out the conspiracy, as on the two days before 
 stocks to the amount of ~C826,000 had been purchased 
 by persons implicated. One of the gang had, for a 
 blind, called on Lord Cochrane, and Cochrane -John- 
 stone, a relation of his, had purchased Consols for him, 
 that he might unconsciously benefit by the fraud. The 
 Tories, eager to destroy a political enemy, concentrated 
 all their rage on him, and he was tried, fined i?l,000, 
 and sentenced to stand for one hour in the pillory ; but 
 this latter part of the sentence was not carried out, as 
 Sir Francis 13urdett had declared that if it was done he 
 would stand beside his friend on the scaffold of shame. 
 Cochrane was further stripped of his knighthood, and 
 his escutcheon kicked down the steps of St. George's 
 Chapel at Windsor. But in his old age his innocence 
 and the injustice done to him were recognised, and his 
 coronet restored to him unsoiled. But could this atone 
 for all the wrong inflicted, and all the misery endured ? 
 Those who wish to know all the details of this remark- 
 able fraud will find them in the two volumes of the 
 Gentleman's Magazine for 1814. The first volume 
 gives a full account of the evidence produced at the 
 trial .
 
 X. 
 
 WITS AND BEAUX OF OLD LONDON SOCIETY. 
 
 A MERE beau, a ' man of dress, 1 as our dictionaries 
 define him, is a pitiful object — a walking and 
 talking doll, painted and bedizened, and as 
 imbecile-looking as a wax figure. The man who 
 chooses to go in for being a beau should, if he does 
 not wish to be thoroughly contemptible, possess, besides 
 physical beauty, a stock of brains, elegant manners, 
 ready wit, and moral courage. The gentleman who 
 at the seaside dresses altogether in white must have 
 a personally distinguished appearance not to be taken 
 for his own chef de cuisine. Beaux are rather out of 
 fashion just now — mashers and fops replace them. In 
 the last century they were more plentiful. Perhaps 
 the then prevailing popinjay style of dress, with its 
 embroidered and many-coloured coats and waistcoats, 
 gaudy breeches, wigs and swords, lent itself more 
 readily to the assumption of the character than does 
 our more subdued costume. In those days the 
 aspirants to the title of beau were termed bucks, 
 gallants, macaronis ; and one of their distinguishing 
 features, as the plays and portraits of those days
 
 106 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 abundantly demonstrate, was their having small legs 
 with slender calves — possibly to show they were not 
 footmen in disguise. And, as a rule, in those days 
 the valet had more brains than his master. 
 
 Beaux have always been a fruitful and pleasant theme 
 for the satirist's pen. The Spectator, in No. 275, de- 
 scribes the dissection of a beau's head, which is found 
 to contain no brain, but in the usual place for one, 
 smelling strongly of essences and orange-flower water, 
 a kind of horny substance, cut into a thousand little 
 faces or mirrors. Further, a lot of ribbons, laces, and 
 embroidery, billets-doux, love-letters, snuff, fictions, 
 vows, oaths, and a spongy substance, known as non- 
 sense. A muscle, not often discovered in dissections, 
 was found, the os cribriforme, which draws the nose 
 upwards when by that motion it intends to express 
 contempt. The ogling muscles were very much worn 
 with use. The individual to whom this head had 
 belonged had passed for a man for about thirty years, 
 and died in the flower of his youth by the blow of a 
 fire-shovel, he having been surprised by an eminent 
 citizen as he was paying some attentions to his wife. 
 This analysis of a beau's head, or character, was written 
 in 1712. In 1757 an essayist described him thus in 
 doggerel : 
 
 ' Would you a modern beau commence, 
 Shake off that foe to pleasure, sense. 
 Scorn real, unaffected worth, 
 Despise the virtuous, good and brave, 
 To ev'ry passion be a slave. . . . 
 Bo it your passion, joy and fame 
 To play at ev'ry modish game. . . . 
 Harangue on fashion, point and lace. . . .
 
 WITS AND BEAUX OF OLD LONDON 107 
 
 Affect to know each reigning belle 
 That throngs the playhouse or the Mall. 
 Though swearing yo'i detest a fool, 
 Be versed in Folly's ample school. . . . 
 These rites observed, each foppish elf 
 May view an emblem of himself.' 
 
 The combination of wit and beau in one person has, 
 nevertheless, occasionally been seen, and the ordinary, 
 or numskulled, beau has shared in the reputation 
 created by such a combination, just as all judges are 
 assumed to be sober. But in the days when beaux 
 flourished wit of a very attenuated kind tickled the 
 fancy of the public, who haunted the taverns patronized 
 by the so-called wits. Even the jokes which passed at 
 the Mermaid between Shakspere, Ben Jonson, and other 
 professed jesters must appear to modern readers who are 
 not absurdly prepossessed in favour of all that savours 
 of antiquity, as heavy, dull, and often far-fetched. To 
 justify what may appear rank heresy, let me quote one 
 of Tarleton's * witty' sayings. Tarleton was Shakspere's 
 friend and fellow -actor, the low comedian of Queen 
 Elizabeth's reign, who probably suggested to Shakspere 
 some of his jesters and fools. Now, this is what is 
 transmitted to us as a specimen of his wit : Tarleton, 
 keeping an ordinary in Paternoster Row, would approve 
 of mustard standing before his customers to have wit. 
 'How so? 1 inquired one. 'It is like a witty scold, 
 meeting another scold, begins to scold first. So," 1 says 
 he, ' the mustard, being licked up and knowing that 
 you will bite it, begins to bite you first. 1 ' I'll try that," 1 
 says a gull, and the mustard so tickled him that his 
 eyes watered. ' How now p 1 says Tarleton. ' Does my
 
 108 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 jest savour P 1 ' Ay,"* says the gull, ' and bite too.' ' If 
 you had had better wit, 1 says Tarleton, 'you would 
 have bit first. So, then, conclude with me that dumb, 
 unfeeling mustard has more wit than a talking, unfeeling 
 fool, as you are.' And this was considered 'a rare 
 conceit ' in the days of Shakspere. We are rather 
 more exacting now. 
 
 The beaux of the days we are speaking of were, 
 indeed, poor specimens of humanity. They were a 
 noisy, swaggering lot, as we learn from the author of 
 ' Shakspere's England/ ' If a gallant,' he says, ' entered 
 the ordinary ... he would find the room full of fashion- 
 mongers . . . courtiers, who came there for society and 
 news ; adventurers who have no home . . . quarrelsome 
 men paced about fretfully fingering their sword-hilts, 
 and maintaining as sour a face as that Puritan moping 
 in a corner, pent up by a group of young swaggerers, 
 disputing over cards. . . . The soldiers bragged of 
 nothing but of their employment in Ireland and in the 
 Low Countries. . . . The mere dullard sat silent, plav- 
 ing with his glove, or discussing at what apothecary's 
 the best tobacco was to be bought. 1 
 
 But let us, in the career of an individual, Beau 
 Fielding, famous in his day, show how beaux then 
 acquired a reputation. Scotland Yard was so called 
 from a palace which stood there, and was the residence 
 of the Kings of Scotland on their annual visit to do 
 homage for their kingdom to the Crown of England. 
 On the union of the Scottish and English Crowns the 
 palace was allowed to go to decay. Farts of it served 
 as occasional residences for various persons, one of 
 whom was Robert Fielding, who died there in the
 
 WITS AND BEAUX OF OLD LONDON 109 
 
 early part of the last century. This Fielding was 
 generally known as Beau Fielding. The Tatler, in 
 August, 1709 (Nos. 50 and 51), thus describes him : 
 ' Ten lustra and more are wholly passed since Orlando 
 (R. Fielding) first appeared in the metropolis of this 
 island, his descent noble, his wit humorous, his person 
 charming. But to none of these advantages was his 
 title so undoubted as that of his beauty. His com- 
 plexion was fair, but his countenance manly ; his 
 stature of the tallest, his shape the most exact ; and 
 though in all his limbs he had a proportion as delicate 
 as we see in the work of the most skilful statuaries, his 
 body had a strength and firmness little inferior to the 
 marble of which such images are formed. This made 
 Orlando the universal flame of all the fair sex ; innocent 
 virgins sighed for him as Adonis, experienced widows as 
 Hercules. Thus did this figure walk alone, the pattern 
 and ornament of our species, but, of course, the envy 
 of all who had the same passions, without his superior 
 merit, and pretences to the favour of that enchanting 
 creature, woman. However, the generous Orlando 
 believed himself formed for the world, and not to 
 be engrossed by any particular affection. . . . Woman 
 was his mistress, and the whole sex his seraglio. His 
 form was always irresistible ; and if we consider that 
 not one of five hundred can bear the least favour from 
 a lady without being exalted above himself . . . we 
 cannot think it wonderful that Orlando's repeated 
 conquests touched his brain. So it certainly did, and 
 Orlando became an enthusiast in love. . . . He would 
 still add to the advantages of his person that of a pro- 
 fession which the ladies always favour, and immediately
 
 110 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 commenced soldier. . . . Our hero seeks distant climes 
 . . . after many feats of arms . . . Orlando returns 
 home, full, but not loaded, with years. . . . The 
 beauteous Yillaria (Barbara, daughter and heiress of 
 William Villiers, Lord Viscount Grandison, of the 
 Kingdom of Ireland) . . . became the object of his 
 affection. . . . According to Milton, 
 
 '" The fair with conscious majesty approved." 
 
 Fortune having now supplied Orlando with necessaries 
 for his high taste of gallantry and pleasure, his equipage 
 and economy had something in them more sumptuous 
 and gallant than could be conceived in our degenerate 
 age, therefore ... all the Britons under the age of 
 sixteen . . . followed his chariot with shouts and 
 acclamations. ... I remember I saw him one day 
 stop, and call the youths about him, to whom he 
 spoke as follows : " Good youngsters, go to school, and 
 do not lose your time in following; my wheels. I am 
 loath to hurt you, because I know not but you are all 
 my own offspring. . . . Why, you young dogs, did you 
 never see a man before T " Never such a one as you, 
 noble General, 11 replied a truant from Westminster. 
 " Sirrah, I believe thee ; there is a crown for thee. 
 Drive on, coachman. 11 . . . Fortune being now pro- 
 pitious to the gay Orlando, he dressed, he spoke, he 
 moved as a man might be supposed to do in a nation 
 of pigmies ... he sometimes rode in an open tumbril, 
 of less size than ordinary, to show the largeness of his 
 limbs, and the grandeur of his personage, to the greater 
 advantage. ... In all these glorious excesses did . . . 
 Orlando live . . . until an unlucky accident brought to
 
 WITS AND BEAUX OF OLD LONDON 111 
 
 his remembrance that ... he was married before he 
 courted the nuptials of Villaria. Several fatal memo- 
 randums were produced to revive the memory of this 
 accident, and the unhappy lover was for ever banished 
 her presence, to whom he owed the support of his first 
 renown and gallantry. . . . Orlando, therefore, now 
 rages in a garret.' The Barbara Villiers mentioned by 
 the Tatler was identical with Ladv Castlemaine, Duchess 
 of Cleveland, whose scandalous history is notorious. 
 She was sixty-five years old when she fell in love with 
 Fielding and married him. The ' unlucky accident 1 of 
 the Tatler was the fact that a few weeks before Fielding- 
 had been taken in by an adventuress, one Mary Wads- 
 worth, whom, taking her for a rich widow, he had 
 married. On his second — bigamous — marriage, the first 
 wife revealed the fact to Lady Castlemaine, who, having 
 been shamefully treated by Fielding, was glad to get 
 rid of him. The first marriage was proved in a court of 
 law, and sentence passed on Fielding to be burnt in the 
 hand. By interest in certain quarters he was spared 
 this ignominious punishment ; but he was left destitute, 
 and died forgotten and forsaken. 
 
 The Tatler gave Fielding a noble descent, and he, in 
 fact, claimed descent from the Hapsburgs ; and on the 
 strength of his name ventured to have the arms of Lord 
 Denbigh emblazoned on his coach, and to drive about 
 the ring in Hyde Park. At the sight of the immaculate 
 coat-of-arms on the plebeian chariot, 'all the blood of 
 the Hapsburgs ' flew to the head of Basil, fourth Earl 
 of Denbigh. In a high state of fury, he at once pro- 
 cured a house-painter, and ordered him to daub the 
 coat-of-arms completely over, in broad daylight, and
 
 112 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 before all the company in the ring. The beau tamely 
 submitted to the insult. 
 
 Fielding had several competitors in the beau-ship ; 
 contemporary with him were Beau Edgeworth and Beau 
 Wilson. Of the former but little is on record ; the 
 hitter's career was cut short at an early date, for when 
 he was not much beyond his twentieth year he was 
 killed in a duel between him and John Law, afterwards 
 so famous as the originator of the Mississippi scheme. 
 The duel took place on the site of the present Blooms- 
 bury Square. A mushroom growth of beaux arose about 
 the year 1770, some of whom having travelled in Italy, 
 and introduced macaroni as a new dish, they came to be 
 designated by that name. They dressed in the most 
 ridiculous fashion, wearing their hair in a very high 
 foretop, with long side-curls, and an enormous chignon 
 behind. Their clothes were tight-fitting, while silk 
 stockings in all weathers were de rigucur. This folly 
 was of but short duration. 
 
 In the first half of the eighteenth century flourished 
 Beau Nash — a great contrast in manners, character, 
 social position, and conduct to Beau Fielding ; but as 
 his life was passed at Bath he cannot be reckoned among 
 London beaux. Yet we mention him, as in his earlier 
 years he was slightly connected with the Metropolis, by 
 the fact that he was entered for the Temple, though he 
 never followed the law as a profession. 
 
 We have to come down to comparatively recent times 
 to encounter a beau of some note ; that beau was known 
 as Beau George Brummel. He was born in 1777, and 
 sent to Eton, where he enjoyed the credit of being the 
 best scholar, the best oarsman, and the best cricketer of
 
 WITS AND BEAUX OF OLD LONDON 113 
 
 his day. His father was Under-Secretary to Lord North, 
 and left each of his children some c£ J 30,000. At Eton 
 he made many aristocratic friends, and thus obtained 
 the entree to Devonshire House, where the beautiful 
 Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, held her court, and 
 where she introduced Brummell to the Prince Regent, 
 who gave him a commission in the 10th Hussars. But 
 the army, with its restraints, did not suit the beau ; he 
 left it, and then resided in Chesterfield Street, where 
 the Prince, finding in him a kindred spirit of vanity and 
 frivolity, used to visit him in the morning to see him 
 make his toilet, and to learn the art of tying his necker- 
 chief fashionably. And frequently the Prince would 
 stay all day to enjoy his friend's intellectual discourse, 
 stopping to take a chop or steak with him, and not 
 returning home till the next morning, half-seas over. 
 The beau spent his time chiefly at Brighton and at 
 Carlton House, and regularly established himself as a 
 leader of fashion, his horses and carriages, his dogs, 
 walking-sticks and snuff-boxes, but especially his clothes, 
 becoming patterns to all the empty-headed noodles who 
 required guidance in such matters. But such show 
 could not be supported on the income derived from his 
 patrimony ; Brummell therefore went in heavily for 
 gambling, with varying luck. Once at Brooks's he 
 played with Alderman Combe, nicknamed ' Mash-tub,' 
 Lord Mayor and brewer. The dice-box circulated. 
 ' Come, Mash-tub,' said the beau, who was the caster, 
 ' what do you set ?' ' Twenty-five guineas,' said the 
 Alderman. The beau won, and eleven more similar 
 ventures. As he pocketed the money, he said : ' Thank 
 you, Alderman ; henceforth 1 shall drink no porter but 
 
 8
 
 114 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 yours/ ' I wish, sir," replied Combe, ' that every other 
 blackguard in London would say the same." At the 
 Watier Club, established at the instigation of the Prince 
 of Wales, Brum mell suffered heavy losses, so that ever 
 after he was in constant pecuniary difficulties, though 
 Fortune smiled on him at times. Indulging in all the 
 superstitious tendencies of gamblers, he at one time 
 attributed his luck to the finding of a crooked sixpence 
 in the kennel, as he was walking with Mr. Raikes, who 
 tells the story, through Berkeley Square. He had a 
 hole bored in the coin, and attached it to his watch- 
 chain. As for the succeeding two years he had great 
 luck at the table and on the turf, he attributed it to the 
 lucky sixpence. He is supposed to have made nearlv 
 i?30,000 during that time. 
 
 A coolness between the Prince and the beau arose 
 after a few years; various reasons are assigned for it. 
 He was, for instance, said to have taken the part of 
 Mrs. Fitzherbert, who had been privately married to 
 the Prince Regent at Carlton House ; he is reported to 
 have asked Lady Chohnondeley, in the hearing of the 
 Prince, and pointing to him, ' Who is your fat friend '? 
 Though it is also reported that this question was put 
 to Jack Lee, as he was walking up St. James's Street, 
 arm-in-arm with the Prince, a few days after the beau 
 had quarrelled with the latter. But this blew over, 
 and Brummell was again invited to Carlton House, 
 where he took too much wine. The Prince said to his 
 brother, the Duke of York : ' I think we had better 
 order Mr. BrummeH\s carriage before he gets quite 
 drunk. 1 Another version of the second rupture is that 
 Brummell took the liberty of saying to the Prince :
 
 WITS AND BEAUX OF OLD LONDON 115 
 
 ' George, ring the bell.- The Prince rang it, and told 
 the servant who answered it : ' Mr. Brummelfs carriage. ' 
 This Brummell always denied; however, he was a second 
 time forbidden Carlton House. For a few years he was 
 a hanger-on at Oatlands, the seat of the Duke of York, 
 then, having lost large sums at play, he was obliged to 
 fly the country, and having lived for some years in 
 obscurity at Calais, he obtained the post of British 
 Consul at Caen — for which his previous career, of course, 
 eminently fitted him ! He died in that town in poor 
 circumstances in 1840. 
 
 Let us conclude this short account of the poor moth, 
 basking in the royal sunshine for awhile, with one or 
 two anecdotes. One day a youthful beau approached 
 Brummell, and said : 'Permit me to ask you where vou 
 get your blacking V ' Ah, 1 said the beau, ' my blacking 
 positively ruins me. I will tell you in confidence — it is 
 made with the finest champagne !' Fie was once at a 
 party in Portman Square. On the cloth being removed, 
 the snuff-boxes made their appearance ; BruminelTs was 
 particularly admired ; it was handed round, and a gentle- 
 man, finding it somewhat difficult to open, incautiously 
 applied a desert-knife to the lid. Brummell was on 
 thorns, and at last could contain himself no longer, and 
 addressing the host, he said, loud enough to be heard 
 by the company : ' Will you be good enough to tell 
 your friend that my snuff-box is not an oyster T 
 
 England has had no regular beau since the time of 
 Brummell, though occasionally some crack-brained 
 individual has attempted to wear his mantle. Such a 
 one was Ferdinand Geramb, a tight- laced German 
 General and Baron, who in the second decade of this 
 
 8—2
 
 116 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 century strutted about the parks, conspicuous for his 
 ringlets, his superb moustaches, and immense spurs. 
 It was asserted that he was a German Jew, who, having 
 married the widow of a Hungarian Baron, assumed her 
 late husband's title. His fiery moustaches were closely 
 imitated by many illustrious personages, and gold spurs 
 several inches long became the fashion — one fool makes 
 many. It is to him the British army is indebted for 
 the introduction of hussar uniforms. Having; to leave 
 England under the Alien Act, he went to Hamburg, 
 where he set himself to writing against the Emperor 
 Napoleon, who shut him up in the Castle of Vincennes. 
 There, in terrible fear of being shot, he made a vow 
 that should he regain his liberty he would renounce the 
 devil and his works, and join the Trappist community. 
 He was released at the Restoration, and at once entered 
 a Trappist monastery, under the name of Brother 
 Joseph, and in course of time became Abbot and Pro- 
 curator-General of the Order. No more fighting of 
 duels now, no more keeping the bailiffs who wanted to 
 seize him for debt at bay for twelve days in an English 
 country house which he had fortified ; he submitted to 
 the severest rules of the Order, and in 1831 made a 
 pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and died at Rome in 
 1848.
 
 XI. 
 
 LONDON 
 SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES. 
 
 TN the year 1765 a Frenchman, who did not give his 
 -*■ name, visited London, and afterwards published in 
 Paris an account of his visit. 
 ' I reached London,' he says, ' towards the close of 
 the day . . . and at last, quite by chance, I found 
 myself settled in an apartment in the house of the 
 Cruishuer Royal in Leicester Fields. This neighbour- 
 hood is filled with small houses, which are mostly let to 
 foreigners. 1 On the following day he walked down 
 Holborn and the Strand to St. Paul's, then crossed 
 London Bridge, and returned to his hotel by walking 
 through Southwark and Lambeth to Westminster, ' a 
 district full of mean houses and meaner taverns.' The 
 localities named have not greatly altered their character 
 since then. In another place our traveller says : ' Even 
 from the bridges it is impossible to get a view of the 
 liver, as the parapets are ten feet high. . . . The reason 
 given for all this is the inclination which the English, 
 and the Londoners especially, have for suicide. It is 
 true that above and below the town the banks are
 
 118 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 unprotected, and offer an excellent opportunity to those 
 who really wish to drown themselves ; but the distance 
 is great, and, besides, those who wish to lease the world 
 in this manner prefer doing so before the eyes of the 
 public. The parapets, however, of the new bridge 
 [Black friars] which is being built will be but of an 
 ordinary height. ' Suicidal tendencies must indeed 
 have greatly declined, since the most recently erected 
 bridges, the new Westminster and Blackfriars, have 
 particularly low parapets. 
 
 Of the streets our author says : ' They are paved in 
 such a manner that it is barely possible to ride or walk 
 on them in safety, and they are always extremely dirty. 
 . . . The finest streets . . . would be impassable were 
 it not that on each side . . . footways are made from 
 four to five feet wide, and for communication from one 
 to the other across the street there are smaller footways 
 elevated above the general surface of the roadway, and 
 formed of large stones selected for the purpose. . . . 
 In the finest part of the Strand, near St. Clement's 
 Church, I noticed, during the whole of my stay in 
 London, that the middle of the street was constantly 
 covered with liquid stinking mud, three or four inches 
 deep. . . . The walkers are bespattered from head to 
 foot. . . . The natives, however, brave all these dis- 
 agreeables, wrapped up in long blue coats, like dressing- 
 gowns, wearing brown stockings and perukes, rough, 
 red and frizzled.'' 
 
 Well, we cannot find much fault with this descrip- 
 tion, unflattering as it is, for in the last century London 
 certainly was one of the most hideous towns to live in, and 
 its inhabitants the most uncouth, repulsive set of ' guys* !
 
 SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES 119 
 
 Concerning Oxford Street our author makes a false 
 prognostic : 'The shops of Oxford Street will disappear 
 as the houses are sought after for private dwellings by 
 the rich. Soon will the great city extend itself to 
 Marylebone, which is not more than a quarter of a 
 league distant. At present it is a village, principally 
 of taverns, inhabited by French refugees."' 
 
 Our traveller sees but four houses in London which 
 will bear comparison with the great hotels in Paris. To 
 the inconvenience of mud, he says, must be added that 
 of smoke, which, mingled with a perpetual fog, covers 
 London as a pall. We, to our sorrow, know this to be 
 true even now. 
 
 But we have improved in one respect : our old watch- 
 men or ' Charleys ' have disappeared before the modern 
 police. Concerning these watchmen our author says : 
 ' There are no troops or guard or watch of any kind, 
 except during the night by some old men, chosen from 
 the dregs of the people. Their only arms are a stick and 
 a lantern. They walk about the streets crying the hour 
 every time the clock strikes . . . and it appears to be 
 a point of etiquette among hare-brained youngsters to 
 maul them on leaving their parties.'' 
 
 Our Frenchman formed a correct estimate of the 
 London watchman of his day — nay, it held good to the 
 final extinction of the ' Charleys. 1 In December, 1826, 
 a watchman was charged before the Lord Mayor with 
 insubordination. On being asked who had appointed 
 him watchman, the prisoner replied that he was in 
 great distress and a burden to the parish, who therefore 
 gave him the appointment to get rid of him. The 
 Lord Mayor : ' I thought so ; and what can be ex-
 
 120 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 pected from such a system of choosing watchmen ? I 
 know that most of the men who are thus burdens on 
 the parish are the vilest of wretches, and such men are 
 appointed to guard the lives and property of others ! I 
 also know that in most cases robberies are perpetrated 
 by the connivance of watchmen.' 
 
 But in some cases our author is really too good- 
 naturedly credulous. Says he : ' The people of London, 
 though proud and hasty, are good at heart, and 
 humane, even in the lowest class. If any stoppage 
 occurs in the streets, they are always ready to lend their 
 assistance to remove the difficulty, instead of raising a 
 quarrel, which might end in murder, as is often the case 
 in Paris. 1 This is really too innocent ! And our 
 French visitor must have been very fortunate indeed 
 never to have got into a London crowd of roughs or of 
 pickpockets, who create stoppages in the streets for the 
 only purpose of pursuing their trade, and who seldom 
 hesitate to commit violence if they cannot rob without 
 it. Our author's belief, indeed, in London honesty is 
 boundless. ' In order that the pot-boys, 1 he says, ' may 
 have but little trouble in collecting them [the pewter 
 pots in which publicans send out the beer], they are 
 placed in the open passages, and sometimes on the 
 doorsteps of the houses. I saw them thus exposed . . . 
 and felt quite assured against all the cunning of thieves. 1 
 But more astounding is the statement that there are 
 no poor in London ! ' A consequence, 1 says our visitor, 
 ' of its rich and numerous charitable establishments 
 and the immense sums raised by the poor-rates, which 
 impost is one which the little householders pay most 
 cheerfully, as they consider it a fund from which, in the
 
 SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES 121 
 
 event of their death, their wives and children will he 
 supported. 1 Fancy a little householder paying his poor- 
 rate cheerfully ! And what a mean opinion must our 
 author have had of the spirit of the householder who 
 calmly contemplated his family, after his death, going 
 to the parish ! 
 
 The Frenchman returns once more to our usual 
 melancholy, ' which, 1 he says, ' is no doubt owing to the 
 fogs 1 and to our fat meat and strong beer. ' Beef is 
 the Englishman's ordinary diet, relished in proportion 
 to the quantity of fat, and this, mixed in their stomachs 
 with the beer they drink, must produce a chyle, whose 
 viscous heaviness conveys only bilious and melancholic 
 vapours to the brain. 1 
 
 It certainly is satisfactory to have so scientific an ex- 
 planation of the origin of our spleen. 
 
 Another French writer in 1784 — M. La Combe — 
 published a book, entitled 'A Picture of London, 1 in 
 which, inter alia, he says : ' The highroads thirty or 
 forty miles round London are filled with armed high- 
 waymen and footpads. 1 This was then pretty true, 
 though the expression ' filled 1 is somewhat of an 
 exaggeration. The medical student of forty or fifty 
 years ago seems to have been anticipated in 1784, for 
 M". La Combe tells us that 'the brass knockers of doors, 
 which cost from 12s. to 15s., are stolen at night if the 
 maid forgets to unscrew them ' — a precaution which 
 seems to have gone out of fashion. ' The arrival of the 
 mails, 1 our author says, ' is uncertain at all times of 
 the year. . . . Persons who frequently receive letters 
 should recommend their correspondents not to insert 
 loose papers, nor to put the letters in covers, because
 
 122 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 the tux is sometimes treble, and always arbitrary, 
 though in a free country. But rapacity and injustice 
 are the deities of the Eno-Hsh. 1 M. La Combe does not 
 give us a flattering character. ' An Englishman, 1 he 
 says, ' considers a foreigner as an enemy, whom he dares 
 not offend openly, but whose society he fears ; and he 
 attaches himself to no one."' Perhaps it was so in 1784, 
 but such feelings have nearly died out — at least, among 
 educated people. M. La Combe, in another part of his 
 book, exclaims : ' How are you changed, Londoners ! . . . 
 Your women are become bold, imperious, and expensive. 
 Bankrupts and beggars, coiners, spies and informers, 
 robbers and pickpockets abound. . . . The baker mixes 
 alum in his bread . . . the brewer puts opium and 
 copper filings in his beer . . . the milkwoman spoils 
 her milk with snails. 1 
 
 Do more recent writers judge of us more correctly ? 
 We shall see. 
 
 I have lying before me a French book, the title of 
 which, translated into English, runs, ' Geography for 
 Young People. 1 It is in its eighth edition, and written 
 by M. Levi, Professor of Belles-Lettres, of History and 
 Geography in Paris. The date of the book is 1850. 
 The Professor in it describes London, and if his pupils 
 ever have, or rather had, occasion to visit our capital, 
 they must have been unable to recognise it from their 
 teacher's description of it. Among the many blunders 
 he commits, there are some which are excusable in a 
 foreigner, because they refer to matters which are 
 often misapprehended even by natives ; but to describe 
 London as possessing a certain architectural feature 
 which a mere walk through the streets with his eyes
 
 SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES 123 
 
 open would have shown him to have no existence at all 
 is rather unpardonable in a professor who takes on him- 
 self to teach young people geography. But what does 
 M. Levi say ? He says : ' In London you never see an 
 umbrella, because all the streets are built with arcades, 
 under which you find shelter when it rains, so that an 
 umbrella, which to us Parisians is an indispensable 
 article, is perfectly useless to a Londoner. 1 M. Levi 
 evidently, if ever he was in London, visited the 
 Quadrant only, before the arcade was pulled down, and 
 thereupon wrote his account of London. Yet he must 
 have looked about a bit, for he tells us of splendid cafes 
 to be met with in every street ; the nobility patronize 
 them ; ' one of them accidentally treads on the toes of 
 another, a duel is the consequence, and to-morrow 
 morning one of them will have ceased to live.'' 
 
 M. Levi reminds us of the Frenchman who came over 
 to England with the object of writing a book about us. 
 He arrived in London one Saturday night, and being- 
 tired, at once went to bed. At breakfast next morning- 
 he asked for new bread ; the waiter told him they only 
 had yesterday's. Out came the Frenchman's note-book, 
 in which he wrote : ' In London the bread is always 
 baked the day before.'' He then asked for the day's 
 paper, but was again told they had yesterday's only. 
 A memorandum went into the note-book : ' The London 
 newspapers are always published yesterday.' He then 
 thought he would present the letter of introduction he 
 had brought with him to a private family, so having 
 been directed to the house, he saw a lady near the 
 window, reading. Not wishing to startle or disturb 
 her, he gave a gentle single rap. This not being
 
 124 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 answered, he had to give a few more raps, when at last 
 a servant partly opened the door and asked his business. 
 He expressed his wish to see the master of the house. 
 ' Master never sees anybody to-day, but he will perhaps 
 to-morrow, 1 replied the servant, and shut the door in 
 his face. Another memorandum was added to the 
 previous ones : ' In London people never see anyone 
 to-day, but always to-morrow.' Having nothing to do, 
 he thought he would go to the theatre. He inquired 
 for Drury Lane, and was directed to it. The doors 
 being shut, he lounged about the neighbourhood till 
 they should open. As it grew later and later, and 
 there was no sign of a queue, he at last addressed a 
 passer-by, and asked him when the theatre would open. 
 ' It won't open to-day,' was the reply. This was the 
 last straw that broke the camel's back. Our French- 
 man hurried back to his hotel, wrote in his note-book, 
 ' In London there are theatres, but they never open to- 
 day,' took a cab, caught the night mail, and hastened 
 to leave so barbarous a country. 
 
 This description of London life is about as correct as 
 that recently given in Max O'Rell's ' John Bull and his 
 Womankind.' What kind of people did OTlell visit ? 
 
 I look at another book before me, written in Italian, 
 and entitled : ' Semi-serious Observations of an Exile 
 on England.' The book was published at Lugano in 
 1831, but the author — Giuseppe Fecchio — dates his 
 preface from York in 1827. 
 
 He speaks thusly of the approach to London by the 
 Dover road : ' If the sky is gloomy, the first aspect of 
 London is no less so. The smoky look of the houses 
 gives them the appearance of a recent fire. If to this
 
 SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES 125 
 
 you add the silence prevailing amidst a population of a 
 million and a half of inhabitants, all in motion (so that 
 you seem to behold a stage full of Chinese shadows), 
 and the uniformity of the houses, as if you were in a 
 city of beavers, you will easily understand that on 
 entering into such a beehive pleasure gives way to 
 astonishment. This is the old country style, but since 
 the English have substituted blue pills for suicide, or, 
 still better, have made a journey to Paris — since, instead 
 of Young's " Night Thoughts,' 11 they read the novels of 
 Walter Scott, they have rendered their houses a little 
 more pleasing in outward appearance. In the West 
 End especially they have adopted a more cheerful style 
 of architecture. But I do not by this mean to imply 
 that the English themselves have become more lively ; 
 they still take delight in ghosts, witchcraft, cemeteries, 
 and similar horrors. Woe to the author who writes a 
 novel without some apparition to make your hair stand 
 on end I 1 
 
 In speaking of the thinness of the walls and floors of 
 London houses, he says : ' I could hear the murmur of 
 the conversation of the tenant of the room above and 
 of that of the one below me ; from time to time the 
 words " very fine weather, 1 '' " indeed, 11 " very fine, 11 " com- 
 fort, 11 "comfortable, 11 "great comfort, 11 reached my 
 ears. In fact, the houses are ventriloquous. As 
 already mentioned, they are all alike. In a three- 
 storied house there are three perpendicular bedrooms, 
 one above the other, and three parlours, equally so 
 superposed. 1 Wc know how much of this description is 
 true. 
 
 ' Why are the English," he asks, ' not expert dancers ?
 
 126 LONDON SOUVENIR? 
 
 Because they cannot practise dancing in their slightly- 
 built houses, in which a lively caper would at once send 
 the third-floor down into the kitchen. This is the 
 reason why the English gesticulate so little, and have 
 their arms always glued to their sides. The rooms are 
 so small that you cannot move about rapidly without 
 smashing some object," 1 or, as we should say, you cannot 
 swing a cat in them. 
 
 ' Strangers are astounded,' continues our author, ' at 
 the silence prevailing among the inhabitants of London. 
 But how could a million and a half of people live 
 together without silence ? The noise of men, horses, 
 and carriages between the Strand and the Exchange is 
 so great that it is said that in winter there are two 
 degrees of difference in the thermometers of the City 
 and of the West End. I have not verified it," 1 our 
 author is candid enough to admit, ' but considering the 
 great number of chimneys in the Strand, it is probable 
 enough. From Chering [sic] Cross to the Exchange is 
 the cyclopedia of the world. Anarchy seems to prevail, 
 but it is only apparent. The rules which Gray gives 
 (in his "Trivia; or, the Art of Walking the Streets of 
 London 1V ) seem to me un necessary. , 
 
 Signor Pecchio pretty well describes the movements 
 of ' City men , : 
 
 ' The great monster of the capital, 1 he says, ' similar 
 to a huge giant, waking up, begins by giving signs of 
 life at its extremities. The movement begins at the 
 circumference, gradually extending to the centre, until 
 about ten o'clock the uproar begins, increasing till four 
 o'clock, which is the hour for going on 'Change. The 
 population seems to follow the law of the tides. Up
 
 SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES 127 
 
 to that hour the tide rises from the periphery to the 
 Exchange. At half- past four, when the Exchange 
 closes, the ebh sets in, and currents of men, horses, and 
 carriages flow from the Exchange to the periphery. 1 
 
 Like all foreigners, he has something to say about 
 the dulness of an English Sunday. 'This country, all 
 in motion, all alive on other days of the week, 1 he 
 observes, ' seems struck with an attack of apoplexy on 
 the Lord's day. 1 Foreigners pass the day at Greenwich 
 or Richmond, where ' they pay dearly for a dinner, 
 seasoned with the bows of a waiter in silk stockings 
 and brown livery, just like the dress of a Turin lawyer." 
 But if you want to see how John Bull spends the day, 
 it is not in Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens you 
 must look for him. ' If you want to see that marvellous 
 personage who is the wonder and laughing-stock of all 
 Europe, who clothes all the world, wins battles on land 
 and sea without much boasting, who works like three 
 and drinks like six, who is the pawnbroker and usurer 
 of all Kings and all Republics, whilst he is bankrupt at 
 home, and sometimes, like Midas, dies of hunger in the 
 midst of gold, you must look for him elsewhere. In 
 winter you must descend into underground cellars. 
 There, around a blazing fire, you will behold the 
 English workman, well dressed and shod, smoking, 
 drinking, and reading. . . . For this class of readers 
 special Sunday newspapers are published. ... It is in 
 these taverns, and amidst the smoke of tobacco and the 
 froth of their beer, the first condition of public opinion 
 is born and formed. It is there the conduct of every 
 citizen is discussed and appraised ; there starts the road 
 which leads to the Capitol or the Tarpeian rock ; there
 
 128 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 praise or blame is awarded to a Burdett issuing 
 triumphantly from the Tower, or to a Castlereagh 
 descending amidst curses to the tomb. . . . There are 
 no rows in these taverns . . . more decency of conduct 
 is observed in them than in our [Italian] churches. 
 When full of spirit and beer the customers, instead of 
 fighting, fall down on the pavement like dead men.'' 
 
 After having so carefully observed the conduct of the 
 British workman, our Italian friend watches him in the 
 suburban tea-garden, which he visits with his family to 
 take tea in the afternoon, or drink his nut-brown ale. 
 ' One of the handsomest, 1 he says, ' is Cumberland 
 Gardens,* close to Vauxhall . . . there he sits smoking 
 long pipes of the whitest clay, which the landlord 
 supplies, filled with tobacco, at one penny each. 
 Between his puffs of smoke he occasionally sends forth 
 a truncated phrase, such as we read in " Tristram Sandi ,1 
 [sic] were uttered by Trion and the captain. It being 
 Sunday, which admits of no amusement, no music or 
 song is heard.'' Pretty much as it is at the present 
 day ! 
 
 Having heard what both Frenchmen and an Italian 
 had to say about London, let us listen to what a 
 German authoress has to tell us on the subject. 
 
 Johanna Schopenhauer, in her ' Travels through 
 England and Scotland ' (third edition, 1826), says : 
 ' The splendid shops, which offer the finest sights, are 
 situate chiefly between the working City and the more 
 aristocratic, enjoying Westminster,'' a statement which, 
 
 * In the early part of 1825, therefore shortly after our author 
 wrote, the tavern was burnt to the ground, and the site taken 
 possession of by the South London Waterworks.
 
 SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES 129 
 
 as every Londoner knows, is only partially correct. 
 ' The English custom of always making way to the right 
 greatly facilitates walking, so that there is no pushing 
 or running against anyone. 1 Did our author ever take 
 a walk in Cheapside or Fleet Street ? ' Even Italians 
 probably do not fear rain so much as a Londoner ; to 
 catch a wetting seems to them the most terrible mis- 
 fortune; on the first falling of a few drops everyone not 
 provided with an umbrella hastens to take refuge in a 
 coach. 1 How well the lady has studied the habits of 
 Londoners ! What will they say to this ? 
 
 'The police exercise a strict control over hackney- 
 coaches. Woe to the driver who ventures to over- 
 charge I 1 And again : ' You may safely enter, carrying 
 with you untold wealth, a coach at any time of the 
 night, as long as someone at the house whence you 
 start takes the number of the coach, and lets the driver 
 see that it is taken. 1 
 
 Mrs. Schopenhauer tells us that it is customary to go 
 for breakfast to a pastry-cook's shop, and eat a few 
 cakes hot from the pan. Truly, we did not know it. 
 Of course, she agrees with other writers as to the small- 
 ness of the houses, every room of which you can tell 
 from the outside ; but we were not aware that, as she 
 informs us, all the doors are exceedingly narrow and 
 high, and that frequently the front-doors look only like 
 narrow slits in the wall. 
 
 ' Bedrooms seldom can contain more than one bed ; 
 but English bedsteads are large enough to hold three 
 persons. And it is a universal custom not to sleep 
 alone ; sisters, relations, and female friends share a bed 
 without ceremony, and the mistress of the house is not 
 
 <J
 
 130 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 ashamed to take her servant to bed with her, for English 
 ladies are afraid of being alone in a room at night, 
 having never been brought up to it. . . . The counter- 
 pane is fastened to the mattress, leaving but an opening 
 for slipping in between the two.* 1 
 
 Again, we are told to our astonishment : ' The majority 
 of Londoners, workmen and shopkeepers, who form but 
 one category, on the whole lead sad lives. Heavy taxes, 
 the high prices of necessaries, extravagance of dress, 
 compel them to observe a frugality of living which, in 
 other countries, would be called poverty. 
 
 ' The shopkeeper, for ever tied to his shop and the 
 dark parlour behind, must deny himself every amuse- 
 ment. Theatres are too far off and too expensive ; the 
 wife of a well-to-do tradesman seldom can visit one 
 more than twice a year. 
 
 ' During the week they cannot leave the shop between 
 nine in the morning and twelve at night. The wife 
 generally attends to it, while the husband sits in the 
 parlour behind and keeps the accounts. True, on Sun- 
 days all the shops are closed, but so are the theatres, 
 and as all domestics and other employes insist on having 
 that day to themselves, the mistress has to stay at home 
 to take care of the house. 
 
 4 Merchants lead lives nearly as dull. They have to 
 deny themselves social pleasures indulged in by the rich 
 merchants of Hamburg or Leipsic. English ladies are 
 more domesticated, and not accustomed to the bustle of 
 public amusements. But their husbands, after business 
 hours, occasionally seek for recreation in cafes and 
 taverns. 1 
 
 How very one-sided and imperfect a view of English
 
 SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES 131 
 
 middle life, even as it was seventy years ago, when these 
 remarks were written, is presented to us by them is self- 
 evident ! 
 
 English ladies, according to our author, 'seldom go 
 out, and when they do, they prefer a shopping excursion 
 to every other kind of promenade. They also are fond 
 of visiting pastry-cooks' 1 shops, and as these are open to 
 the street, ladies may safely enter them. But that is 
 not allowable at Mr. Birch's in Cornhill, whose shop 
 ladies cannot visit without being accompanied by gentle- 
 men, the breakfast-room being at the back of the house, 
 at the end of a long passage, and lit up all the year 
 round (as daylight does not penetrate into it) with wax 
 candles, by the light of which ladies and gentlemen — 
 usually amidst solemn silence — swallow their turtle-soup 
 and small hot patties. The house supplies nothing 
 else . . . but its former proprietor, Master Horton, by 
 his patties and soup made a fortune of one hundred 
 thousand pounds, and his successor seems in a fair way 
 of doing the same. 1 We hope the assumption was 
 verified. 
 
 According to Mrs. Schopenhauer, Londoners are not 
 very hospitable, and ' prefer entertaining a friend they 
 invite to dinner at a coffee-house or tavern, rather than 
 at their own homes, where the presence of ladies is a 
 restraint upon them. Ladies are treated with great 
 respect, but, like all personages imposing respect, they 
 are avoided as much as possible. 1 
 
 Our traveller must have come in contact with some 
 very ungallant Englishmen. She describes a dinner at 
 a private house ; we are told that ' there are twelve to 
 fourteen guests, who fill the small drawing-room, the 
 
 9—2
 
 132 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 ladies sitting in armchairs, whilst the gentlemen stand 
 about, some warming themselves by the fire, often in a 
 not very decent manner. At the dinner-table napkins 
 are found only in houses which have acquired foreign 
 polish, and they are not many. The tablecloth hangs 
 down to the floor, and every guest takes it upon his 
 knee, and uses it as a napkin. . . . The lady of the 
 house serves the dishes, and there is no end to her 
 questions put to her guests as to the seasoning, the 
 part of the joint, the sauce, etc., they like, 1 questions 
 which are exceedingly troublesome to a foreigner who 
 is not up to all the technical terms of English cookery. 
 Of course, the hobnobbing and taking wine with every- 
 body — a fashion now happily abolished — comes in for a 
 good deal of censure, which, indeed, is richly deserved. 
 ' Conversation on any subject of interest is out of the 
 question during dinner ; were anyone to attempt it, the 
 master would immediately interrupt him with, " Sir, 
 you are losing your dinner ; by-and-by we will discuss 
 these matters. 11 The ladies from sheer modesty speak 
 but little ; foreigners must beware from saying much, 
 lest they be considered monstrous bold. 1 
 
 Whilst, after dinner, the gentlemen sit over their 
 wine, the ladies are yawning the time away in the 
 drawing-room, until their hostess sends word down to 
 the dining-room that tea is ready. ' It is said, 1 con- 
 tinues our author, 'that the slow or quick attention 
 given to this message shows who is master in the 
 house, the husband or the wife. 1 Long after midnight 
 the guests drive home ' through the streets still swarm- 
 ing with people. All the shops are still open, and 
 lighted up ; the street-lamps, of course, are alight, and
 
 SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES 133 
 
 burn till the rising of the sun.' Has any Londoner 
 ever seen all the shops open and lighted np all night ? 
 Did our author have visions ? 
 
 A London Sunday, of course, is commented on. The 
 complaint raised quite recently by some of our bishops 
 seems but a revival of wai lings uttered long ago, for we 
 learn from Mrs. Schopenhauer that in her time (sixty 
 years ago) 'some of the highest families in the kingdom 
 were called to account for desecrating the Sabbath with 
 amateur concerts, dances, and card-playing,' so that it 
 would indeed seem there is nothing new under the sun. 
 'The genuine Englishman, 1 says our authoress, 'divides 
 his time on Sundays between church and the bottle; his 
 wife spends the hours her religious duties leave her with 
 a gossip, and abuses her neighbours and acquaintances, 
 which is quite lawful on Sundays.' 1 
 
 We allow Mrs. Schopenhauer to make her bow and 
 retire with this parting shot. Still, that lady was not 
 singular in attributing great drinking powers to Eng- 
 lishmen. M. Larcher, who in 1861 published a book 
 entitled 'Les Anglais, Londres et rAngleterre, 1 says 
 therein that in good societv the ladies after dinner 
 retire into another room, after having partaken very 
 moderately of wine, while the gentlemen are left to 
 empty bottles of port, madeira, claret, and champagne. 
 ' And it is, 1 he adds, ' a constant habit among the ladies 
 to empty bottles of brandy. 1 And he quotes from a 
 work by General Pillet : ' Towards forty years of age 
 every well-bred English lady goes to bed intoxicated. 1 
 
 M. Jules Lecomte says in his ' Journey of Troubles 
 to London ' (' Un Voyage de Desagrements a Londres, 1 
 1854) that he accompanied a blonde English miss to
 
 134 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 the Exhibition in Hyde Park, where at one sitting she 
 ate six shillings" 1 worth of cake resembling a black brick 
 ornamented with currants. 
 
 According to M. Francis Wey's account of 'The 
 English at Home'CLes Anglais chez Eux, 1 1856), at 
 Cremorne Gardens the popular refreshment, and par- 
 ticularly with an Oxford theologian, is ginger-beer. 
 M. Wey probably means shandy-gaff. He agrees with 
 M. Lecomte : the consumption of food by one English 
 young lady would suffice for four Paris porters ! 
 
 A Russian visitor to London, the ' Own Correspon- 
 dent 1 of the Northern Bee Russian newspaper, who 
 inspected London in 1881, asserts, in his 'England and 
 Russia,'' that any English miss of eighteen is capable of 
 imbibing sundry glasses of wine ' without making a 
 face. 1 
 
 In the Daily Graphic of November 1, 1893, a state- 
 ment appeared, according to which a French journalist 
 at this present day informs the world, through Le Jour, 
 that in London — nay, in all England — not one cyclist 
 is to be found, the Government having rigidly sup- 
 pressed them. Well, M. Levi has told us that there 
 are no umbrellas in London ; now we learn that there 
 are no cyclists (how we wish this were true !). What 
 curious information we get from France about our- 
 selves ! 
 
 When will travellers leave off being Mi'mchausens ?
 
 XII. 
 OLD LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS.* 
 
 I. — The Galleried Taverns of Old London. 
 
 OLD London abounded in taverns. A folio volume 
 might be filled with accounts of the more im- 
 portant of them, but as we have only a limited 
 number of pages at our command, we shall confine our- 
 selves to the description of one peculiarly characteristic 
 sort of them, namely, the taverns with galleried court- 
 yards, and, in consequence of their great number, our 
 notice of each will have to be brief. 
 
 These old taverns, very few of which are now left 
 standing, formed, architecturally, squares, the buildings 
 surrounding a yard, furnished on three sides with outer 
 galleries to the floors above ; and the reason why this 
 
 * This chapter is based on ancient and modern histories of 
 London ; on works treating of special localities ; on essays in 
 periodical publications ; on the Transactions of Antiquarian 
 and other Societies, and as it is not a product of imagination, 
 but of research, nothing new to the student, but a great deal 
 new to the general reader, may be expected ; though the stones 
 are old, the house is new.
 
 136 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 form of construction was adopted was because then the 
 yards were rendered suitable for theatrical representa- 
 tions, which, before the erection of regular theatres, 
 were usually given in inn-yards. Access to these yards 
 was obtained either through the part of the tavern 
 facing the street, or through the gateway, through 
 which coaches, carts and waggons entered the yard. 
 The stage was erected, in a primitive and temporary 
 manner, behind the front portion of the square, and 
 faced the galleries at the back and sides of it. The 
 yard itself then formed the pit, and the galleries 
 the boxes of the theatre. A yard so surrounded by 
 galleries, with their banisters or open panels, often of 
 elegant design, looked very picturesque ; but did this 
 style of construction contribute to the comfort of the 
 guests? Scarcely. The ground -floors of the inn- 
 buildings, on the level of the yard, were given up to 
 stables, coach-houses, store-rooms, etc. Access to the 
 galleries was obtained by staircases, often steep, twisted 
 and narrow ; along the galleries were the bedrooms, the 
 doors, and frequently the windows, of which opened on 
 to them, and there were no other means of reaching 
 these rooms. Now, consider that these galleries were 
 open, exposed to all the changes of the weather, to 
 wind, rain, hail, sleet and snow, which must have been 
 very trying, especially at night, when the bedrooms had 
 to be entered by the light of a candle, difficult to keep 
 burning, whilst the wind was driving rain or snow into 
 the gallery. Remember also that the roughly paved 
 yard and the stables surrounding it were full of noises, 
 not only during the day, but all the night through. 
 There were the horses kicking, coaches and waggons
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 137 
 
 constantly coming in through the gateway, or going 
 out, stablemen, coachmen, carters shouting, horses being 
 harnessed to carts, and other vehicles starting early in 
 the morning on their journeys, and the rest of the 
 sleepers in the bedrooms along the galleries must have 
 been sadly interfered with. Nor can the smell arising 
 from the stables and from the manure heap, all confined 
 within the well formed by the surrounding buildings, 
 have added to the comfort of the guests staying at the 
 inn. As the bar of the inn frequently was in the yard, 
 the noises made by its visitors, and the quarrels they 
 occasionally indulged in, and which often would be 
 settled by a fight in the yard, were not calculated to 
 promote sound sleep. But our ancestors were not so 
 particular in these matters ; even aristocratic quarters 
 of London were given up to dirt and rowdyism. In 
 St. James's Square offal, cinders, dead cats and dogs 
 were shot under the very windows of the gilded saloons 
 in which the first magnates of the land — Norfolks, 
 Ormonds, Kents and Pembrokes — gave banquets and 
 balls. Lord Macau lay quotes the condition of Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields as a striking example of the indifference felt 
 by the most polite and splendid members of society in 
 a former age to what would now be deemed the 
 common decencies of life. But the poorest cottage and 
 the meanest galleried inn-yard look well in a picture. 
 Be glad that you have not to live in either. But a few 
 generations ago, as we have pointed out, tastes and 
 habits were different, and even now there are old fogeys 
 so wedded to ancient customs that they still patronize 
 the dark boxes yet found in some antiquated taverns, 
 which afford room for four or six customers, who have
 
 138 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 to sit upright against the perpendicular backs of the 
 boxes, lest they slide off' the twelve-inch-wide shelves on 
 which they have to perch and disappear under the table. 
 Strange were the customs of the days referred to. The 
 people seemed to live in taverns, physicians met their 
 patients and apothecaries there, lawyers their clients, 
 business men their customers, people of fashion their 
 acquaintances. ' Even men of fortune," 1 says Macaulay, 
 ' who might in their own mansions have enjoyed every 
 luxury, were often in the habit of passing their even- 
 ings in the parlour of some neighbouring house of 
 public entertainment,"' in the company of ill-bred, loud 
 talking, roisterous and spittoon-patronizing smokers. 
 Johnson declared that the tavern chair was the throne 
 of human felicity. To him it was, because there he 
 found his toadies, whom he could bully to his heart's 
 content. But the man who could say 
 
 ' My mini to me a kingdom is ' 
 
 did not care to sit on such a throne. 
 
 But we have insensibly strayed into side-openings ; 
 let us return to the main avenue of galleried taverns. 
 We shall have to mention so many, that we see no 
 better means of preventing our getting confused and 
 losing our way altogether than to arrange them alpha- 
 betically according to the signs they were known by. 
 
 The first inn thus on our list is the Angel, at 
 Islington. Its establishment dates back two hundred 
 years. Originally it presented the usual features of a 
 large country inn, having a long front, with an over- 
 hanging tiled roof; the principal entrance was beneath 
 a projection, which extended along a portion of the
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS lf39 
 
 front, and had a wooden gallery at top. The inn-yard, 
 approached by a gateway in the centre, was nearly a 
 quadrangle, having double galleries supported by plain 
 columns and carved pilasters, with caryatides anil other 
 figures. This courtyard, as it was more than a hundred 
 years, was preserved by Hogarth in his print of a ' Stage 
 ( loach. 1 There is also a view of it in Pinks's ' History 
 of Clerkenwell. 1 In olden days the inn was a great 
 halting-place for travellers from London, and from the 
 northern and western counties. On the King's birthday 
 the royal mail coaches used to meet there, as shown in 
 an engraving of 1812, in the Crace collection in the 
 British Museum. In 1819 the old house was pulled 
 down, and the present ordinary-looking building erected 
 in its stead, a grand opportunity, afforded by its com- 
 manding position, ninety-nine feet above the Trinity 
 high water-mark, at the meeting of so many important 
 roads, being thus stupidly lost. 
 
 There was another Angel inn, in St. Clement's, 
 Strand, ' behind St. Clement Kirk. 1 To this also was 
 attached a galleried yard, but, according to the wood- 
 cut in Diprose's ' St. Clement Danes, 1 there were 
 "•alleries to the first and second floors on one side of the 
 yard only. And from this house also seven or eight 
 mail-coaches were despatched nightly, and from here 
 also the royal mails used to start on the King's birth- 
 day for the West of England. Concerning the public 
 conveyances of those days, the following curious 
 announcement reads amusing : ' On Monday the 
 5th April, 1762, will set out from the Angel Inn, 
 behind St. Clement's Church, a neat flying machine, 
 carrying four passengers, on steel springs, and sets out
 
 140 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 at four o'clock in the morning and goes to Salisbury 
 the same evening, and returns from Salisbury the next 
 morning at the same hour ; and will continue jroinff 
 from London every Monday, Wednesday and Fridav, 
 and return every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. 
 Performed by the proprietors of the stage coach, 
 Thomas Massey, Anthony Coack. Each passenger to 
 pay twenty-three shillings for their fare, and to be 
 allowed fourteen pounds' weight baggage ; all above to 
 pay for one penny a pound. Outside passengers and 
 children in lap to pay half fare. N.B. — The masters of 
 the machine will not be accountable for plate, watches, 
 money, jewels, bank-notes, or writings, unless booked as 
 such, and paid for accordingly.' Why the proprietors 
 should have called their coach a ' machine ' is a riddle, 
 and as it took a whole day, from four in the morning 
 till the evening, to get over the eighty-four miles be- 
 tween London and Salisbury, its rate of progress could 
 hardly be called a ' flying ' one. 
 
 The Angel inn was of very ancient origin, being- 
 mentioned in a correspondence dated 1503. In the 
 Public Advertiser of March 28, 1769, appeared the 
 following advertisement : ' To be sold a Black Girl, the 
 property of J. R, eleven years of age, who is extremely 
 handy, works at her needle tolerably, and speaks 
 English perfectly well ; is of an excellent temper and 
 willing disposition. Inquire of Mr. Owen, at the Angel 
 Inn, behind St. Clement's Church.' The inn was 
 closed in 1853, the freehold fetching ^6,800, and on 
 its site the legal chambers known as Danes Inn were 
 erected. 
 
 In Philip Lane, London Wall, anciently stood the
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 141 
 
 Ape, an inn with a galleried yard ; all that now re- 
 mains of this ancient hostelry is a stone carving of a 
 monkey squatted on its haunches and eating an apple ; 
 under it is the date 1670 and the initial B. It is fixed 
 on the house numbered 14. The courtyard, where the 
 coaches and waggons used to arrive and depart, is now 
 an open space, round which houses are built. A view 
 of the Ape and Cock taverns as they appeared in 1851 
 is in the Crace collection. 
 
 We should be trying the reader's patience were we lo 
 enter into a discussion as to the origin of the sign of 
 the Relle Sauvage, the inn which once stood at the 
 bottom of Ludgate, and whose site is now occupied by 
 (he establishment of Messrs. Cassell and Company. 
 The name was derived either from one William Savage, 
 who in 1380 was a citizen living in that locality, or, 
 more probably, from one Arabella Savage, whose 
 property the inn once was. The sign originally was a 
 bell hung within a hoop. As already mentioned, inn- 
 yards were anciently used as theatres. The Belle 
 Sauvage was a favourite place for dramatic perform- 
 ances, its inner yard being spacious, and having hand- 
 somely carved galleries to the first and second floors at 
 the back of the main building. An original drawing of 
 it is in the Crace collection. In this yard Banks, the 
 showman, so often mentioned in Elizabethan pamphlets, 
 exhibited his trained horse Morocco, the animal which 
 once ascended the tower of St. Paul's, and which on 
 another occasion delighted the mob by selecting 
 Tarleton, the low comedian, as the greatest fool 
 present. Banks eventually took his horse to Rome, 
 and the priests, frightened at the circus tricks, burnt
 
 142 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 both Morocco and his master as sorcerers. Close by 
 the inn lived Grinling Gibbons, and an old house, bear- 
 ing the crest of the Cutlers' 1 Company, remains. 
 
 The old Black Bull (now No. 122), Gray's Inn Lane, 
 w.'is, in its original state, as shown by a woodcut in 
 AValford's ' Old and New London, 1 a specimen, though 
 of the meaner sort, of the old-fashioned galleried yard. 
 
 The Black Lion, on the west side of Whitefriars 
 Street, was a quaint and picturesque edifice, and its 
 courtyard showed a gallery to the first-floor of the 
 building, rather wider than usual, and with massive 
 banisters, pillars supporting the roof. The old house 
 was pulled down in 1877, and a large tavern of the 
 ordinary uninteresting type now occupies its site. 
 
 One of the once famous Southwark inns was the 
 Boars Head, which formed a part of Sir John Fastolf "s 
 benefactions to Magdalen College, Oxford. This Sir 
 John was one of the bravest Generals in the French 
 wars under Henry IV. and his successors. The premises 
 comprised a narrow court of ten or twelve houses, and 
 two separate houses at the east end, the one of them 
 having a gallery to the first-floor. The property was 
 for many years leased to the father of Mr. John Timbs, 
 which latter, in his ' Curiosities of London,"' gives a 
 lengthy account of the premises. They were taken 
 down in 1830 to widen the approach to London Bridge. 
 The court above mentioned was known as Boar's Head 
 Court, and under it and some adjoining houses, on 
 their demolition, was discovered a finely-vaulted cellar, 
 doubtless the wine-cellar of the Boar's Head. 
 
 Most noted among theatrical inns was the Bull, in 
 Bibhopsgate Street, so much so that the mother of
 
 LONDON TAVKUNS AND TEA-GARDENS 143 
 
 Anthony Bacon (the brother of the great Francis), 
 when he went to live in the neighbourhood of the inn, 
 was terribly frightened lest he and his servants should 
 be led astray by the actors performing at the inn. 
 Tarleton, the comedian, often acted there. It was 
 while giving representations at the Bull that Burbage, 
 Shakespeare's friend, and his fellows obtained a patent 
 from ( t )ucen Elizabeth for erecting a permanent build- 
 ing for theatrical performances, though the Bull afforded 
 them every convenience, its vard and galleries beina on 
 a large scale and in good style. It was at the Bull that 
 the Cambridge carrier Hobson, of 'Hobson's choice, 1 
 used to put up.* A portrait and a parchment certifi- 
 cate of Mr. Van Ham, a customer of the house, were 
 long preserved at the Bull inn; this worthy is said to 
 have drunk 35,680 bottles of wine in this hostelry. 
 
 The Bull and Gate, in Holborn, probably took its 
 name from Boulogne Gate, as the Bull and Mouth in 
 Aldersgate Street was a corruption of Boulogne Mouth, 
 and both were, no doubt, intended as compliments to 
 Henry VIII., who took that town in 1544. Tom Jones 
 alighted at the Bull and Gate when he first came to 
 London. 
 
 Holborn at one time abounded in inns. Says Stow : 
 'On the higli street of Old bourne have ye many fair 
 houses builded, and lodgings for gentlemen, inns for 
 travellers and such like up almost (for it lacketh but 
 little) to St. Giles 1 in the Fields. 1 We shall have to 
 mention one or two more as we go on. 
 
 The Bull and Mouth inn alluded to above in the 
 
 * Though I find it stated in oiher authorities that he put up 
 at the Four Swans ; possiblv he resorted to both.
 
 144 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 olden time was a great coaching-place. It had a large 
 vard and galleries, with elegantly designed galleries to 
 the first, second, and third floors. There is a view of it 
 in the Grace collection. Its site was afterwards occupied 
 by the Queen's Hotel, which was pulled down in 1887 
 to make room for the post-office extension. 
 
 The Catherine Wheel was a sign frequently adopted 
 by inn-keepers in former days. Mr. Larwood, in his 
 ' History of Signboards, 1 assumes that it was intended 
 to indicate that as the knights of St. Catherine of 
 Mount Sinai protected the pilgrims from robbery, he, 
 the innkeeper, would protect the traveller from being 
 fleeced at his inn. But this surmise seems too learned 
 to be true. What did the bonifaces of those days 
 know of the knights of St. Catherine ? But in Roman 
 Catholic countries saints were, and are still, seen on 
 numerous signboards, and so the one in question may 
 have descended in English inns from ante-Reformation 
 times, or it may have been the fancy of one particular 
 man, who may have read the story of St. Catherine, 
 and been moved by it to adopt the wheel. St. Catherine 
 was beheaded, after having been placed between wheels 
 with spikes, from which she was saved by an angel. 
 But to come to facts. 
 
 There were two inns in London with that sign. One 
 was in Bishopsgate Street, and was in the last century 
 a famous coaching inn, built in the style of such inns, 
 with a coach-yard and galleried buildings round. It 
 has disappeared. The other was in the Borough, and 
 was a much larger establishment, and a famous inn for 
 carriers during the last two centuries. It remains, but 
 has lost its galleries and other distinctive features.
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 145 
 
 One of the oldest inns in London, bearing the sign 
 of the Cock, stood till 1871 on the north side of Tot- 
 hill Street. It was built entirely of timber, mostly 
 cedar-wood, but the outside was painted and plastered, 
 and an ancient coat of arms, that of Edward III. (in 
 whose reign the house is said to have been built), carved 
 in stone, discovered in the house, was walled up in the 
 front of the house. Larwood says that the workmen 
 employed at the building of the east end of West- 
 minster Abbey used to receive their wages there, and 
 at a later period, about two centuries ago, the first 
 Oxford stage-coach is reported to have started from 
 that inn. In the back parlour there was a picture of a 
 jolly and bluff-looking man, who was said to have been 
 its driver. The house was built so as to enclose a 
 galleried yard, and it no doubt originally was one of 
 some importance. Under the staircase there was a 
 curious hiding-place, perhaps to serve as a refuge for a 
 ' mass priest ' or a highwayman. There were also in 
 the house two massive carvings, the one representing 
 Abraham about to offer up his son, and the c . the 
 adoration of the magi, and they were said to have been 
 left in pledge for an unpaid score. There is a water- 
 colour drawing of the house as it appeared in 1853 in 
 the Grace collection. It is supposed that the sign of 
 the Cock was here adopted on account of its vicinity to 
 the Abbey, of which St. Peter was the patron. In the 
 Middle Ages a cock crowing on the top of a pillar was 
 often one of the accessories in a picture of the Apostle. 
 
 A sign frequently adopted by innkeepers was the 
 Cross Keys, the arms of the Papal See, the emblem of 
 St. Peter and his successors. There was an inn with 
 
 10
 
 146 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 that sign in Gracechurch Street, having a yard with 
 galleries all round, and in which theatrical perform- 
 ances were frequently given. Banks, already mentioned, 
 there exhibited his wonderful horse Morocco ; it was 
 here the horse, at his master's bidding to ' fetch the 
 veriest fool in the company, 1 with his mouth drew forth 
 Tarleton, who was amongst the spectators. Tarleton 
 could only say, ' God a mercy, horse I 1 which for a time 
 became a by-word in the streets of London. At this 
 inn the first stage-coach, travelling between Clapham 
 and Gracechurch Street once a day, was established in 
 1690 by John Day and John Bundy; but the house 
 was well known as early as 1681 as one of the carriers 1 
 inns. 
 
 The Four Swans (demolished) was a very fine old 
 inn, with courtyard and galleries to two stories on three 
 sides complete. 
 
 Whether St. George ever existed is doubtful ; prob- 
 ably the story of this saint and the dragon is merely a 
 corruption of the legend of St. Michael conquering 
 Satan, or of Perseus 1 delivery of Andromeda. The 
 story was always doubted, hence the lines recorded by 
 Aubrey : 
 
 ' To save a maid St. George the dragon slew, 
 A pretty tale if all is told be true. 
 Most say there are no dragons, and it's said 
 There was no George ; pray God there was a maid.' 
 
 But the George is, and always has been, a very 
 common inn sign in this as well as in other countries. 
 We are, however, here concerned with one George only, 
 the one in the Borough. It existed in the time of
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 147 
 
 Stow, who mentions it in the list of South wark inns he 
 gives, and its name occurs in a document of the year 
 1554. It stood near the Tabard. It had the usual 
 courtyard, surrounded by buildings on all sides, witli 
 galleries to two stories on three sides giving access to 
 the bedrooms. The banisters were of massive size, of 
 the 'footman leg 1 style. In 1670 the inn was in great 
 part burnt down and demolished by a fire which broke 
 out in the neighbourhood, and it was totally consumed 
 bv the great fire of Southwark some six years later. 
 The fire began at one Mr. Welsh's, an oilman, near St. 
 Margaret's Hill, between the George and Talbot inns. 
 It was stopped by the substantial building of St. 
 Thomas's Hospital, then recently erected. The present 
 George inn, although built only in the seventeenth 
 century, was rebuilt on the old plan, having open 
 wooden galleries leading to the bedchambers. When 
 Mrs. Scholefield, descended from Weyland, the landlord 
 of the inn at the time of the fires, died in 1859, the 
 property was purchased by the governors of Guy's 
 Hospital. The George now styles itself a hotel, but 
 still preserves one side of its galleries intact. 
 
 Dragons, though fabulous monsters, asserted them- 
 selves on signboards ; green appears to have been their 
 favourite colour. When Taylor, the water poet, wrote 
 his ' Travels through London,' there were no less than 
 seven Green Dragons amongst the Metropolitan taverns 
 of his dav. The most famous of them, which is still in 
 existence, was the Green Dragon in Bishopsgate Street, 
 which for two centuries was one of the most famous 
 coach and carriers' inns. It is even now one of the 
 best examples of the ancient hostelries, its proprietor 
 
 10—2
 
 148 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 having strictly retained the distinctive features of 
 former days, the only innovation introduced by him 
 being a real improvement, in the removal of one of the 
 objections to the open galleries of the old inns. He 
 has enclosed these with glass, and on a trellis-work 
 leading up to them creeping plants have been made to 
 twine, so as to give a cool and refreshing aspect to the 
 old inn yard in summer time. Troops of guests now 
 daily dine in its low-ceilinged rooms with great beams 
 in all soi-ts of angles, and shining mahogany tables. 
 The Dragon is great in rich soups and mighty joints 
 of succulent meat ; in old wines, appreciated by 
 amateurs. 
 
 The King's Head was another of the many inns once 
 to be found in the Borough. Their great number is 
 easily explained by the fact that London Bridge was 
 then the only bridge from south to north, and vice versa. 
 and that therefore the traffic of horses and men had to 
 pass through South wark — of course, necessitating much 
 hotel accommodation. The King's Head was a great 
 resort of big waggons, for the loading of which a large 
 crane stood in the yard, in consequence of which one 
 side of the yard had a gallery to the second floor only, 
 the crane occupying the space of the lower one, whilst 
 on the other side there were galleries to the first and 
 second floors. 
 
 The Old Bell in Holborn, recently pulled down, bore 
 the arms of the Fowlers of Islington, the owners of 
 Barnsbury Manor and occupiers of lands in Canonbury. 
 In its galleried yard the boys used to meet to go in 
 roaches to Mill Hill School. 
 
 The Oxford Arms stood south of Warwick Square
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 149 
 
 and the College of Physicians, and is mentioned in a 
 carrier's advertisement of 1072. Edward Martlet, an 
 Oxford carrier, started his coaches and waggons thence 
 three times a week. lie also announced that he kept a 
 hearse to convey 'a corps' 1 to any part of England. 
 The Oxford Arms had a red-brick facade, of the period 
 of Charles II., surmounting a gateway leading into the 
 yard, which had on three sides two rows of wooden 
 galleries with exterior staircases, the fourth side being 
 occupied by stabling, built against a portion of old 
 London Wall. This house was consumed in the <n-eat 
 (ire, but was rebuilt on the former plan. The house 
 always belonged to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, 
 and the houses of the Canons Residentiary adjoin the 
 Oxford Arms on the south, and there is a door from the 
 old inn into one of the back-yards of the residentiary 
 houses, which is said to have been useful during the 
 riots of 1780 for facilitating the escape of Roman 
 Catholics from the fury of the mob, by enabling them 
 to pass into the residentiary houses; for which reason, 
 it is said by a clause always inserted into the leases of 
 the inn, it is forbidden to close up the door. John 
 Roberts, the bookseller, from whose shop most of the 
 libels and squibs on Pope were issued, lived at the 
 Oxford Arms. 
 
 The Queen's Head was another of the Southwark 
 inns. Its inner yard had galleries on one side only, 
 one to the first and another to the second floor. Like 
 all others, the yard was approached by a high gateway 
 from the street, and another under the building between 
 the outer and inner yards. 
 
 At Knightsbridge there stood till about 1«65, when
 
 150 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 it was pulled down, the Rose and Crown, anciently 
 called the Oliver Cromwell. It was one of the oldest 
 houses in the High Street, Knightsbridge, having been 
 licensed above three hundred years. The Protector's 
 bodyguard is said to have been stationed in it, and an 
 inscription to that effect was, till shortly before its 
 demolition/- painted on the front. This is merely 
 legendary, but there are grounds for not entirely reject- 
 ing the tradition. In 1648 the Parliament army was 
 encamped in that neighbourhood ; Fairfax's head- 
 quarters were for a while at Holland House. There 
 was a house not far from the inn called Cromwell 
 House, and at Kensington there still exists a charity 
 called Cromwell's Gift, originally a sum of ^45, but, 
 having been invested in land in the locality, of great 
 value now. Cromwell House was also known as Hale 
 House; a portion of the South Kensington Museum 
 now occupies the site. 
 
 To return to the Rose and Crown. Two sides of the 
 yard had a gallery to the first floor, but it was of the 
 poorest description. There were no elegant banisters, 
 the lower part of the gallery was closed up with boards 
 of the roughest kind, about breast high, and irregularly 
 nailed on to the posts supporting the roof. Two water- 
 colour drawings, dated 1857, showing the exterior of the 
 house and the yard, are in the Grace collection. Cor- 
 bould painted this inn under the title of the ' Old 
 Hostelrie at Knightsbridge,'' exhibited in 1849 ; but he 
 transferred its date to 145)7, altering the house accord- 
 ing to his fancy. In 1853 the inn had a narrow escape 
 from destruction by fire. Before its final demolition it 
 had been much modernized, though leaving enough of
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 151 
 
 its original characteristics to testify to its antiquity 
 and former importance. The Royal Oak at Vauxhall 
 was an old inn with a galleried yard. It was taken 
 down circa 1812 to make the road to Vauxhall Bridge, 
 then in course of construction. 
 
 One of the oldest of galleried inns in London was the 
 Saracen's Head, on Snow Hill. In 1377 the fraternity 
 founded in St. Botolplfs Church, Aldersgate, in honour 
 of the Body of Christ and of the saints Fabian and 
 Sebastian, were the proprietors of the Saracen's Head 
 inn. In the reign of Richard II. they granted a lease 
 of twenty-one years to John Hertyshorn of the Saracen's 
 Head, with appurtenances, consisting of two houses 
 adjoining on the north side, at the yearly rent of ten 
 marks. In the reign of Henry VI. Dame Joan Astley 
 (some time nurse to that King) obtained a license 
 to refound the fraternity in honour of the Holy 
 Trinity. In the reign of Edward VI. it was sup- 
 pressed, and its endowments, valued at £30 per annum, 
 granted to William Harris. The antiquity of the 
 inn was thus beyond question. Stow, describing this 
 neighbourhood, mentions it as 'a fair large inn for 
 receipt of travellers.'' The courtyard had to the last 
 many of the characteristics of an old English inn : 
 there were galleries all round leading to the bedrooms, 
 and a spacious gateway through which the mail-coaches 
 used to pass in and out. It was at this inn that 
 Nicholas Nickleby and his uncle waited on Squeers, the 
 schoolmaster of Dotheboys Hall. It was demolished in 
 186i3, when the Holborn Valley improvements were 
 undertaken. A view of the inn as it appeared in 1855 
 is in the Crace collection.
 
 152 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 As there were many inns on the Southwark side of 
 London Bridge for the reasons given when we spoke of 
 the King's Head, so for the same reason a number of 
 inns, some of which we have already mentioned, were on 
 the northern side of the bridge. Besides those already 
 named, there was the Spread Eagle, in Gracechurch 
 Street. The original building had perished in the 
 great fire, but the inn was rebuilt after it. It had 
 the usual yard and galleries to the two floors. At first 
 only a carriers 1 inn, it became famous as a coaching- 
 house, the mails and principal stage-coaches for Kent 
 and other southern counties arriving and departing 
 from here. It was long the property of John Chaplin, 
 cousin of William Chaplin, of the firm of Chaplin and 
 Home. The inn was taken down in I860 ; the plot of 
 ground which it occupied contained 12,600 feet, and 
 was sold for ,£95,000. 
 
 The Swan with Two Necks is a curious sign, variously 
 explained. It is supposed to mean the swan with two 
 nicks or notches cut into swans' bills, so that each 
 owner might know his. But these nicks being so small 
 as not to be discernible on an inn sign hung high up, 
 there seems no sense in referring to them. More likely 
 two swans swimming side by side, and the neck of one 
 of them protruding beyond that of the other, took 
 some artist's fancy, and induced him to produce the 
 illusion in a picture. However, the origin of the sign does 
 not concern us, but the inn with that sign. There was 
 a famous one in what was Lad Lane, and is now 
 Gresham Street. It was for a centurv and more the 
 head coach-inn and booking-office for the North. Its 
 courtyard was of great size ; the galleries were of some-
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 153 
 
 what irregular arrangement, there being one only at 
 the back, communicating at one end with a lower and 
 an upper gallery on one side, whilst on the other side 
 there was a gallery unconnected with the others, and 
 which also was wider and more elaborately decorated 
 than the others. A view of it appeared in the Illustrated 
 London News, December 23, 1805. 
 
 An inn which has been rendered famous by Chaucer s 
 rhymed tales — we cannot honestly call them poetry — 
 of the Canterbury pilgrims is the Tabard, in the 
 Borough. Its history must be pretty familiar to most 
 people. It originally was the property of William of 
 Ludegarsale, of whom the Tabard and the adjoining 
 house, which the Abbots made their town residence, 
 were purchased in 1304 by the Abbot and convent of 
 Hyde, near Winchester. The pilgrimage to Canter- 
 bury is said to have taken place in 1383. Henry Bailly, 
 Chaucer's host of the Tabard at that time, was a repre- 
 sentative of the Borough of Southwark in Parliament 
 during the reien of two Kings, Edward III. and 
 Richard II. After the dissolution of the monasteries, 
 the Tabard and the Abbot's house were sold by 
 Henry VIII. to John Master and Thomas Master ; the 
 Tabard afterwards was in the occupation of one Robert 
 Patty, but the Abbot's house, with the stable and 
 garden belonging thereto, were reserved to the Bishop 
 Commendator, John Saltcote, alias Casson, who had 
 been the last Abbot of Hyde, and who surrendered it 
 to Henry VIII., and who afterwards was transferred to 
 the See of Salisbury. The original Tabard was in 
 existence as late as the year lb'02. On a beam across 
 the road, whence swung the sign, was inscribed : k This
 
 154 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 is the inn where Sir Jeff'ry Chaucer and the nine-and- 
 twenty pilgrims lay in their journey to Canterbury, 
 anno 1383. 1 On the removal of the beam the inscrip- 
 tion was transferred to the gateway. The house was 
 repaired in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and from that 
 period probably dated the fireplace, carved oak panels, 
 and other portions spared by the fire of 1676, which 
 were still to be seen at the beginning of this century. 
 In this fire some six hundred houses had to be destroyed 
 to arrest the progress of the flames, and as the Tabard 
 stood nearly in the centre of this area, and was mostly 
 built of wood, there can be no doubt that the old inn 
 perished. It was, however, soon rebuilt, and as nearly 
 as possible on the same spot ; but the landlord changed 
 the sign from the Tabard to the Talbot ; there is, 
 nevertheless, little doubt that the inn as it remained 
 till 1874, when it was demolished, with its quaint old 
 timber galleries, with two timber bridges connecting 
 their opposite sides, and which extended to all the inn 
 buildings, and the no less quaint old chambers, Avas 
 the immediate successor of the inn commemorated by 
 Chaucer. According to an old view published in 1721, 
 the yard is shown as apparently opening to the street ; 
 but in a view which appeared in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine of September, 1812, the yard seems enclosed. 
 A sign, painted by Blake, and fixed up against the 
 gallery facing you as you entered the yard, represented 
 Chaucer and his merry company setting out on their 
 journey. There was a large hall called the Pilgrims' 1 
 Hall, dating of course from 1676, but in course of time 
 it was so cut up to adapt it to the purpose of modern 
 bedrooms, that its original condition was scarcely recog-
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 155 
 
 nisable. There are various views of the old inn in 
 the Grace collection : one without date, one of 1780, 
 another of 1810, another of 1812 (the Gentleman? 8 
 Magazine print), one of 1831, and yet another of 1841. 
 The site is now occupied by a public-house in the gin- 
 palace style, which presumes to call itself the Old 
 Tabard. 
 
 In Piccadilly, No. 75, there formerly stood on part of 
 the site for so short a time occupied by Clarendon 
 House (1664-1683) the Three Kings tavern. At the 
 gateway to the stables there were seen two Corinthian 
 pilasters, which originally belonged to Clarendon House. 
 The stable-yard itself presented the features of the old 
 galleried inn-yard, and it was the place from which the 
 first Bath mail-coach was started. Later, Mr. John 
 Camden Hotten, and afterwards Messrs. Chatto and 
 Windus, carried on their publishing business on this 
 spot. 
 
 In the seventeenth century the Three Nuns was the 
 sign of a well-known coaching and carriers 1 inn in 
 Aldgate, which gave its name to Three Nuns Court 
 close by. The yard, as usual, was galleried, but within 
 recent years the inn was pulled down and rebuilt in the 
 form of a modern hotel. Near this inn was the dread- 
 ful pit in which, during the Plague of 1665, not less 
 than 1,114 bodies were buried in a fortnight, from 
 September 6 to 20. 
 
 The Criterion Restaurant and Theatre stands on the 
 site of an old inn, the White Rear, which for a century 
 and more was one of the busiest coaching-houses in con- 
 nection with the West and South- West of England. In 
 this house Benjamin West, the future President of the
 
 156 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Royal Academy, put up on his arrival in London from 
 America. Here died Luke Sullivan, the engraver of 
 some of Hogarth's most famous works. The inn yard 
 had galleries to two sides of the bedchambers on the 
 second floor, connected by a bridge across. 
 
 We must once more return to Southwark, for besides 
 the inns already mentioned as existing in that locality, 
 there was another famous one, namely, the White Hart. 
 It had the largest inn sign except the Castle in Fleet 
 Street. Much maligned Jack Cade and some of his 
 followers put up at this inn during their brief possession 
 of London in 1450. The original inn which sheltered 
 them remained standing till 1676, when it was burnt 
 down in the great fire already mentioned. It was 
 rebuilt, and was in existence till a few years ago, when 
 it was pulled down. It consisted of several open 
 courts, the inner one having handsome galleries on 
 three sides to the first and second floors. There are 
 two views of it, taken respectively in 1840 and 1853, 
 in the Crace collection, and it was in the yard of this 
 inn that Mr. Pickwick first encountered Sam Weller. 
 
 The White Lion, in St. John Street, Clerkenwell, 
 was originally an inn frequented by drovers and carriers, 
 and covered a good deal of ground ; but before its 
 demolition it had already been greatly reduced in size, 
 the gateway leading into the yard having been built up 
 and formed into an oil-shop. Inserted in the front 
 wall was the sign in stone relief, representing a lion 
 rampant, painted white, and with the date 1714. A 
 house on the other side of the central portion also 
 seems to have formed part of the original White Lion. 
 The gate just mentioned led into a yard similar to
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 157 
 
 those attached to other ancient inns. There were, in 
 the east front of the inn, strong wooden beams, which 
 no doubt supported the erection over the gateway, and 
 that there was a yard surrounded by a gallery is proved 
 by the remains of door openings in the upper parts of 
 the back walls of the premises, which had been bricked 
 up. At one time a bowling-green was attached to the 
 tavern, and by the side of it a pond, in which Anthony 
 Joyce, the cousin of Pepys, drowned himself. He was 
 a tavern keeper, and kept the Three Stags in Holborn, 
 which was burnt down in 1666. l^pys records in his 
 Diary, under September 5 of that year : ' Thence home- 
 ward . . . having . . . seen Anthony Joyce's house on 
 fire.'' The loss incurred by the fire preyed on Joyce's 
 mind, and is supposed to have led him to commit the 
 rash act. 
 
 Here we will close our selection, which embraces all 
 the most important galleried taverns once existing in 
 London. Their disappearance is much to be regretted, 
 though with the requirements of modern travellers it 
 was scarcely to be avoided. But they formed picturesque 
 features of London, which has so very few of them, 
 especially as regards hotels, which in their modern style 
 remind us only of slightly decorated barracks, if they 
 are not perfectly hideous, as, for instance, the architec- 
 tural nightmare in Victoria Street. But there are 
 plenty of people yet who delight in old-fashioned 
 houses and surroundings — the revival of stage-coaches 
 is proof of it. A galleried tavern with modern improve- 
 ments would, we fancy, not be a bad spec.
 
 158 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 II. — Old London Tea-Gardens. 
 
 Names are often misleading. Mr. Coward is a fierce 
 fire-eater ; Mr. Gentle's family tremble when they hear 
 his footsteps on the pavement on his return home from 
 his office, for they know that immediately on his 
 entrance he will kick up a row with every one of them ; 
 whilst Mr. Lion lives in awe of his termagant better, or 
 worse, half. We are led into these reflections by the 
 term ' tea-gardens. 1 It sounds so very innocent ; it 
 calls up visions of honest citizens, surrounded by their 
 wives and olive-branches, enjoying, amid idyllic scenes 
 of rural beauties, their fragrant bohea, bread-and- 
 butter, cream and sillabub. But the vision is delusive. 
 Noorthouck, who wrote about 1770, when the tea- 
 gardens were most abundant and flourishing, speaks of 
 them thus : ' The tendency of these cheap catering- 
 places of pleasure just at the skirts of this vast town 
 is too obvious to need farther explanation ; they swarm 
 with loose women and with boys whose morals are 
 depraved, and their constitutions ruined, before thev 
 arrive at manhood. Indeed, the licentious resort to 
 the tea-drinking gardens was carried to such excess 
 every night that the magistrates lately thought proper 
 to suppress the organs in their public rooms ; it is left 
 to their cool reflection whether this was discharging all 
 the duty they owe to the public.' Certes, the remedv 
 seems hardly adequate when the grand jury of Middle- 
 sex, as far back as 1744, had complained of 'advertise- 
 ments inviting and seducing not only the inhabitants, 
 but all other persons, to several places kept apart for
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 159 
 
 the encouragement of luxury, extravagance, idleness, 
 and other wicked illegal purposes, which go on with 
 impunity to the destruction of many families, to the 
 great dishonour of the kingdom, especially at a time 
 when we are involved in an expensive war, and so much 
 overburdened with taxes of all sorts,'' etc. With such 
 an indictment before them, the magistrates must have 
 been wooden-headed indeed if they thought to stop the 
 evil by forbidding the playing of organs at such places. 
 And the evil must have been not only serious, but 
 widespread, seeing there were upwards of thirty of 
 these tea-gardens around London. But our object is 
 not to preach a sermon on the wickedness of the world, 
 but to describe the places where it was practised. We 
 begin with Bagnigge Wells tea-gardens. 
 
 Who now, wandering about dreary King's Cross, un- 
 acquainted with the history of the place, would believe 
 that this was once a picturesque rural spot ? But such 
 it was, and here Nell Gwynne had a summer residence 
 amidst fields and on the banks of the River Fleet, then 
 a clear stream, occasionally flooding the locality. The 
 ground on which the house, a gabled building, stood 
 was then called Bagnigge Vale. Early in the eighteenth 
 century the house was converted into a place of public- 
 entertainment, in consequence of the timely discovery 
 on the spot of two wells, one of which was said to be 
 purging and the other chalybeate, and the water of 
 which was sold at threepence a glass or at eightpence 
 by the gallon. But one of the wells seems to have 
 been known by the name of Black Mary's Well or Hole, 
 which may have been a corruption of Blessed Mary's 
 Well, or due to the alleged fact that a black woman
 
 160 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 leased the well. The gardens, it seems, were largely 
 patronized, hundreds of persons visiting them in the 
 morning to drink the waters, and on summer afternoons 
 to drink tea, and something stronger, too. The grounds 
 were ornamented with curious shrubs and flowers, a 
 small round fish-pond, in the centre of which was a 
 fountain, representing Cupid bestriding a swan, which 
 spouted the water up to a great height. The Fleet 
 flowed through a part of the gardens, and was crossed 
 by a bridge. Two prints are extant (reproduced in 
 Pinks's ' Clerkenwell '), showing the gardens as they 
 were in 1772 and again early in the present century. 
 But in December, 1813, the gardens came to grief; the 
 whole of the furniture and fittings were sold by auction 
 by order of the assignees of Mr. Salter, the tenant, a 
 bankrupt. The fixtures and fittings were described as 
 comprising the erection of a temple, a grotto, alcoves, 
 arbours, boxes, green-house, large lead figures, pumps, 
 cisterns, sinks, counters, beer machine, stoves, coppers, 
 shrubs, 200 drinking tables, 350 forms, 400 dozen 
 bottled ale [which shows that tea was not the only 
 drink consumed there], etc. The house itself remained 
 standing till 1844, when it was demolished ; the Phoenix 
 brewery afterwards occupied the site, which is now 
 covered with dreary streets. All that reminds you 
 now of the gardens is a stone tablet set into the wall 
 of a dull house in the neighbourhood, which shows a 
 grotesque head and the inscription : ' This is Bagnigge 
 House, neare the Pinder a Wakefield, 1680/ It may 
 be added that at the time the gardens were in existence 
 the place was environed with hills and rising ground 
 every way but to the south, and consequently screened
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 161 
 
 from the inclemency of the more chilling winds. Prim- 
 rose Hill rose westward ; on the north-west were the 
 more distant elevations of Hampstead and Highgate ; 
 on the north and north-east were pretty sharp ascents 
 to Islington. But the ground, which, as shown then, 
 was in a deep hollow, has in modern times been con- 
 siderably raised above the former level, and no vestige 
 remains of the gardens or the springs. But the gardens 
 were so famous in their day as to cause their name to 
 be adopted by a similar establishment in a totally 
 different direction. Towards the end of the last 
 century the New Bagnigge Wells tea-gardens were 
 opened at Bayswater. Whether these were identical 
 with the new Bayswater tea-gardens mentioned in a 
 London guide we have not been able to ascertain, but 
 probably they were. Sir John Hill, born about 171(5, 
 had a house in the Bayswater Road, in whose grounds 
 he cultivated the medicinal plants from which he pre- 
 pared his tinctures, balsams, and water-dock essence, 
 and though the profession called him a charlatan and 
 a quack, he must have been a learned botanist. His 
 ' Vegetable System 1 extends to twenty-six folio volumes. 
 His garden is now covered by the long range of 
 mansions called Lancaster Gate, but towards the close 
 of the last century the site was opened to the public as 
 tea-gardens. The grounds were spacious, and contained 
 several springs of fine water lying close to the surface. 
 The Bayswater Bagnigge Wells was opened as a public 
 garden as late as 1854, shortly after which time, the 
 visitors having grown less and less, it was shut up, and 
 eventually seized by the land-devouring speculating 
 builder. 
 
 11
 
 162 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 The similarity of names has earned us from the 
 north of London to the west, but as the former locality, 
 in consequence of its natural features, always was a 
 favourite one for tea-gardens, we will return to it. On 
 the top of the hill we referred to as rising from Bag- 
 nigge Wells to Islington there stood, where the Belve- 
 dere Tavern now stands, a house of entertainment 
 known as Busby's Folly, so called after its owner, one 
 Christopher Busby, whose name is spelt Busbee on a 
 token, 'White Lion at Islington, 1668,' of which he 
 was the landlord. Why the cognomen of Folly was 
 given to it is not very apparent, since, to judge by the 
 prints extant, there was nothing foolish about the 
 building. But it appears that then, as it is now, it 
 was customary to call any house which was not con- 
 structed according to a tasteless, unimaginative builder s 
 ideas a Folly ; at Peckham there was Heaton's Folly. 
 From Busby's Folly the Society of Bull Feathers' Hall 
 used to commence their march to Islington to claim the 
 toll of all gravel earned up Highgate Hill, to which 
 they asserted a right in a tract published by them and 
 entitled ' Bull Feather Hall ; or, the Antiquity and 
 Dignity of Horns amply shown. London, 1664.' 
 Busby's Folly retained its name till 1710, after which 
 it was called Penny's Folly, and here men with learned 
 horses, musical glasses, and similar shows entertained 
 the public. The gardens were extensive, and about 
 1780 the house seems to have been rebuilt and christened 
 Belvedere Tavern, which name it still bears. Close to 
 it was another tavern known as Dobney's, and which 
 originally was called Prospect House, because in those 
 days, standing as it did on the top of what was then
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 1G3 
 
 styled Islington Hill, it really commanded a fine 
 prospect north and south. In 1770 Prospect House 
 was taken for a school, but soon reopened as the 
 Jubilee Tea-Gardens, in commemoration of the jubilee 
 got up at Stratford-on-Avon by Garrick in honour of 
 Shakespeare, and the interior of the bowers was painted 
 with scenes from his plays. In 1772 one Daniel Wild- 
 man here performed ' several new and amazing experi- 
 ments never attempted by any man in this or any other 
 kingdom before. He rides, standing upright, one foot 
 on the saddle and the other on the horse's neck, with a 
 curious mask of bees on his head and face . . . and by 
 firing a pistol makes one part of the bees march over a 
 table and the other swarm in the air and return to 
 their proper hive again.' He also advertised that he 
 was prepared to supply the nobility and gentry with 
 any quantity of bees from one stock in the common or 
 newly-invented hives. In 1774 the gardens fell into a 
 ruinous condition, but there were still two handsome 
 tea-rooms. In 1780 the house was converted into a 
 discussion and lecture room, but the speculation did 
 not answer; the place was cleared, and about 1790 
 houses, known as Winchester Place, were erected on it. 
 But a portion of the gardens remained open till 1810, 
 when that also disappeared, and the only remains on 
 the site of this once famous tea-garden is a mean court 
 in Penton Street called Dobney's Court. The Prospect 
 House to which the gardens belonged still stands 
 behind the present Belvedere Tavern, but there is no 
 sign of antiquity about it. 
 
 In 1683 the well known as Sadler's Well was dis- 
 covered, and Sadler's Musick-House, as it was origi- 
 
 11—2
 
 164 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 nally called, thenceforth became Sadler's Well. But as 
 it was, as its name implied, rather a house for musical 
 entertainment than a tea-garden, and as its history is 
 pretty well known, we pass it by to speak of a well 
 adjoining it, namely, Islington Wells or Spa, or New 
 Tunbridge Wells. 
 
 This well was already in repute when the well on 
 Sadlers land was discovered, and as the two wells were 
 contiguous, the Spa was frequently mistaken for Sadler's. 
 About the year 1690 it was advertised that the Spa 
 would open for drinking the medicinal waters. In 1700 
 there was ' music for dancing all day long every Monday 
 and Thursday during the summer season ; no masks to 
 be admitted."* A few years later the Spa became fashion- 
 able, being patronized by ladies of such position as Lady 
 Mary Wortley Montagu. In 1733 the Princesses Amelia 
 and Caroline, daughters of George II., came daily in the 
 summer and drank the waters ; in fact, such was the 
 concourse of nobility and others that the proprietor 
 took upwards of thirty pounds in a morning. When- 
 ever the Princesses visited the Spa they were saluted 
 with a discharge of twenty-one guns, and in the evening 
 there was a bonfire. Ned Ward described the place : 
 
 ' Lime trees were placed at a regular distance, 
 And scrapers were giving their awful assistance.' 
 
 It also furnished a title to a dramatic trifle, by George 
 Colman, called 'The Spleen, or Islington Spa,' acted at 
 Drury Lane in 1776. The proprietor, Holland, failing, 
 the Spa was sold to a Mr. Skinner in 1778, and the 
 gardens were reopened every morning for drinking the 
 waters, and in the afternoon for tea. The subscription
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 165 
 
 for the season was one guinea ; non-subscribers drinking 
 the waters, sixpence each morning. At the beginning 
 of this century part of the garden was built on, and 
 about 1840 what remained was covered by two rows of 
 cottages, called Spa Cottages. At present there is at 
 the corner of Lloyd's Row a small cottage with the 
 inscription on it, ' Islington Spa, or New Tunbridge 
 Wells. 1 
 
 The Islington Spa must not be confounded with a 
 similar neighbouring establishment in Spa Fields, adjoin- 
 ing Exmouth Street. The locality was originally called 
 Ducking Pond Fields. Hunting ducks with dogs was 
 one of the barbarous amusements our ancestors delighted 
 in. The public-house to which the pond belonged was 
 taken down in 1770, and on its site was erected the 
 Pantheon, built in imitation of the Oxford Street 
 Pantheon. It was a large round building, with a 
 statue of Fame on the top of it. Internally it had two 
 galleries and a pit, and in the winter it was warmed by 
 a stove, having fireplaces all round, the smoke from 
 which was carried away under the floor. To the build- 
 ing was attached an extensive garden, disposed in fancy 
 walks, and having on one side of it a pond, at one end 
 of which was a statue of Hercules, at the other end 
 stood a summer-house for company to sit in. There 
 were also boxes of alcoves all round the gardens, and 
 two tea-rooms in the main building itself. The place 
 was well patronized, the company usually consisting, as 
 described in the Sunday Ramble, of some hundreds of 
 persons of both sexes, the greater part of which, not- 
 withstanding their gay appearance, were evidently 
 neither more nor less than journeymen tailors, hair-
 
 166 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 dressers, and other such people, attended by their 
 proper companions, milliners, mantua - makers, and 
 servant-maids, besides other and more objectionable 
 characters of the female sex. According; to a letter 
 addressed to the St. James's Chronicle, 1772, the 
 Pantheon was a place of ' infamous resort, 1 the writer 
 declaring that of all the tea-houses in the environs of 
 London, the most exceptional he ever had occasion to 
 be in was the Pantheon. He was particularly annoyed 
 at being frequently asked by the Cyprian nymphs 
 swarming in the place to be treated with ' a dish of 
 tea.' He ought to have heard the requests of our 
 modern Cyprians ! The place, however, did not prosper; 
 the Rotunda had been built by a Mr. Craven ; whilst it 
 was being erected Mrs. Craven visited it, and was so 
 overcome by the gloomy thoughts that troubled her mind 
 that she gave vent to tears, and remarked to a friend of 
 hers : ' It is very pretty, but I foresee that it will be the 
 ruin of us, and one day or other be turned into a 
 Methodist meeting-house."' The lady had a prophetic 
 mind, for in 1774 her husband became bankrupt, and 
 the Pantheon, ' with its four acres of garden, laid out 
 in the most agreeable and pleasing style, refreshed with 
 a canal abounding with carp, tench, etc., and com- 
 manding a pleasing view of Hampstead, Highgate, 
 and the adjacent country," 1 were sold by auction, and 
 finally closed in 1776. The Rotunda, as foreseen by 
 Mrs. Craven in 1779, became one of the chapels of 
 Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, under the name of Spa 
 Fields Chapel. It is now replaced by the Episcopal 
 Church of the Holy Redeemer. 
 
 To the south of the Pantheon, in Bowling Green
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 167 
 
 Lane, stood, in the middle of the last century, the 
 Cherry Tree Public House and Gardens, with their 
 bowling-green. The gardens took their name from the 
 large number of trees bearing that fruit which grew 
 there. There were subscription grounds for the game 
 of nine-pins, knock-'em-downs, etc., and the house was 
 much resorted to by the inhabitants of Clerkenwell. 
 But there was yet another well in this locality, which 
 seems to have been a very solfatara for springs, for near 
 King's Cross there was a chalybeate spring, known as 
 St. Chad's Well, supposed to be useful in cases of liver 
 attacks, dropsy, and scrofula. St. Chad* was the 
 founder of the See and Bishopric of Lichfield, and was 
 cured of some awful disease by drinking the waters of 
 this well, wherefore his name was given to it. He died 
 about 673, and in those days the names of saints were as 
 commercially valuable in starting a well or other natura* 
 or unnatural phenomenon as the names of lords are on 
 modern business prospectuses. And St. Chad brought 
 lots of custom to the well, for as late as the last century 
 eight or nine hundred persons a morning used to come 
 and drink these waters. Nay, fifty years ago they 
 drew visitors to themselves and the gardens surrounding 
 the well. On a post might be seen an octagonal board, 
 with the legend, ' Health preserved and restored. , 
 Further on stood a low, old-fashioned, comfortable- 
 looking, large-windowed dwelling, and frequently there 
 might also be seen standing at the open door an ancient 
 dame, in a black bonnet, a clean blue cotton gown, and 
 a checked apron. She was the Lady of the Well. The 
 
 * He is a saint in the English calendar, and his day ia 
 March 2.
 
 168 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 gardens might be visited and as much water drunk as 
 you pleased for £1 Is. per year, 9s. 6d. quarterly, 
 4s. 6d. monthly, and Is. 6d. weekly. A single visit and 
 a large glassful of water cost 6d. The water was 
 warmed in a large copper, whence it was drawn off into 
 the glass. The charge of 6d. was eventually reduced to 
 3d. There was a spacious and lofty pump-room and a 
 large house facing Gray's Inn Road, but all that now 
 remains is the remembrance of the well in the name of 
 a narrow passage, called St. Chad's Place, closed at its 
 inner end by an old-fashioned cottage with green 
 shutters. 
 
 We will ascend Pentonville Hill again to Penton 
 Street, at the corner of which stands Belvedere Tavern, 
 formerly Busby "s Folly, and, going up Penton Street a 
 little way, we come to what was once the site of White 
 Conduit House, the present White Conduit House 
 tavern covering a portion of the old gardens. It took 
 its name from a conduit, built in the reign of Henry VI., 
 and repaired by Sutton, the founder of the Charter 
 House. The house was at first small, having only four 
 windows in front ; but in the middle of the last century 
 the then owner could advertise that ' for the better 
 accommodation of gentlemen and ladies he had com- 
 pleted a long walk, with a handsome circular fish-pond, 
 a number of shady, pleasant arbours, enclosed with a 
 fence seven feet high to prevent being incommoded by 
 people in the fields ; hot loaves and butter every day, 
 milk directly from the cows, coffee, tea, and all manners 
 of liquors in the greatest perfection ; also a handsome 
 long-room, from whence is the most copious prospects 
 and airy situation of any now in vogue. 1 A long poem
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 169 
 
 in praise of the house appeared in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine in 1760. It was written by William Woty, 
 a Grub Street poet. A frequent visitor to White 
 Conduit House was Goldsmith, who used to repair 
 thither with some of his friends, after he had discovered 
 the place, as he relates in Letter 122 of the * Citizen of 
 the World.' The passage, I must confess, does little 
 honour to his genius or his taste, and I wonder he did 
 not have it expunged from his collected writings. As 
 is customary with such places of amusement, in course 
 of time the company did not improve, though in 1826 
 it was attempted to revive the reputation of the place, 
 partly by calling it a Minor Vauxhall ; but nightly dis- 
 turbances and the encouragement of immorality thereby, 
 caused it to be suppressed by magisterial authority on 
 the proprietor's application for the renewal of his 
 license. About 1827 the grounds were let for archery 
 practice, and in 1828 the old house was pulled 
 down and a new one erected in its place, which was 
 opened in 1829. The new building was somewhat in 
 the gin-palace style : stucco front, pilasters, cornices 
 and plate glass. It contained large refreshment rooms, 
 and a long and lofty ballroom above, where the dancing, 
 if not very refined, was vigorous. Gentlemen went 
 through country dances with their hats on and their 
 coats off. Eventually the master of the ceremonies 
 objected to the hats, and they were left off, as the coats 
 continued to be. In 1849 this elegant place of amuse- 
 ment was demolished and streets built on its grounds, 
 as also the present White Conduit Tavern. 
 
 A former proprietor of White Conduit House, 
 Christopher Bartholomew, died in positive poverty in
 
 170 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Angel Court, Windmill Street, 'at his lodgings, two 
 pair of stairs room, 1 as the Gentlemans Magazine, 
 March, 1809, says. He once owned the freehold of 
 White Conduit House and of the neighbouring: Angel 
 inn, and was worth £ 50,000 ; but he was seized with 
 the lottery mania, and paid as much as i?l,000 a day 
 for insurances. By degrees he sank into poverty, but a 
 friend having supplied him with the means of obtaining 
 a thirty-second share, that number turned up a prize of 
 <£20,000. He purchased an annuity of of 60 per annum, 
 but foolishly disposed of it and lost it all. A few days 
 before he died he begged a few shillings to buy him 
 necessaries. But does his fate, and that of many others 
 equally deluded, act as a warning to anyone? We 
 fear not. 
 
 White Conduit House was sold in 1864, by order of 
 the proprietor, in consequence of ill-health. The lease 
 had then about eighty years to run, at the rent of £S0 
 per annum. The property fetched ^8,990. What 
 price would it fetch now ? Public-houses have gone up 
 tremendously since then. 
 
 Close to White Conduit House was another famous 
 house of entertainment, that is to say, Copenhagen 
 House, which was opened by a Dane when the King of 
 Denmark paid a visit to James I., but the house did 
 not attract much attention till after the Restoration, 
 when the once public-house became a tea-garden, with 
 the customary amusements, fives - playing being a 
 favourite. Hazlitt, who was enthusiastic about the 
 game, immortalized one Cavanagh, an Irish player, who 
 distinguished himself at Copenhagen House by playing 
 matches for wagers and dinners. The wall against which
 
 LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 171 
 
 they played was that which supported the kitchen 
 chimney, and when the ball resounded louder than 
 usual the cooks exclaimed, ' Those are the Irishman's 
 balls P 'And the joints trembled on their spits, 1 says 
 Hazlitt. The next landlord encouraged dog-fighting 
 and bull-baiting, in consequence of which he lost his 
 license in 1816. The fields around Copenhagen House, 
 now all built over, were the scene of many riotous 
 assemblies at the time of the French Revolution, 
 Thelwall, Home Tooke, and other sympathizers with 
 France being the chief instigators and leaders of those 
 meetings. 
 
 Going considerably northward, we reach Highbury 
 Barn, which, with lands belonging thereto, was leased 
 in 1482 by the Prior of the monastery of St. John of 
 Jerusalem to John Man tell, described as citizen and 
 butcher of London. The property thus leased com- 
 prised the Grange place, with Highbury Barn, a garden, 
 and ' castell Hilles, 1 two little closures containing five 
 acres, and a field called Snoresfeld, otherwise Bushfield. 
 Highbury Barn was at first a small ale and cake house, 
 and as such is mentioned early in the eighteenth 
 century. Gradually it grew into a tavern and tea- 
 garden. A Mr. Willoughby, who died in 1785, in- 
 creased the business, and his successor added a bowling- 
 green, a trap-ball ground, and more gardens. The barn 
 could accommodate 2,000 persons at once, and 800 
 people have been seen dining together, with seventy 
 geese roasting for them at one fire. Early in this 
 century a dancing and a dining room were added. Near 
 this house there was, in 1868, found in a field a vase 
 containing nearly 1,000 silver coins, consisting of silver
 
 172 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 pennies, groats and half-groats, two gold coins of 
 Edward III., and an amber rosary. The manor of 
 Highbury having, as we have seen, belonged to the 
 Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the coins may have 
 been buried by them at the time of the insurrection of 
 Wat Tyler, whose followers destroyed the monastery 
 and also made an attack on the Priors house at High- 
 bury. The coins are now in the British Museum. 
 
 But we find we have got to the end of the space 
 allotted to us, and though we have only, as it were, 
 dipped into the bulk of our subject, we must defer for 
 some other opportunity the description of the large 
 number of old tea-gardens still to be noticed. We 
 will here only indicate the most important of them : 
 Camberwell Grove, Cuper's Gardens, Chalk Farm, 
 Canonbury House, Cumberland Gardens, Cupid Gardens, 
 Sluice House, Eel-pie House, St. Helen's, Hornsey 
 Wood, Hoxton, Kilburn Wells, Mermaid, Marylebone, 
 Montpellier, Ranelagh, Paris Gardens, Shepherd and 
 Shepherdess, Union Gardens, Yorkshire Stingo, Jew's 
 Harp, Adam and Eve, Tottenham Court Road ; Adam 
 and Eve, St. Pancras ; the Brill, Mulberry Gardens, 
 Springfield, and others of less note.
 
 XIII. 
 
 WILLIAM PATERSON AND THE BANK OF 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 SOME London streets have strange and unsuitable 
 names ; thus you will find an alley of wretched 
 hovels, with muddy yards, containing nothing but 
 cabbage-stumps and broken dustbins, called Prospect 
 Place; whilst a lane adjoining the shambles styles itself 
 Paradise How. And what a curious name for a street 
 is that of Threadneedle* Street ! How came the street 
 to be so named ? However, such is its name, and in 
 this case it is not inappropriate. For lives there not in 
 that street the Old Lady who is, year in, year out, ever- 
 lastingly threading her diamond needle with gold and 
 silver threads, and working the gorgeous embroidery of 
 the financial flags of her own and of almost every other 
 country in the world ? Her dwelling is palatial ; to be 
 merely admitted into her parlour is in itself a positive 
 proof of your respectability, for you gain no entrance 
 
 * Stow calls it Three Needle Street, as Hatton supposes, from 
 such a sign. It has also been written Thrid Needle and Thred 
 Needle Street, but our ancestors were not so particular as 
 to spelling as we are.
 
 174 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 thereto unless you are a stockholder ; as to her drawing- 
 room, the glories of Versailles and the Escurial are as 
 miserable shanties, for her drawing - room contains, 
 leaving alone other treasures, engravings worth from 
 five pounds each to fifty thousand — nay, a hundred 
 thousand pounds each. There is no five o'clock tea 
 there, but plenty of music all day long ; its notes, 
 indeed, are silent, but the gold and silver instruments, 
 whose fascinating and entrancing sounds have more 
 magic in them than has the finest orchestra, vocal or 
 instrumental, are audible enough. And as to her 
 cellars, the treasures the Old Lady keeps there would 
 buy up half a dozen such caves as that into which 
 Aladdin descended. 
 
 The reader has by this time discovered who the Old 
 Lady of Threadneedle Street is — namely, the Bank of 
 England — the most gigantic monetary establishment 
 in the world, the financial reservoir, the opening or 
 shutting of whose sluices causes not only the commercial 
 ebb and flow of east and west, of north and south, but 
 sets in motion or prevents the ' pomp and circumstance 
 of glorious war. 1 
 
 The history of this mighty establishment has often 
 been told, but it seems to us that but scant justice has 
 as yet been done to its founder, William Paterson. 
 The injustice done to him, in fact, dates from an early 
 day, for soon after the foundation of the Bank, of 
 which he naturally was one of the directors, intrigue 
 drove him from that position, and envy and obloquy 
 pursued him ever after. But let us briefly recount his 
 early history. 
 
 Born on a farm in Dumfriesshire in 1658 of a family
 
 WILLIAM PATERSON AND THE BANK 175 
 
 notable in old Scottish history, he was, at the age of 
 sixteen, transferred to the care of a kinswoman at 
 Bristol, on whose death he inherited some property. 
 Bristol was then a great commercial emporium, doing 
 with much legitimate business a little in the slave trade, 
 and his connection with that town was afterwards 
 injurious to him, for whilst his friends said that he 
 visited the New World as a missionary, his enemies 
 asserted that he was mixed up with slave-dealing, and 
 occasionally indulged in piracy. But the fact of his 
 marrying the widow of a Puritan minister at Boston is 
 more in accordance with the statements of his friends 
 than with those of his enemies. Anderson, the historian 
 of commerce, who as a lad must have known him in his 
 old age, speaks of him as ' a merchant who had been 
 much in foreign countries, and had entered far into 
 speculations relating to commerce and the colonies. - ' 
 
 He was in England in 1681, and, among the various 
 schemes he started, he took a leading part in the project 
 for bringing water into the north of London from the 
 Hampstead and Highgate hills. He made a heavy 
 investment in the City of London Orphans 1 Fund ; in 
 the improved management and distribution of that 
 charity he took a profound interest, a fact which leaves 
 no doubt of his philanthropic and public spirit. It 
 was in 1684 that he first conceived the idea of the 
 Darien scheme, and though this turned out so unfortu- 
 nate, he from first to last acted with rare disinterested- 
 ness ; his errors were those such as a well-balanced and 
 generous mind might fall into without reproach. Nor 
 is the failure of that enterprise to be attributed to him, 
 but to the conduct of William III., who had sanctioned,
 
 176 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 but afterwards, at the instigation of the East India 
 Companies of England and Holland, discouraged and 
 positively thwarted, it. How deeply he felt the 
 disastrous results of the expedition is shown by the 
 fact that for a time his mind was deranged in conse- 
 quence of it. And who will now deny that Paterson 
 was right in calling the Isthmus of Panama the ' door 
 of the seas and the key of the universe 1 ? In 1825 
 Humboldt recommended the scheme of a canal from 
 the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the enterprise of 
 Lesseps will yet be carried to a successful issue. 
 
 However, we have to deal with Paterson chief! v as the 
 founder of the Bank of England, and with the long and 
 fierce battle he had to fight to accomplish his object, 
 for there was great opposition to it from interest and 
 prejudice. Paterson had been long in Holland, and 
 when he propounded his scheme of a Bank of England, 
 the people objected to it as coming from Holland ; 
 ' they had too many Dutch things already, 1 just as now 
 there is a prejudice against things 'made in Germany . , 
 Moreover, they doubted the stability of the Govern- 
 ment of William III. At last, however, they consented 
 to the Bank, on the express condition that d£l, 200,000 
 should be subscribed and lent to the Government. The 
 money was subscribed in ten days. The Bank Act was 
 obtained in spite of all opposition, which perhaps 
 would have prevailed had not Queen Mary, acting on 
 the instruction of William (then in Flanders), during a 
 six hours 1 sitting, carried the point, and the company 
 received their royal charter of incorporation in July, 
 1694. Almost as soon as it had been established the 
 Bank was called upon to assist the Government in the
 
 WILLIAM PATERSON AND THE BANK 177 
 
 re-coinage of the silver money. The notes of the new 
 Bank were destined to fill up the vacuum occasioned by 
 the calling in of the old coin, but as the notes were 
 payable on demand, they were returned faster than 
 coin could be obtained from the Mint ; a crisis ensued, 
 during which the notes of the Bank fell to a discount 
 of 20 per cent. But the Bank passed safely through its 
 difficulties, as also through the troubles caused by the 
 South Sea Bubble. The opposition in the first crisis 
 was due chiefly to the goldsmiths, who detested the 
 new corporation because it interfered with their system 
 of private banking, hitherto monopolized by them. 
 Patersons advice was of the greatest assistance in his 
 capacity of director, yet such was the animus against 
 him that, as we mentioned above, in 1695 he sold out 
 the stock he held (i?2,000), which from the first was a 
 director's qualification, and retired from his office. But 
 he did not withdraw from public life. The Darien 
 Expedition already referred to was organized by him 
 in 1698, and its disastrous results were, as we have 
 shown, in nowise attributable to him, and this was, in 
 fact, eventually admitted by the nation, Parliament in 
 1715 passing an Act awarding him an indemnity of 
 upwards of £18,000 for his losses in that enterprise. 
 In other ways Paterson continued to interest himself in 
 matters affecting the public welfare ; he rendered his 
 Sovereign signal services by the wise and shrewd advice 
 he gave him during the latter part of his troubled 
 reign ; he published many tracts on the management of 
 the National Debt and the system of auditing public 
 accounts ; he was a zealous advocate of Eree Trade, and 
 his views on the subject of taxation were far ahead of 
 
 12
 
 178 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 the ideas of his day. His undoubtedly great talents, 
 his thorough honesty and genuine patriotism, fully 
 entitle him to the praise given him by his friend 
 Daniel Defoe, as ' a worthy and noble patriot, one of 
 the most eminent, to whom we owe more than ever he 
 would tell us, or, I am afraid, we shall ever be sensible 
 of, whatever fools, madmen, or Jacobites may asperse 
 him with.* 1 
 
 We cannot attempt to give a history of the Bank of 
 England in our limited space, but a short account of 
 the Bank building may not unfitly close this notice of 
 the founder of the establishment. The business was 
 originally started at Mercers 1 Hall, and next removed 
 to, and for many years carried on at, Grocers 1 Hall in 
 the Poultry. In August, 1732, the governors and 
 directors laid the first stone of their new building in 
 Threadneedle Street, on the site of the house and 
 garden formerly belonging to Sir John Houblon, the 
 first Governor of the Bank. At first the buildings 
 comprised only the centre of the principal or south 
 front, the Hall, Bullion Court, and the Courtyard, and 
 were surrounded by St. Christopher-le-Stocks Church, 
 three taverns, and several private houses. From the 
 year 1766 onwards considerable additions were made to 
 the building. All the adjoining houses on the east 
 side to Bartholomew Lane, and those occupying the 
 west side of that lane almost to Lothbury, were taken 
 down, and their places occupied by offices of the Bank. 
 The south side buildings, forming the eastern continua- 
 tion of the establishment, presented a range of fluted 
 columns in pairs, with arched intervals between, point- 
 ing out where windows should have been placed, which,
 
 WILLIAM PATERSON AND THE BANK 179 
 
 however, were filled up with stone. This necessitated 
 the rooms within being lighted by small glass domes in 
 the roof, a circumstance much complained of at the 
 time by the clerks as injuriously affecting their eyes. 
 It was intended to extend the facade on the western 
 side by taking down the Church of St. Christopher, 
 which by the removal of that part of Threadneedle 
 Street had been deprived of a great part of its parish. 
 Noorthouck, who wrote in 1773, says : ' How far so 
 extensive a plan may answer the vast expense it will 
 call for to complete it is a question proper for the con- 
 sideration of those who are immediately concerned ; an 
 indifferent spectator cannot view this expanded fabric 
 without comparing it with the growth of public debts 
 negotiated here, and trembling more for the safety of 
 the one than of the other.'' Could he see the Bank 
 now, covering nearly four acres of ground, what would 
 he say ? 
 
 One Ralph, architect, whose ' Critical Review of the 
 Buildings, Statues, and Ornaments in and about 
 London 1 was published in 1783, says: 'The building 
 erected for the Bank is liable to the very same objec- 
 tion, in point of place, with the Royal Exchange, and 
 even in a greater, too. It is monstrously crowded on 
 the eye, and unless the opposite houses could be pulled 
 down, and a view obtained into Cornhill, we might as 
 well be entertained with a prospect of the model 
 through a microscope. As to the structure itself, it 
 is grand . . . only the architect seems to be rather too 
 fond of decoration ; this appears pretty 'eminently by 
 the weight of his cornices . . . rather too heavy for 
 the building.' The objectionable buildings here referred 
 
 12—2
 
 180 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 to were the triangular block of houses which formerly 
 stood in front of the old Royal Exchange, but was 
 removed on the building of the new. 
 
 At the beginning of this century the Bank on the 
 south side was of the same extent as now ; on the east 
 side also it extended to Lothbury, on the west it 
 reached to about half the length of the present Princes 
 Street, which, however, then did not proceed in a 
 straight line, as it does now, but took a sharp turn to 
 north-east, coming into Lothbury at a point nearly 
 opposite St. Margaret's Church, and thus cutting off a 
 corner of the Bank site, which would otherwise have 
 been nearly square. But when, early in this century, 
 Princes Street was extended in a straight line to Loth- 
 bury, the condensed portion of the street, together with 
 a block of houses on the west side of it, were added to 
 the Bank site, and the Bank assumed its present shape. 
 But great architectural improvements had in the mean- 
 time been introduced. The original or central portion, 
 eighty feet in length, which was of the Ionic order 
 raised on a rusticated basement, was altered to what it 
 now is ; the attic seen on it was added in 1850. This 
 original portion was from the design of George 
 Sampson. The east and west wings were added by Sir 
 Robert Taylor, after whom Sir John Soane was 
 appointed the Bank architect, and he rebuilt many of 
 those parts constructed by Sampson and Taylor ; and 
 on Sir John's death in 1837 Mr. Cockerell succeeded 
 him in the position. He again greatly modified many 
 features of the building. The eighty feet of the 
 original south side now extend to 365 feet ; the length 
 of the west side is 440 feet, of the north side 410 feet,
 
 WILLIAM PATERSON AND THE BANK 181 
 
 and of the east side 245 feet. Both internally and 
 externally classical models have been followed. The 
 hall known as the Three Per Cent. Consol (three per 
 cent., alas ! gone) Office, ninety feet long by fifty wide, 
 is designed from models of the Roman baths, as are the 
 Dividend and Bank Stock Offices. The chief cashier's 
 office is forty-five feet by thirty, and designed after the 
 Temple of the Sun and Moon at Rome. The Court 
 Room of the composite order, about sixty feet long and 
 thirty-one wide, is lighted by large Venetian windows 
 on the south, overlooking what once was the church- 
 yard of St. Christopher's Church, and into which in 
 1852 a fountain was placed, which throws a single jet, 
 thirty feet high, amongst the branches of two of the 
 finest lime-trees in London. The north side of the 
 Court Room is remarkable for three exquisite chimney- 
 pieces of statuary marble. The original Rotunda was 
 roofed in with timber, but in 1794 it was found 
 advisable to take it down, and the present Rotunda was 
 built, which measures fifty-seven feet in diameter, and 
 about the same in height ; it is of incombustible 
 material, as are all the offices erected by Sir John 
 Soane. There are a number of courts within the outer 
 walls of the buildings ; they are all of great architectural 
 beauty ; the one entered from Lothbury is truly mag- 
 nificent. It has screens of fluted Corinthian columns, 
 supporting a lofty entablature, surmounted by vases. 
 This part of the edifice was copied from the beautiful 
 temple of the Sybils, near Tivoli. A noble arch, an 
 imitation of the arch of Constantine at Rome, gives 
 access to the Bullion Court, in which is another row 
 of Corinthian columns, supporting an entablature,
 
 182 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 decorated with statues representing the four quarters of 
 the globe. The north-west corner of the Bank is 
 modelled on the temple of Vesta at Rome. We have 
 yet to mention the Old Lady's Drawing-Room, or the 
 pay-office, where bank-notes are issued, or exchanged for 
 cash. It is a fine hall, seventy-nine feet long by forty 
 wide, and we have left the mention of it to the last 
 because it suggests to us some particular reflections. 
 We have seen that Paterson was the real founder of the 
 Bank of England, and we may take this opportunity 
 of adding that Charles Montague and Michael Godfrey 
 are entitled to share in Paterson's glory for the assist- 
 ance they lent him in this undertaking ; but the Bank 
 ignores its founder, and had not even a portrait of him 
 till Mr. James Hogg, the founder of London Society 
 presented them with one. In the Pay Hall stands the 
 statue of William III., and in the Latin inscription 
 underneath he is called ' founder of the Bank. 1 It is 
 the old story : when a prize is taken at sea the biggest 
 share of it, the lion's share, goes to the ' Flag 1 ; the 
 real fighters must put up with the leavings. 
 
 Let us end with another philosophical reflection. 
 Facts are more astounding than fiction, as we will 
 show by two facts. Gaboriaus novel 'La Degrin- 
 golade ' (The Downfall), in one of its earliest chapters 
 describes the opening of a grave in the Parisian 
 cemetery of Montmartre, to discover whether it con- 
 tains the body of a certain person or not. The coffin 
 is found to be empty. This is a fiction, but are we not 
 likely to see its realization shortly ? Paul FevaFs 
 romance ' Les Mysteres de Londres ' gives a long 
 account of the fictitious attempt of some villains to get
 
 WILLIAM PATERSON AND THE BANK 183 
 
 at the treasures in the cellars of the Bank of England 
 by digging a tunnel under Threadneedle Street ; they 
 are, of course, foiled in the end. But now, according 
 to accounts published at the end of the month of 
 November, 1898, in the Daily Mail, the tunnel is 
 actually dug by a railway company, and so close to the 
 walls of the Bank as to actually compel its governors 
 and directors to call in the assistance of Sir John Wolfe 
 Barry to advise means to avert the danger which 
 threatens the building, already affected by the ex- 
 cavations. Truly fact is stranger than fiction.
 
 XIV. 
 THE OLD DOCTORS. 
 
 THE lines of modern doctors have fallen in pleasant 
 places. Their position is certainly somewhat 
 different from what it was in the days when 
 they were contemptuously called leeches, when their 
 scientific investigations exposed them to persecution 
 and death. Vesalius, the father of modern anatomy, 
 was condemned to death by the Inquisition for dis- 
 secting a human body, but by the intervention of 
 King Philip II., whose physician he was, the punish- 
 ment was reduced to a pilgrimage to the Holy Land ; 
 on his return the ship was lost on the island of 
 Zante, where he perished of starvation in 1564. Now 
 Government licenses doctors to practise vivisection ! 
 At Dijon, in 1386, a physician was fined by the bailiff 
 fifty golden francs, and imprisoned for not having 
 completed the cures of some persons whose recovery he 
 had undertaken. In a schedule of the offices, fees, and 
 services which the Lord Wharton had with the Wardenry 
 of the city and castle of Carlisle in 1547, a trumpeter 
 was rated at 16d. per day, and a surgeon only at 
 12d. Edward III. granted Counsus de Gangeland, an
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 185 
 
 apothecary of London, 6d. a day for his care and 
 attendance on him while he formerly lay sick in 
 Scotland. A knowledge of astrology was in those days 
 requisite for a physician ; the herbs were not to be 
 gathered except when the sun and the planets were in 
 certain constellations, and certificates of their being so 
 were necessary to give them reputation. Sometimes 
 patients applied to astrologers, who were astrologers 
 only, whether the constellations were favourable to the 
 doctor's remedies. Then, if the man died, the astrologer 
 ascribed the death to the inefficacy of the remedies, 
 whUe the doctor threw the blame on the astrologer, he 
 not having properly observed the constellations. Then 
 the latter would exclaim that his case was extremely 
 hard ; if he made a mistake, his calculation being wrong, 
 heaven discovered it, whilst if a physician was guilty of 
 a blunder, the earth covered it. Even then doctors 
 were considered like the potato plant, whose fruit is 
 underground. To see the doctor's carriage, whose 
 motto should be ' Live or die, 1 or ' Morituri te salutant,' 
 attending a funeral, reminds a cynic of a cobbler taking 
 home his work. 
 
 In England the medical profession rose in public 
 estimation from the time when Henry VIII., with that 
 view, incorporated several members of the profession 
 into a body, community, and perpetual college, since 
 called the College of Physicians. The seven been th and 
 eighteenth centuries, with their opposite characteristics 
 of vulgarity and romance, of squalor and luxury, of 
 ignorance and grand discoveries in science, of prejudice 
 and intelligence, were highly conducive to the formation 
 and cultivation of individualism and originality of
 
 186 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 character; hence those two centuries abounded in 
 ' oddities ' and ' eccentricities," 1 and in no section of 
 society more than in the medical. The members of 
 that profession could very readily and appropriately 
 then be divided into two great schools — the Rough and 
 the Smooth, the fierce dispensers of Brimstone and the 
 gentle administrators of Treacle. The present century, 
 with its levelling tendencies, opposed to all originality 
 and so-called eccentricity in speech, custom, and 
 costume, reducing all gentlemen in full dress to the 
 rank of waiters, has nearly abolished the sulphury 
 Galen ; in fact, he would scarcely be tolerated now. 
 People submit to certain foolish pretensions now, such 
 as those of thought-reading and pin-hunting cranks, 
 and similar mental eccentricities ; but they must be 
 administered mildly, there must be a treacly flavour 
 about them, for — 
 
 ' This is an age of flatness, dull and dreary, 
 
 Society is like a washed-out chintz, 
 Which scandal renders somewhat foul and smeary ; 
 
 And yet, without its malice, lies, and hints, 
 E'en fashion's children would at last grow weary 
 
 Of looking at the faded cotton prints 
 To which respectability subdues 
 Our uncontrolled imagination's hues.' 
 
 Hence the medical showmen of the present day must ac- 
 company the ' exhibition ' of their nostrums with dulcet 
 sounds and honeyed speeches, especially when treating 
 those nursed in the lap of affluence ; and, accustomed as 
 they are to adulation, the medico who can condescend 
 to feed them with well-disguised flattery, or assume the 
 tone of abject servility, has too often the credit of
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 187 
 
 possessing superior skill and science. And the patients, 
 in the words of Byron, travestied — 
 
 1 They swallow filthy draughts and nauseous pills, 
 But yet there is no end of human ills.' 
 
 It was, of course, not every doctor who could, at the 
 beginning of his career, go in for the brimstone system. 
 Unless he was backed by very powerful patronage, or 
 wrote a book or pamphlet which attracted attention — 
 as Elliotsons practice rose from i?500 to £5,000 a year 
 through his papers in the Lancet — or was by some lucky 
 accident pitched into a position which by itself alone 
 inspired the public with an overwhelming belief in his 
 skill, the experiment of treating his patients with rudeness 
 and indifference would have been fatal to his prospects. 
 But let him once make a hit, either by being luckily on 
 the spot when a king or prince was thrown off his horse, 
 or by a successful operation, or by writing a book which 
 * caught on," 1 and the public were at his feet, and he 
 could trample on them as much as he liked. But it 
 did not follow that, after such success, he must neces- 
 sarily abuse his privileges. Dr. Arbuthnot, the son of 
 a non-juring clergyman in Scotland, came to London 
 about the time of the Restoration, and at first earned 
 a living by teaching mathematics, though he had 
 studied medicine. He happened to be at Epsom on 
 one occasion when Prince George, who was also there, 
 was suddenly taken ill. Arbuthnot was called in, and 
 having effected a cure, was soon afterwards appointed 
 one of the physicians in ordinary to the Queen. And, 
 of course, his practice was established on a solid founda- 
 tion, and he carried it on with considerable professional
 
 188 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 distinction. But his success did not spoil him, for he 
 was a man of a genial disposition, who turned neither 
 to brimstone nor to treacle, but always maintained a 
 dignified demeanour. He was a wit and a man of 
 letters, and enjoyed the esteem of such men as Swift, 
 Pope, and Gay. Before coining to London he had 
 chosen Dorchester as a place to practise as a physician, 
 but the salubrity of the air was opposed to his success, 
 and he took horse for London. A friend meeting him, 
 asked him where he was going. ' To leave your con- 
 founded place, where I can neither live nor die."* It 
 was said of him that his wit and pleasantry sometimes 
 assisted his prescriptions, and in some cases rendered 
 them unnecessary. He died at the age of sixty from a 
 complication of disorders, so little is the physician able 
 to cure himself. 
 
 Sir Astley Cooper (b. 1768, d. 1841) also did not 
 belong to the brimstone school. His surgical skill was 
 very great, and he liked to display it. He always 
 retained perfect self-command in the operating theatre, 
 and during the most critical and dangerous performances 
 on a patient, he tried to keep up the latter's courage by 
 lively and facetious remarks. When he was in the 
 zenith of his fame, a satirical Sawbones said of him : 
 
 ' Nor Drury Lane nor Common Garden 
 Are, to my fancy, worth a farden ; 
 
 I hold them both small beer. 
 Give me the wonderful exploits, 
 And jolly jokes between the sleights, 
 Of Astley' s Amphitheatre' 
 
 When Sir Astley lived in Broad Street, City, he had 
 every day a numerous morning levee of City patients.
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 189 
 
 The room into which they were shown would hold from 
 forty to fifty people, and often callers, after waiting for 
 hours, were dismissed without having seen the doctor. 
 His man Charles, with more than his master's dignity, 
 would say to disappointed applicants when they re- 
 appeared on the following morning : ' I am not sure 
 that we shall be able to attend to you, for our list is 
 full for the day; but if you will wait, I will see what 
 we can do for you. 1 During the first nine years of his 
 practice Sir Astley's earnings progressed thus : First 
 year, £5 5s. ; second, £26 ; third, £64 ; fourth, £96 ; 
 fifth, £100 ; sixth, £200 ; seventh, £400 ; eighth, £600 ; 
 ninth, £1,100. Eventually his annual income rose to 
 more than £15,000 ; the largest sum he ever made in 
 one year was £21,000. A West Indian millionaire 
 gave him his highest fee ; he had successfully undergone 
 a painful operation, and sitting up in bed, he threw his 
 nightcap at Cooper, saying, ' Take that !' ' Sir,' re- 
 plied Sir Astley, ' I'll pocket the affront ;' and on 
 reaching home he found in the cap a cheque for one 
 thousand guineas. 
 
 Dr. Matthew Baillie (b. 1761, d. 1823) was a physician 
 who occasionally indulged in the brimstone temper, and 
 was disinclined to attend to the details of an uninterest- 
 ing case. After listening on one occasion to a long- 
 drawn account from a lady, who ailed so little that 
 she was going that evening to the opera, he had made 
 his escape, when he was urged to step upstairs again 
 that the lady might ask him whether, on her return 
 from the opera, she might eat some oysters. ' Yes, 
 madam, 1 said Baillie ; ' shells and all I 1 
 
 Dr. Richard Mead (b. 1673, d. 1754) was physician
 
 190 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 to George II., and the friend of Drs. Radcliffe, 
 Garth, and Arbuthnot, and a great patron of literary 
 and artistic genius. In his house in Great Ormond 
 Street he established what may be called the first 
 academy of painting in London. His large collection 
 of paintings and antiquities, as well as his valuable 
 library, was sold by auction on his death in 1754. In 
 1740 he had a quarrel with Dr. Woodward, like himself 
 a Gresham professor ; the two men drew their swords, 
 and Mead having obtained the advantage, he com- 
 manded Woodward to beg his life. ' No, doctor,'' said 
 the vanquished combatant, 'that I will not till I am 
 your patient. -1 But, nevertheless, at last he wisely 
 submitted. In Ward's ' Lives of the Gresham Pro- 
 fessors 1 is a view of Gresham College, with a gateway, 
 entering from Broad Street, marked 25. Within are 
 the figures of two persons, the one standing, the other 
 kneeling ; they represent Dr. Mead and Dr. Woodward. 
 Dr. Mead was of a generous nature. In 1723, when 
 the celebrated Dr. Friend was sent to the Tower, Mead 
 kindly took his practice, and, on his release by Sir 
 Robert Walpole, presented the escaped Jacobite with 
 the result, <£5,000. 
 
 Dr. Mead, about 1714, lived at Chelsea ; about the 
 same date there lived in the same locality Dr. Alex- 
 ander Black well, whom we introduce here chiefly on 
 account of his singularly unfortunate life and very 
 tragical end. Blackwell was a native of Aberdeen, 
 studied physic under Boerhaave at Leyden, and took 
 the degree of M.D. On his return home he married, 
 and for some time practised as a physician in London. 
 But not meeting with success, he became corrector of
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 191 
 
 the press for Mr. Wilkins, a printer, and some time 
 after commenced business in the Strand on his own 
 account, and promised to do well, when, under an 
 antiquated and unjustly restrictive law, a suit was 
 brought against him for setting up as a printer without 
 his having served his apprenticeship to it. Mr. Black- 
 well defended the suit, but at the trial in Westminster 
 Hall a dunderhead ed jury, probably of narrow-minded 
 tradesmen, all anxious to uphold their objectionable 
 privileges, found a verdict against him, in consequence 
 of which he became bankrupt, and one of his creditors 
 kept him in prison for nearly two years. By the help 
 of his wife, who was a clever painter and engraver, he 
 was released. She prepared all the plates for the 
 ' Herbal, 1 a work figuring most of the plants in the 
 Physic Garden at Chelsea, close to which she lived. A 
 copy of this book eventually fell into the hands of the 
 Swedish Ambassador, who sent it over to his Court, 
 where it was so much liked that Dr. Blackwell was 
 engaged in the Swedish service, and went to reside at 
 Stockholm. He was appointed physician to the King, 
 who under his treatment had recovered from a serious 
 illness. Dr. Blackwell had left his wife in England ; 
 she was to follow him as soon as his position was placed 
 on a solid basis. But ere this could take place he was 
 accused of having been engaged with natives and 
 foreigners in plotting to overturn the constitution of 
 the kingdom. He was found guilty, and sentenced to 
 be broken alive on the wheel, his heart and bowels to 
 be torn out and burnt, and his body to be quartered. 
 He was said, under torture, to have made confession of 
 such an attempt, but the real extent of his guilt must
 
 192 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 always remain problematical. That he, a person of no 
 influence, and unconnected with any person of rank, 
 should have aimed at overthrowing the constitution 
 seems very improbable. It is more likely that he was 
 made a scapegoat to strike terror into the party then 
 opposed to the Ministry. The awful sentence passed on 
 him, however, was commuted to beheading, which fate he 
 underwent on July 29, 1747. He must have been a man 
 of great nerve and a humorist, for, having laid his head 
 wrong, he remarked jocosely that this being his first ex- 
 periment, no wonder he should want a little instruction ! 
 
 The Dr. Woodward we mentioned above seems to 
 have been a very irascible and objectionable individual. 
 He so grossly insulted Sir Hans Sloane, when he was 
 reading a paper of his own before the Royal Society in 
 1710, that, under the presidency of Sir Isaac Newton, 
 he was expelled from the Society. 
 
 Among medical oddities of the rougher sort we may 
 reckon Mounsey, a friend of Garrick, and physician to 
 Chelsea Hospital. His way of extracting teeth was 
 original. Round the tooth to be drawn he fastened a 
 strong piece of catgut, to the opposite end of which he 
 fastened a bullet, with which and a strong dose of 
 powder he charged a pistol. On the trigger being 
 pulled, the tooth was drawn out. Of course, it was but 
 seldom he could prevail on anyone to try the process. 
 Once, having induced a gentleman to submit to the 
 operation, the latter at the last moment exclaimed : 
 ' Stop ! stop ! Fve changed my mind."' ' But I have 
 not, and you are a fool and a coward for your pains, 1 
 answered the doctor, pulling the trigger, and in another 
 instant the tooth was extracted.
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 193 
 
 Once, before setting out on a journey, being incredu- 
 lous as to the safety of cash-boxes and safes, he hid a 
 considerable quantity of gold and notes in the fireplace 
 of his study, covering them with cinders and shavings. 
 A month after, returning luckily sooner than he was 
 expected, he found his housemaid preparing to enter- 
 tain a few friends at tea in her master's room. She was 
 on the point of lighting the fire, and had just applied 
 a candle to the doctor's notes, when he entered the 
 room, seized a pail of water which happened to be 
 standing near, and throwing its contents over the fuel 
 and the servant, extinguished the fire and her presence 
 of mind at the same time. Some of the notes were 
 injured, and the Bank of England made some difficulty 
 about cashing them. 
 
 ' When doctors disagree, 1 etc. Do they ever agree ? 
 Yes, when, after a consultation over a mild case which 
 has no interest for any of them, they over wine and 
 biscuits agree that the treatment hitherto pursued had 
 better be continued. To discuss it further would inter- 
 rupt the pleasant chat over the news of the day ! But 
 when they meet over a friendly glass at the coffee-house 
 thev go at it hammer and tongs. Dr. Buchan, the 
 author of ' Domestic Medicine, 1 of which 80,000 copies 
 were sold during the author's lifetime, and which, 
 according to modern medical opinion, killed more 
 patients than that — doctors like cheap medicine as 
 little as lawyers like cheap law — Dr. Gower, the urbane 
 and skilled physician of Middlesex Hospital, and 
 Dr. Fordyce, a fashionable physician, whose deep 
 potations never affected him, used to meet at the 
 Chapter Coffee-House, and hold discussions on medical 
 
 13
 
 194 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 topics ; but they never agreed, and with boisterous 
 laughter used to ridicule each other's theories. But 
 they all agreed in considering the Chapter punch as a 
 safe remedy for all ills. 
 
 Dr. Garth, the author of the ' Dispensary, 1 a poem 
 directed against the Apothecaries and Anti - Dis- 
 pensarians, a section of the College of Physicians, was 
 very good-natured, but too fond of good living. One 
 night, when he lingered over the bottle at the Kit-Kat 
 Club, though patients were longing for him, Steele 
 reproved him for his neglect of them. ' Well, it's no 
 great matter at all, 1 replied Garth, pulling out a list of 
 fifteen, ' for nine of them have such bad constitutions 
 that not all the physicians in the world can save them, 
 and the other six have such good constitutions that all 
 the physicians in the world cannot kill them. 1 The 
 doctor here plainly admitted the uselessness of his sup- 
 posed science, as in his ' Dispensary 1 he admitted drugs 
 to be not only useless, but murderous. 
 
 ' High where the Fleet Ditch descends in sable streams, 
 To wash the sooty Naiads in the Thames, 
 There stands a structure* on a rising hill, 
 Where Tyros take their freedom out to kill.' 
 
 In Blenheim Street lived Joshua Brookes, the famous 
 anatomist, whose lectures were attended by upwards of 
 
 * Apothecaries' Hall. A doctor, I forget his name, having 
 obtained some mark of distinction from the Company of 
 Apothecaries, mentioned at a party that the glorious Company 
 of Apothecaries had conferred much honour on him. ' But,' 
 said a lady, ' what about the noble army of martyrs of 
 patients ?'
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 195 
 
 seven thousand pupils. His museum was almost a 
 rival of that of John Hunter, and was liberally thrown 
 open to visitors. One evening a coach drew up at his 
 door, a heavy sack was taken out and deposited in the 
 hall, and the servants, accustomed to such occurrences, 
 since their master was in the habit of buying subjects, 
 were about to carry it down the back-stairs into the 
 dissecting-room, when a living subject thrust his head 
 and neck out of one end and begged for his life. The 
 servants in alarm ran to fetch pistols, but the subject 
 continued to beg for mercy in such tones as to assure 
 them they had nothing to fear from him. He had 
 been drunk, and did not know how he got into the 
 sack. Dr. Brookes ordered the sack to be tied loosely 
 round his chin, and sent him in a coach to the watch- 
 house. How he got into the sack may easily be sur- 
 mised : Some body-snatchers, a tribe then very much to 
 the fore, had no doubt found the man dead drunk in 
 the street, and knowing the doctor to be a buyer of 
 subjects, had taken him there, in the hope that the 
 doctor might begin operating on the body before it 
 recovered consciousness, so as to enable them afterwards 
 to claim the price. In the days when there were dozens 
 of executions in one morning at Newgate, the doctors 
 had a good time of it, for the bodies of the malefactors 
 were handed over to them for dissection. In fact, 
 under the steps leading up to the front - door of 
 Surgeons' 1 Hall, a handsome building which stood next 
 to Newgate Prison, there was a small door, through 
 which the corpses were introduced into the building. 
 Surgeons 1 Hall was pulled down in 1809, to make room 
 for the new Sessions House. 
 
 ]3-2
 
 196 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 The doctors of the previous two centuries were mostly 
 Sangrados, who bled and purged their patients most 
 unmercifully; but we must say this to their credit, they 
 did not descend to the sublime atrocity of microbes, 
 bacilli, and all the other horrors of the microscopic 
 mania now sending unnumbered nervous people into 
 lunatic asylums. And so they had not, like their 
 modern compeers, the chance of amusing themselves 
 and paying one another professional compliments by 
 sending glass tubes, filled with the deadly spawn, from 
 one country to another by ship and rail. Fancy one of 
 those tubes getting accidentally broken, or being in- 
 tentionally smashed for a lark on board a passenger 
 steamer. Why, this would speedily become a vessel 
 laden with corpses ! At least, according to modern 
 teaching, which, entre rious, we have no more faith in 
 than we have in many other medical dicta. A man is 
 ill from over gorging or drinking, a child ails from a 
 surfeit of sweets or from catching a disease playing with 
 other children in the streets or at school. The doctor 
 is called in, and instead of telling the man, ' You have 
 made a beast of yourself, , or correctly indicating the 
 cause of the child's illness, he sniffs about and says : 
 ' There is something the matter with your drains : I 
 can smell sewer -gas.* 1 And presently the sanitary 
 inspector arrives, and orders the pulling up and renewal 
 of the drains, and for days the house is filled with the 
 effluvia supposed to be poisonous. How is it the whole 
 family do not die off? Well, scavengers who daily deal 
 with offal and garbage of the most offensive kind, the 
 men who work down in the sewers, enjoy robust health ; 
 the latter only suffer when they are suddenly plunged
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 197 
 
 into an excess of sewer-gas, but it is the quantity and 
 not the quality that injures. 
 
 The excessive treacliness of modern doctors, as we 
 have just shown, is as objectionable as was the brim- 
 stone treatment of some of their predecessors. A 
 principle with modern doctors is never to acknowledge 
 themselves nonplussed. The old doctors now and then 
 confessed themselves beaten. Said an iEsculapius who 
 had been called in to prescribe for a child, after 
 diagnosing, as the ridiculous farce of tongue-speering 
 and pulse-squeezing is called : ' This here babe has got 
 a fever ; now, I ain't posted up in fevers, but I will 
 send her something that will throw her into fits, and 
 I'm a stunner on fits. 1 And modern doctors, indeed, 
 have no occasion to admit ignorance since the invention 
 of the liver. When they cannot tell what is the matter 
 with a man, or they are too urbane to reproach him 
 with his excesses, his liver is out of order — and that is 
 an organ which cannot possibly be examined and its 
 condition be verified so as to prove or disprove the 
 practitioner's assertion. I assume that nine out of ten 
 people don't know where or what the liver is — I'm sure 
 I don't, and don't want to ; but as Sancho Panza 
 blessed the man who invented sleep, the doctors should 
 bless their colleague who invented the liver ! Abernethy, 
 of whom more hereafter, with all his eccentricity, was 
 honest enough to confess that he never cured or pre- 
 tended to cure anyone, which only quacks did. He 
 despised the humbug of the profession, and its arts to 
 mislead and deceive patients. He only attempted to 
 second Nature in her efforts. He admitted that he 
 could not remove rheumatism, that opprobrium of the
 
 198 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 faculty, and no doctor can ; a residence in a warm and 
 
 ever sunny clime, or a long course of Turkish baths, 
 
 can do it. Hence sings Allan Ramsay's ' Gentle 
 
 Shepherd 1 : 
 
 ' I sits with my feet in a brook, 
 And if they ax me for why, 
 In spite of the physic I took, 
 It's rheumatiz kills me, says I.'* 
 
 This was the desperate remedy taken by Caroline, 
 Queen of that brute George II., when he expected her 
 to take her usual walk with him, though both her feet 
 were swollen with rheumatism. She plunged them in 
 a bath of cold water, and managed to go out with him 
 that afternoon. 
 
 I read in some publication — London Society, I think — 
 in an article on medicine, that it is a sensible plan, 
 adopted by some wise people, to pay a medical man a 
 yearly sum to look up a household periodically and 
 keep them in good health. This seems to me as insane 
 a plan as can well be imagined. Fancy the physicking 
 such a family, especially the children and servants, 
 must all the year round undergo ! For the doctor does 
 not like to take his money and do nothing for it ; so, 
 if there happens to be no real illness, he must exhibit 
 his draughts and pills, just to show that he is honestly 
 earning his fee. The regular attendant, the family 
 doctor, means that the family are hospitalizing all the 
 year round. Better go and live in the island of Sark. 
 Sir Robert Inglis, in his account of the Channel Islands, 
 
 * In searching for material for these pages I had occasion to 
 read the lives of a good many doctors ; half of them, I should 
 say, died of rheumatism and gout.
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 199 
 
 says that at Sark there is no doctor, and that in the 
 years 1816 and 1820 there was not one death on the 
 island, containing a population of five hundred persons, 
 and that on an average of ten years the mortality is 
 not quite one in a hundred. But let us return to the 
 old doctors. 
 
 Dr. George Fordyce, who came in 1762 from 
 Edinburgh to London, very speedily made himself a 
 name by a series of public lectures on medical science, 
 which he afterwards published in a volume entitled 
 ' Elements of the Practice of Physic, 1 which passed 
 through many editions. Unfortunately he was given 
 to drink, and though he never was known to be dead 
 drunk, yet he was often in a state which rendered him 
 unfit for professional duties. One night when he was 
 in such a condition, he was suddenly sent for to attend 
 a lady of title who was very ill. He went, sat down, 
 listened to her story, and felt her pulse. He found he 
 was not up to his work ; he lost his wits, and in a 
 moment of forgetfulness exclaimed : ' Drunk, by Jove !' 
 Still, he managed to write out a mild prescription. 
 Early next morning he received a message from his 
 noble patient to call on her at once. Dr. Fordyce felt 
 very uncomfortable. The lady evidently intended to 
 upbraid him either with an improper prescription or 
 with his disgraceful condition. But to his surprise and 
 relief she thanked him for his prompt compliance with 
 her pressing summons, and then confessed that he had 
 rightly diagnosed her case, that unfortunately she 
 occasionally indulged too freely in drink, but that she 
 hoped he would preserve inviolable secrecy as to the 
 condition he had found her in. Fordyce listened to
 
 200 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 her as grave as a judge, and said : ' You may depend 
 upon me, madam ; I shall be as silent as the grave. 1 
 
 Another doctor who made his reputation by lecturing 
 was Dr. G. Wallis, of Red Lion Square. He had 
 originally established himself at York, where he was 
 born, but being much attached to theatrical amuse- 
 ments, and a man of wit, he had written a dramatic 
 piece, entitled ' The Mercantile Lovers : a Satire.' It 
 contained a number of highly caustic remarks, either so 
 directly levelled at certain persons of that city, or taken 
 by them to themselves, that he lost all professional 
 practice, and had to leave York, when he came to 
 London, and, as already mentioned, commenced lectures 
 on the Theory and Practice of Physic. He published 
 various medical works, and died in 1802. 
 
 In the reign of James I. lived Dr. Edward Jorden, 
 whom we mention on account of two curious circum- 
 stances in his life. The doctor, being on a journey, 
 benighted on Salisbury Plain, and not knowing which 
 way to ride, met a shepherd of whom he made inquiry 
 what places were near where he could pass the night. 
 He was told there was no house of entertainment for 
 travellers near, but that a gentleman of the name of 
 Jordan, and a man of great estate, lived close by. 
 Looking on the similarity of the names as a good 
 omen, Jorden applied at the house, where he was 
 kindly received, and made so good an impression on his 
 host that the latter bestowed on him his daughter with 
 a considerable fortune. 
 
 The second circumstance was this : James, as is well 
 known, was a firm believer in witchcraft. Now, it 
 happened that a girl in the country was said to have
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 201 
 
 been bewitched by a neighbour. The King had her 
 sent for, and placed under the care of Dr. Jorden, who 
 very soon discovered the girl to be a cheat ; in fact, 
 she confessed as much, saying that her father, having 
 had a quarrel with a female neighbour, had induced 
 her (his daughter) to accuse the woman of having 
 bewitched her and brought upon her the fits she 
 simulated. This confession Jorden reported to the 
 King, the doctor not being courtier enough to see what 
 James wanted, namely, a witch to burn. But as the 
 girl had for a short time given him the prospect of 
 such a treat, the King, though she by her own con- 
 fession was a diabolical liar — for everyone in those days 
 knew that the charge of witchcraft involved the risk of 
 losing life by a fiery death — James actually gave her a 
 portion, and she was married, ' and, 1 as the account 
 naively observes, 'thus was cured of her inimical 
 witchery. 1 
 
 Of Dr. Francis J. P. de Valangin (b. 1719, d. 1805), 
 of the College of Physicians, London, though a native 
 of Switzerland, it was said that to his patients he 
 was kind and consolatory in the extreme — nothing 
 of the rough element in him ; he was, as the obituary 
 notice of him says, the friend of mankind and an honour 
 to his profession. About the year 1772 de Valangin 
 purchased ground in Pentonville, near "White Conduit 
 House, where he erected a residence on a plan laid 
 down by himself; and as the design was not that of 
 ordinary builders or architects it was called fanciful, 
 chiefly because of a high brick tower rising from it, 
 which the doctor built for an observatory. Of course 
 the next tenant, a timber merchant, had nothing more
 
 202 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 pressing to do than immediately to pull down the 
 features which distinguished the building from the 
 dulness of orthodox architecture. Valangin had chris- 
 tened the elevation on which his house stood ' Hermes 
 Hill, 1 after Hermes Trismegistus, the fabled discoverer 
 of the chemist's art. 
 
 Dr. Anthony Askew, one of the celebrities of St. 
 Bartholomew's in the last half of the last century, was 
 as famous in literature as he was in medicine. He had 
 a collection of Greek MSS., purchased at great expense 
 in the East, more numerous and more valuable than 
 that of any other private gentleman in England. His 
 house in Queen Square was, moreover, crammed with 
 printed books ; the sale of his library in 1775, which 
 lasted twenty days, was the great literary auction of 
 the time. 
 
 Another famous physician of St. Bartholomew's was 
 Dr. David Pitcairn, who died in 1809. He also was 
 distinguished as a literary man and lover of art. His 
 earnings were very large, for he was frequently requested 
 by his brethren for his advice in difficult cases. His 
 manners as a physician were simple, gentle, and dignified, 
 and always sufficiently cheerful to inspire confidence and 
 hope. It is said that he was occasionally affected in 
 his speech ; thus he is reported to have asked a lady 
 for a pinch of snuff in the following terms : ' Madam, 
 permit me to immerse the summits of my digits in your 
 pulveriferous utensil, to excite a grateful titillation of 
 my olfactory nerves.'' 
 
 Of Dr. John lladcliffe, the physician of the reigns of 
 William III. and Queen Anne, many strange anecdotes 
 are told, for he was a man of rough Abemethy manners,
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 203 
 
 even with kings. When called in to see King William 
 at Kensington, finding his legs dropsically swollen, he 
 said: 'I would not have your two legs, your Majesty, 
 not for your three kingdoms.'' The remark gave great 
 offence. But on another occasion he was even more 
 brusque. 'Your juices,' 1 he said to the King, 'are all 
 vitiated, your whole mass of blood corrupted, and the 
 nutriment mostly turned to water. If your Majesty 
 will forbear making long visits to the Earl of Bradford , 
 (where the King was wont to drink very hard), ' I'll 
 engage to make you live three or four years longer, but 
 beyond that time no physic can protract your Majesty's 
 existence.'' On one occasion, when he was sent for from 
 the tavern, to which he resorted but too often, by 
 Queen Anne, he flatly refused to leave his bottle. 
 'Tell her Majesty,' he bellowed, ' that it's nothing but 
 the vapours. 1 He advised a hypochondriacal lady, who 
 complained of nervous singing in the head, to ' curl her 
 hair with a ballad. 1 He cured a gentleman of a quinsy 
 by making his own two servants eat a hasty-pudding 
 for a wager, which caused the patient to break out 
 into such a fit of laughter as to burst the quinsy. Sir 
 Godfrey Kneller and Radcliffe were at one time neigh- 
 bours in Bow Street, Covent Garden, and the painter 
 having beautiful pleasure-grounds, a door was opened 
 for the accommodation of his neighbour. But in con- 
 quence of damage done to his flower-beds, Sir Godfrey 
 threatened to close the door, to which Radcliffe replied, 
 he might do anything with it but paint it. 'Did 
 Dr. Radcliffe say so P 1 cried Sir Godfrey. ' Go and tell 
 him, with my compliments, that I can take anything 
 from him but his physic. 1 In spite of his cynicism and
 
 204 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 rudeness, he made a very large income, on the average 
 twenty guineas a day, and when he was told that the 
 ^5,000 he had invested in South Sea stock was lost, he 
 could with placid sangfroid say : ' Well, it is only 
 going up another 5,000 stairs.' But though he so 
 heavily taxed his patients, he was very much opposed 
 to paying his debts, especially such as he owed to 
 tradespeople. A pavior, whom he had employed and 
 constantly put off paying, at last waited for him at his 
 (the doctor's) door, and, when his carriage drove up, 
 roughly asked for his money. ' Why, you rascal,' said 
 the doctor, ' do you expect to get paid for such a bad 
 piece of work ? You have spoiled my pavement, 
 and covered it with earth to hide your bad work !' 
 ' Doctor,' replied the pavior, ' mine is not the only 
 bad work the earth hides.' ' You dog, you !' cried the 
 doctor, 'you must be a wit, and want the money. 
 Come in.' And he paid him. Curiously enough, the 
 man who left the splendid library, known by his name, 
 to Oxford, at one time, on being asked where his library 
 was, pointed to a few phials, a skeleton, and a herbal, 
 in one corner of his apartment, and said, ' Sir, there is 
 my library !' He was a Tory in politics, and it was 
 said that he kept Lady Holt alive out of pure political 
 animosity to the Whig Chief Justice Holt, because she 
 led her lord such a life. 
 
 Of a more genial disposition, though no less original 
 character, was Dr. John Cookley Lettsom. He was 
 born in a small island near Tortola, called Little Van 
 Dyke, which belonged to his father. A view of it may 
 be seen in the Gentlemaii's Magazine, December Supple- 
 ment, 1815. When only six years of age he was sent
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 205 
 
 to England for his education, being entrusted to the 
 care of a Mr. Fothergill, then a famous preacher among 
 the Quakers. His father dying before he came of age, 
 that gentleman became his guardian, and with a view 
 to his future profession sent him to Dr. Sutcliffe. For 
 two years he attended St. Thomas's Hospital, and then 
 returned to his native place in the West Indies to take 
 possession of any property that might remain ; but on 
 his arrival he found himself cfSOO worse than nothing, 
 his elder brother, then dead, having run through an 
 ample fortune, leaving to his younger brother only a 
 number of negro slaves, whom he at once emancipated. 
 He entered on the medical profession, and in five 
 months made the astonishing sum of i?2,000, with 
 which he returned to Europe, visited the medical 
 schools of Paris and Edinburgh, took his degree of 
 M.D. at Leyden in 1769, and was admitted a licentiate 
 of the College of Physicians of London in the same 
 year. His rise in his profession was rapid. In 1783 
 he earned ^3,600 ; in 1784, ,£3,900 ; in 1785, ^4,015 ; 
 in 1786, i?4,500 ; and in some years his income reached 
 dP12*000. But he was at the same time giving away 
 hundreds — nay thousands — in gratuitous advice, and 
 the poorer order of the clergy and struggling literary 
 men received not only gratuitous advice, but substantial 
 aid. He was one of the original projectors and sup- 
 porters of the General Dispensary, of the Finsbury and 
 Surrey Dispensaries, of the Margate Sea - Bathing 
 Infirmary, as well as of many other charitable institu- 
 tions. In 1779 he purchased some land on the east 
 side of Grove Hill, Camberwell, where he erected the 
 villa which for years was associated with his name, and
 
 206 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 where he entertained some of the most eminent literati 
 of his time. The house contained a library of near 
 ten thousand volumes, and a museum full of natural 
 and artistic curiosities. The grounds were most taste- 
 fully laid out and adorned with choice trees, shrubs 
 and flowers. The avenue of elms, still retaining the 
 name of Camberwell Grove, formed part of the small 
 estate and the approach to the house. It is sad to 
 relate that Dr. Lettsom's excessive devotion to science 
 and literature impaired his resources, and compelled 
 him eventually to quit Grove Hill. He died in 1815, 
 aged seventy-one years. He being in the habit of sign- 
 ing his prescriptions ' J. Lettsom, 1 some wag, putting 
 forth the lines as the doctors own composition, wrote 
 
 thus : 
 
 ' When patients comes to I, 
 
 I physics, Weeds, and sweats 'em ; 
 Then, if they choose to die, 
 What's that to I ? I lets 'em. 1 
 
 Everyone has heard, and has a story to tell, of 
 Dr. John Abernethy (b. 1764, d. 1831), so we do not 
 know whether in telling our stories of him we shall be 
 able to tell the reader anything new ; but as he was 
 a medical eccentricitv, we cannot omit him from our 
 portrait gallery. But let us premise that if we call 
 him eccentric we refer to his manners only, in which he 
 did not take after his chief instructor, Sir Charles Blick, 
 who was a fashionable physician of the extra-courteous 
 school. In scientific knowledge Abernethy greatly 
 excelled all his colleagues, though he got less fame by 
 that than by his oddities. When he had made up his 
 mind to many he wrote off-hand to a lady a note of
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 207 
 
 proposal, saying that he was too busy to attend in 
 person, but he would give her a fortnight for considera- 
 tion. His irritable temper at times rendered him very 
 disagreeable with patients and medical men who con- 
 sulted him. When the latter did so, he would walk up 
 and down the room with his hands in his pockets and 
 whistle all the time, and end by telling the doctor to go 
 home and read his (Abernethy's) book. On being asked 
 by a colleague whether a certain plan he suggested 
 would answer, the only reply he could obtain was : 
 ' Ay, ay, put a little salt on a bird's tail, and you will 
 be sure to catch him. 1 He could hardly be induced to 
 give advice in cases which appeared to depend on im- 
 proper diet. A farmer of immense bulk came from a 
 distance to consult him, and having given an account of 
 his daily meals, which showed an immense amount of 
 animal food, Abernethy said : ' Go away, sir ; I won't 
 attempt to prescribe for such a hog f A loquacious 
 lady he silenced by telling her to put out her tongue ; 
 she having done so, ' Now keep it there till / have done 
 talking, 1 said Abernethy. A lady having brought her 
 daughter, he refused to prescribe for her, but told the 
 mother to let the girl take exercise. Having received 
 his guinea, he gave the shilling to the mother and 
 said : ' Buy the girl a skipping-rope as you go along. 1 
 When the late Duke of York consulted him, he stood 
 whistling with his hands in his pockets, and the Duke 
 said : ' I suppose you know who I am P 1 ' Suppose I 
 do, 1 was the uncourtly reply, ' what of that P 1 To a 
 gentleman who consulted him for an ulcerated throat, 
 and wanted him to look at it, he said : * How dare you 
 suppose that I would allow you to blow your stinking,
 
 208 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 foul breath in my face I 1 But sometimes he met a 
 Tartar. A gentleman who could not succeed in getting 
 the doctor to listen to his case, suddenly locked the 
 door, put the key into his pocket, and took out a 
 loaded pistol. Abernethy, alarmed, asked if he meant 
 to murder him. No, he only wanted him to listen to 
 his case, and meant to keep him a prisoner till he did. 
 The patient and the surgeon afterwards became great 
 friends. The Duke of Wellington having insisted on 
 seeing him out of his usual hours, and abruptly entering 
 his room, was asked by the doctor how he got in. ' By 
 that door, 1 was the reply. ' Then,' said Abernethy, ' I 
 recommend you to make your exit by the same way. 1 
 He refused to attend George IV. until he had delivered 
 his lecture at the hospital, in consequence of which he 
 lost a royal appointment. To a lady who complained 
 that on holding her arm over her head she felt pain, he 
 said : ' Then what a fool you must be to hold it up V 
 He was fond of calling people fools. A countess con- 
 sulted him, and he offered her some pills, when she said 
 she could never take a pill. ' Not take a pill ! What 
 a fool you must be P was the courteous reply. 
 
 Abernethy usually cut patients short by saying : ' I 
 have heard enough. You have heard of my book P 1 
 ' Yes. 1 * Then go home and read it. 1 This book gives 
 admirable rules for dieting and general living, though 
 few persons would be willing to comply with them 
 rigidly ; he himself did not. When someone told him 
 that he seemed to live like most other people, he 
 replied : ' Yes, but then I have such a devil of an 
 appetite I 1 One day a lawyer suffering from dyspepsia, 
 brought on by want of exercise and good living, went
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 209 
 
 to consult Abernethy. As he came out of the consult- 
 ing-room he met another lawyer, a friend of his. 
 ' What the devil brought you here P 1 said one, and the 
 other echoed the question, and the reply of each was 
 the same. ' What has he prescribed for you T asked 
 the newcomer. The prescription was produced and 
 read as follows : ' Read my book, p. 72. J. Abernethy.'' 
 The first lawyer agreed to wait for his friend whilst he 
 went to consult the doctor. In about a quarter of an 
 hour he came out, well pleased apparently with his 
 interview. ' Well, what is your prescription V inquired 
 lawyer number one. Number two produced a slip of 
 paper, on which was written : ' Read my book, p. 72. 
 J. Abernethy. 1 That was what each got for his guinea. 
 But Abernethy deserves praise for three utterances, viz., 
 that mind is a miraculous energy added to matter, and 
 not the result of certain modes of organization, as 
 modern scientists maintain ; that an operation is a re- 
 proach to surgery, and that a patient should be cured 
 without recourse to it ; and that vivisection experi- 
 ments are morally wrong and physiologically unsafe, 
 because unreliable. 
 
 That Dr. Abernethy, with his uncouth manners and 
 vulgar repartee, should have been so successful in his 
 profession is a marvel ; certainly few people of the 
 present day would tolerate such rudeness as his. 
 Possibly in former days the doctor's distinctive dress 
 had a secret influence of its own. The gold-headed 
 cane, the elaborate shirt-frill, the massive snuff-box, 
 tapped so argumentatively in consultation, the pompous 
 manner and overbearing assurance, no doubt exercised 
 a spell with which we are unacquainted now. 
 
 14
 
 210 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Abernethy had imitators, but they had been pupils 
 of his. Tommy Wormald, or ' Old Tommy,' as the 
 students called him, was Abernethy over again in voice, 
 style, appearance and humour. To an insurance 
 company he reported on a bad life proposed to them : 
 ' Done for. 1 When an apothecary wanted to put him 
 off with a single guinea at a consultation on a rich 
 man's case, he said : ' A guinea is a lean fee, and the 
 patient is a fat patient. I always have fat fees from fat 
 patients. Pay me two guineas instantly ; our patient 
 is a fat patient.' Some rich but mean people would 
 drive to St. Bartholomew's to get advice gratis as out- 
 patients. To this Tommy meant to put a stop. 
 Seeing a lady dressed in silk, he thus addressed her 
 before a roomful of people : ' Madam, this charity is 
 for the poor, destitute invalids ; I refuse to pay atten- 
 tion to destitute invalids who wear rich silk dresses.' 
 The lady quickly disappeared. Will no Old Tommy 
 arise at the present day and put an end to the abuse, 
 which is as rampant as ever? 
 
 Doctors are not agreed as to what constitutes medical 
 science. By an empiric a quack is meant. Now, an 
 empiric goes by observation only, without rational 
 grounds ; yet Sir Charles Bell asserted that physiology 
 was a science of observation rather than of experiment, 
 which is the rational ground the quack is said to dis- 
 regard. Who is right ? Without attempting to 
 answer the question, which would lead us too far, we 
 must rest satisfied with the fact that the profession and 
 the public have agreed to stigmatize certain individuals 
 as quacks who, with or without any medical training, 
 pretend to cure diseases by charms, manipulations, or
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 211 
 
 nostrums, which have no scientific or rational basis. 
 Quacks have existed at all times, for mankind, especially 
 suffering mankind, has ever been credulous. Henry VIII. 
 endeavoured to put down those of his own times by 
 establishing censors in physic, but the public would not 
 be enlightened, and so the quacks flourished. In 1387 
 one Roger Clerk, of Wandsworth, pretending to be a 
 physician, got twelve pence in part payment from one 
 Roger atte Haccke, in Ironmonger Lane, for under- 
 taking the cure of his wife, who was ill. He put a 
 charm, consisting of a piece of parchment, round her 
 neck, but it did her no good, whereupon Roger brought 
 him before the chamber at Guildhall for his deceit and 
 falsehood, and Roger Clerk was sentenced to be led 
 through the middle of the city with trumpets and 
 pipes, he riding on a horse without a saddle, the said 
 parchment and a whetstone* for his lies being hung 
 about his neck, a urinal also being hung before him, 
 and another on his back. In the reign of Edward VI. 
 one Grig, a poulterer in Surrey, was set in the pillory 
 at Croydon, and again in the Borough, for cheating 
 people out of their money by pretending to cure them 
 by charms or by only looking at the patient. 
 
 Was Valentine Greatrakes, whom Charles II. invited 
 to his Court, a quack ? If he was, he was a harmless 
 one, since he gave no physic, but only pretended to 
 cure by magnetic stroking. Our modern magnetizers 
 
 * Early in English history we find the whetstone as the 
 symbol of a liar. Why ? Does lying imply a sharpened wit, 
 as a whetstone sharpens a blade ? The custom is referred to in 
 ' Hudibras,' II., i. 57-60. 
 
 14—2
 
 212 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 are not so modest ; they have added much hocus-pocus 
 to Valentine's simple process. 
 
 From among the medical oddities of the latter part 
 of the last century we must not omit Dr. Von Butchell, 
 who lived in Mount Street, and pretended to cure 
 every disease. He applied for the post of dentist to 
 George III., but when the King's consent was obtained 
 he said he did not care for the custom of royalty. 
 When his wife died, he had her embalmed and kept in 
 his parlour, where he allowed his patients to see the 
 body ; so that the modern showman who exhibited the 
 dead body of his wife at Olympia was, after all, only a 
 copyist. But whilst the doctor was half-mad, the world 
 was altogether mad ; for his exhibiting the corpse of 
 his wife was not considered as eccentric as his letting 
 his beard grow, which then was held to be the height of 
 madness. And there seems to have been method in his 
 madness, for he sold the hairs out of his beard at a 
 guinea each to ladies who wished to have fine children. 
 He used to ride about the West End on a pony painted 
 with spots by the doctor himself. There is an en- 
 graving extant of him, showing him astride on it. The 
 horse was afterwards, in consequence of a dispute with 
 the stable-keeper who had charge of it, sold at Tatter- 
 sail's, where, as a curiosity, it fetched a good price. 
 There was a wonderful inscription on the outside of his 
 house, extending over the front of the next, and his 
 neighbour rebuilding his frontage, half the inscription 
 was obliterated. Butchell was also a great advertiser, 
 and his advertisements even now afford amusing reading. 
 He never would visit a patient, though as much as 
 0C0OO was offered him for a visit — patients had to go to
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 213 
 
 his house. * I go to none, 1 he said in his advertisements. 
 Many persons used to visit him, not for getting advice, 
 but simply to converse with such an original. He was 
 twice married. His first wife he dressed in black, and 
 his second in white, never allowing a change of colour. 
 He was one of the earliest teetotalers. The profits he 
 and some of his contemporaries made on their quack 
 draughts and pills led, in 1783, to the imposition of 
 the tax on ' patent medicines. 1 
 
 But to come down to more recent times, in 1700 one 
 John Pechey, living at the Angel and Crown, in Basing 
 Lane, an Oxford graduate and member of the College 
 of Physicians, London, advertised that all sick people 
 might for sixpence have a faithful account of their 
 diseases and plain directions for their cure, and that he 
 was prepared to visit any sick person in London for 
 2s. 6d. ; and that if he were called by any person as he 
 passed by, he would require but one shilling for his 
 advice. A physician who in our day advertised like 
 this would be deprived of his diploma. In 1734 one 
 Joshua Ward became a celebrity even among quacks by 
 his pills, which he extensively advertised, and which 
 were patronized by the Queen herself. There was a 
 rhyming quack, Dr. Hill, who also wrote a farce, and 
 wanted Garrick to produce it, till the latter published 
 the following distich on him : 
 
 ' For farces and physic his equal there scarce is, 
 His farces are physic, his physic a farce is.' 
 
 A Dr. Hannes, a contemporary of Dr. RadclifFe, 
 ordered his servant to stop a number of coaches between 
 Whitehall and the Royal Exchange, and to inquire at
 
 214 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 each whether it belonged to Dr. Hannes, as he was 
 called to a patient. Entering Garraway's Coffee-House, 
 the servant put the same question. Dr. Radcliffe 
 happening to be there, he asked who wanted Dr. 
 Hannes. The servant named several lords who all 
 wanted him. ' No, no, friend, 1 said Radcliffe ; ' Dr. 
 Hannes wants the lords. , 
 
 Quacks were never more flourishing than they are 
 now, and they always will be, for the public like 
 mysterious remedies, and are anxious to recommend 
 them and to force them on their friends. In nothing 
 is a little knowledge more dangerous than in medicine ; 
 mothers and nurses especially, who have acquired some 
 smattering of it from their conversations with doctors, 
 may do a lot of mischief. To them are due nearly all 
 so-called diseases of children — as if children must 
 necessarily have diseases — a superstition which is shared 
 bv some doctors, who also encourage the reading of 
 their books. The reading of those books has physically 
 the same effect on the body that the reading or hearing 
 of ghost stories has morally on the mind : the reader or 
 hearer everywhere feels dis-ease and sees ghosts ; ergo 
 beware of medical books and goblin stories — both are 
 unwholesome. Modern invalids are fortunate in 
 escaping the tortures inflicted on patients in earlier 
 days. Edmund Verney thus writes concerning his 
 father, Sir Ralph Verney, of Clay don House, in 1686 : 
 ' He hath been blooded, vomited, blistered, cupt and 
 scarified, and hath three physicians with him, besides 
 apothecary and chirurgian.* 1 And then he wonders that 
 ' he still continues very weak. 1 The marvel was that he 
 survived at all. Had not Moliere a few years before
 
 THE OLD DOCTORS 215 
 
 the above date said : ' You must not say that a man 
 died of such and such a disease, but of so many 
 physicians, surgeons and apothecaries ' ? 
 
 The most pungent and most witty definition of the 
 doctor's character probably is that given, I think, by 
 Talleyrand. When Napoleon, in a fit of despondency, 
 said that he would forsake war and turn physician, the 
 sarcastic courtier said sotto voce : ' Toujours assassin T
 
 XV. 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON. 
 
 LONDON is deficient in two conditions to render it 
 picturesque : it lacks diversity of surface, and it 
 lacks water. In so vast an expanse of ground as 
 is covered by London, Ludgate Hill and Notting Hill 
 are mere molehills.* As to water, it has the Thames, 
 but that is accessible at short and broken intervals 
 only. There is the Embankment from Blackfriars to 
 Westminster ; a short bit at Chelsea, and the Albert 
 Embankment. But the City people during the day have 
 no time to waste on their Embankment, and in the 
 evening they are gone to the suburbs, and so this grand 
 promenade is given up to occasional country cousins' 
 
 * The highest point north is Hampstead Hill, 400 feet above 
 sea-level ; to the south Sydenham Hill, 365 feet ; Primrose Hill, 
 about 2G0 feet ; Heme Hill, about 180 feet ; Denmark, about 
 100 feet ; Orme Square, 05 feet ; Broad Walk, 90 feet ; North 
 Audley Street, 83 feet ; Tottenham Court Road, 85 feet ; Regent 
 Circus, 90 feet ; Cornhill, 60 feet ; Charing Cross, 24 feet ; 
 Euston Road, 90 feet ; Cheapside, 59 feet ; Farringdon Street, 
 28 feet ; St. Katherine's, Regent's Park, 120 feet ; Camberwell 
 Green, 19 feet.
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 217 
 
 visits, and to permanent ruffianism. For, of course, no 
 one from the more northern parts of London ever thinks 
 of coming so far to take a stroll on that Embankment, 
 from which nothing is to be seen but mud-banks in the 
 near prospect, as by a perverse arrangement of nature it 
 is generally low water when you want to take a walk ; 
 on the opposite bank only dismal wharves present 
 themselves. As to the Chelsea Embankment, that is 
 patronized by the dwellers in that region only, if they 
 do not neglect it altogether, as people generally do 
 who live in a rather picturesque locality. The less we 
 say about the Albert Embankment the better ; its 
 characteristics are dingy hovels and smoke-belching 
 pottery chimneys on one side, smoke and cinders from 
 passing steam-barges and penny steamers on the river, 
 and a dreary outlook on the opposite side, scarcely re- 
 lieved by the Tate Gallery, which, for reasons unknown 
 to the general public, but self-evident to those who can 
 see the wire-pulling behind, has been pitched, like a 
 King Log, into the Pimlico swamp. All other parts of 
 the river are inaccessible to the public, and therefore as 
 good as non-existent for the Londoner. 
 
 Thus much for the Thames. As to other pieces of 
 water to be found in public parks, they are mere ponds, 
 and of benefit only locally. As to public fountains, 
 which form the peculiar charm of so many Continental 
 cities, where the melodious splash of water is heard day 
 and night, London possesses none. True, there are 
 two squirts in Trafalgar Square, and the Shaftesbury 
 fountain is making asthmatic efforts to assert itself, 
 whilst the Angel at the top seems to be shooting Folly 
 as it flies all around him in the savoury purlieus of the
 
 218 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Haymarket. The small drinking fountains found here 
 and there are evidences of philanthropy, which may be 
 grateful to children and tramps, to horses and dogs, but 
 do not add much to the aquatic features of London. 
 There are canals, it is true, but they are private pro- 
 perty, and so fenced, hoarded, and walled in, as to be of 
 no use to the public. And as a rule their water is so 
 dirty that no one with a nose would walk by the side 
 of them, even if allowed to do so. 
 
 But London was not always so deadly level and so 
 waterless as it is now. In ancient days there were high 
 hills and deep valleys in the very heart of it. From 
 the river Lea to the river Brent on the northern side 
 of London there were numerous rivulets and brooks 
 descending from the northern heights through the City 
 and its western outskirts into the Thames, brooks and 
 rivulets which at times assumed such dimensions as to 
 cause serious inundations. It was the same in the 
 south of London, where from the Ravensbourne to the 
 Wandle similar watercourses reached the Thames from 
 the southern hills. 
 
 All those brooks between the four rivers we have 
 named, and which alone are still existing, have totally 
 disappeared. What were their features, when they still 
 flowed from northern and southern heights, and what 
 were the causes and the process of their disappearance, 
 we now intend to investigate, by proceeding from east 
 to west, and taking the northern shore of the Thames 
 first. 
 
 The site on which the Romans founded London was 
 the rising ground on the northern bank of the Thames, 
 from the present Fish Street Hill, or Billingsgate, to
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 219 
 
 the Wallbrook. At a later date of their occupation 
 they extended the City eastward to the Tower, and 
 westward to the valley of the Fleet. Then the valley 
 of the Wallbrook divided the City into two portions of 
 almost equal size. To the north the buildings extended 
 to the present Aldgate and to Moorfields, and westward 
 to Newgate and Ludgate. The wall which encom- 
 passed the town began at the Tower, and in a line 
 with various bends in it terminated at the Arx Palatina, 
 somewhere near the present Times office. On the east 
 of the town, where the country was flat, there was a 
 marsh, extending to the river Lea. To the north-west 
 were dense forests stretching far into Middlesex, and 
 abounding with deer, wild boar, and other savage 
 animals. This forest was partly the cause of the many 
 brooks, which in those days watered London from the 
 northern heights ; it being a well-known fact that trees 
 absorb and retain moisture. 
 
 It is doubtful whether there were any Roman 
 buildings west of the Fleet ; Fleet Street and the 
 Strand certainly were then undreamt of, and did not 
 come into existence till centuries after the Romans had 
 left our island. To the west of the present Strand, the 
 ground lying very low, it was frequently inundated by 
 the river, and there are persons still living who can 
 remember Belgravia and Pimlico as a dismal swamp. 
 Westminster Abbey stood on an island, which rose 
 above the marshy environs, and even as late as the 
 times of Charles II. occasional high tides converted the 
 palace of Whitehall into an island. 
 
 The great forest of Middlesex above mentioned came 
 close to the City wall ; it had, in fact, occupied a
 
 220 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 portion of the site on which the City was built, and as 
 much of it had been cut down, and so much space 
 cleared, as the builders required for their operations. 
 But the nature of the forest ground could not be as 
 readily changed. It was still fall of moisture, and 
 numerous rills continued to flow through it. Now, one 
 of the most important of them was the Langbourne. 
 
 This watercourse, so called because of its length, took 
 its rise in ground now forming part of Fenchurch 
 Street. It ran swiftly through that street in a west- 
 ward direction, across Grass, now Gracechurch Street, 
 into and down Lombard Street — where many Roman 
 remains have been discovered — to the west of St. Mary 
 Woolnoth Church, where it turned sharply round to 
 the south and gave name to Sherbourne Lane, so 
 termed of sharing or dividing, because there it broke 
 into a number of rills and so reached the Thames. 
 From this watercourse Langbourne Ward took its 
 name. Thus says Stow, but he adds that in his day 
 (1598) this bourne had long been stopped up at the 
 head, and the rest of the course filled up and paved 
 over, ' so that no sign thereof remaineth more than the 
 name aforesaid. 1 
 
 Some modern historians, Mr. Loftie, for instance, 
 deny the existence of the Langbourne altogether. 
 ' Stow says that the Langbourne rose in Fenchurch 
 Street and ran down Lombard Street. It does not 
 seem to have occurred to him that the course indicated 
 is up hill, 1 Mr. Loftie objects. But Fenchurch Street 
 was then, as it is now, considerably higher than the 
 outfall of the Langbourne into the Thames, and what 
 do we know of the then levels of the streets through
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 221 
 
 which it was said to have run? Upwards of thirty 
 feet under the present level of Lombard Street Roman 
 remains have been found, and the Langbourne, as we 
 know from various documents, was covered in as early 
 as the latter part of the twelfth century, a time when 
 building increased rapidly under Fitz-Alwyn, the first 
 Mayor of London ; moreover, the fenny condition of 
 Fenchurch Street is said to have been due to the over- 
 flowino; of the Langbourne at its source. Mr. Loftie 
 says that the original name of the Langbourne was 
 Langford ; but a ford implies a watercourse, and not 
 a mere ditch or artificial trench, which, receiving the 
 drainage of the immediate locality, fell into the Wall- 
 brook, as Mr. Burt would have us believe. If the 
 Langbourne never existed, whence did Langbourne 
 Ward derive its name ? 
 
 Proceeding westward, we come to a much more im- 
 portant stream, namely, the Wallbrook. 
 
 No more striking instance of the changes which 
 Time will effect in the topographical aspect of a 
 locality can be found than that which the disappear- 
 ance of the Wallbrook has produced within the limits 
 of its own course and in its surroundings. Where now a 
 smooth expanse of asphalte paving covers firm ground 
 (except where rendered treacherously dangerous by 
 sewer-like railway tunnels, in which human beings are 
 shot to and fro like so many rats enclosed in traps in a 
 drain !), extending from Princes Street right across to 
 the Mansion House, and to and down the street called 
 Wallbrook, there, centuries ago, yawned a wide ravine 
 with precipitous sides, at the bottom of which flowed 
 the brook called the Wall-brook, because, rising in the
 
 222 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 upper fenny grounds of Moorfields, it entered the city 
 through an opening in the wall, somewhere near the 
 northern end of the present Moorgate Street. The 
 brook, towards its southern termination, must have 
 been of considerable width, for barges could be rowed 
 up to Bucklersbury — a fact commemorated by Barge 
 Yard, formerly a kind of dock, but now solid ground, 
 opening into Bucklersbury. The width of the Wall- 
 brook near its outfall was no doubt increased by 
 tributaries, which, flowing from the opposite portion 
 of the City, found an exit on the western bank. There 
 is no doubt that there was a watercourse along the line 
 of Cheapside ; the fact is stated positively by Maitland. 
 He says : ' At Bread Street corner, the north-east end, 
 in 1595, one Thomas Tomlinson causing in the High 
 Street of Chepe a vault to be digged, there was found 
 at fifteen feet deep a fair pavement, like that above- 
 ground, and at the further end, at the channel, was 
 found a tree, sawed into five steps, which was to step 
 over some brook running out of the west towards Wall- 
 brook. And upon the edge of the said brook there 
 was found lying the bodies of two great trees, the ends 
 whereof were then sawed off', and firm timber as at the 
 first when they fell. It was all forced ground until 
 they went past the trees aforesaid, which was about 
 seventeen feet deep, or better. Thus much has the 
 ground of this city been raised from the main. And 
 here it may be observed that within fourscore years and 
 less, Cheapside was raised divers feet higher than it was 
 when St. Paul's was first built, as appeared by several 
 eminent marks discovered in the late laying of the 
 foundation of that church."' The mention of Cheapside
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 223 
 
 as a highway does not go back to very early times. In 
 the eleventh century it must have been a mere bog ; 
 for, when in 1090 the roof of Bow Church was blown 
 off by a tempest, the rafters, which were twenty-six feet 
 long, penetrated more than twenty feet into the soft 
 soil of Cheapside. The course of the brook just men- 
 tioned west of Bread Street is not known ; it is doubtful 
 whether it struck off' northward by about Gutter Lane, 
 and so towards springs known to exist near Cripplegate, 
 or whether it came from further westward, from the 
 springs which supply the ancient baths in Bath Street 
 (formerly called Bagnio Court), north of Newgate 
 Street. 
 
 But we must return to the Wallbrook itself; and, 
 first, as to its course. After entering the City through 
 the opening in the wall, it curved eastward, ran along 
 Bell Alley, crossed Tokenhouse Yard and Lothbury, 
 close by St. Margaret's Church, curved westward again, 
 passing through ground now covered by the north-west 
 corner of the Bank of England ; crossing the present 
 Princes Street and the Poultry, it ran under what is 
 now the National Safe Deposit, whence, by an almost 
 semicircular bend, it reached Cannon Street, which it 
 crossed, turning westwardly towards St. Michael's 
 Church, and crossing Thames Street, flowed past 
 Joiners 1 Hall into the Thames. There were various 
 bridges over the said watercourse. There was one close 
 to Bokerelsberi (Bucklersbury), which in 1291 four 
 occupiers of tenements adjoining the bridge were 
 ordered to repair, according to clauses in their tenancies. 
 There was another over against the wall of the chancel 
 of the church of St. Stephen, which it was the duty of
 
 224 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 the parishioners to repair, as they were ordered to do, 
 for instance, in 1300. At Dowgate Hill, at the outfall 
 of the Wallbrook into the Thames, there was discovered 
 in 1884 an ancient landing-stage, a Roman pavement 
 in tile, set upon timber piles, with mortised jointing. 
 The stage stood on the left bank of the Wallbrook, 
 facing not the Thames, but the brook. It was twenty- 
 one feet below the present level of Dowgate Hill, and 
 below the churchyard of St. John's. A large quantity 
 of stout oak-piling was also in situ, and the sill of the 
 bridge which crossed from east to west at this spot was 
 seen very plainly. Another landing-stage appears to 
 have existed on the brook at a spot now covered by the 
 National Safe Deposit : it consisted of a timber flooring 
 supported by huge oak timbers, and running parallel 
 with the stream. Adjoining this were evidences of a 
 macadamized roadway, which extended in a line with 
 Bucklersbury, until it reached the apparent course of 
 the brook. Upon the opposite side similar indications 
 appeared, so that here also a bridge may have existed. 
 Another bridge seems to have spanned the brook near 
 London Wall, in Broad Street Ward, with yet another 
 a little more south. It appears that in the year 1300 
 both these bridges required repairs, and that the Prior 
 of the Holy Trinity, who was liable for those of the 
 first, and the Prior of the New Hospital without 
 Bishopsgate, who was bound to do those of the second, 
 were in that year summoned by the Mayor and Alder- 
 men of London ' to rebuild the said bridges and keep 
 them in repair. 1 
 
 When in the seventies the National Safe Deposit 
 Company dug down some forty feet into the ground,
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 225 
 
 and reached the ancient course of the Wallbrook, they 
 found in its bed, among other debris, enormous 
 quantities of broken vessels and kitchen utensils. No 
 doubt the careless cooks and housemaids of the ancient 
 Romans found the brook handy for getting rid of 
 the evidences of mishap or recklessness ; but their 
 successors on the banks of the stream seem to have 
 treated it with even greater disrespect. In the records 
 of the* City we find constant references to the disgraceful 
 condition of the Wallbrook. In 1288 the Warden and 
 Sheriffs of the City of London had to order that the 
 watercourse of the Wallbrook should be made free from 
 dung and other nuisances, and that the rakes should be 
 put back again upon every tenement extending from 
 Finsbury Moor to the Thames. In 1374 the Mayor 
 and Aldermen granted to Thomas atte Ram, brewer, a 
 seven years'* lease of the Moor, together with charge of 
 the watercourse of Wallbrook, without paying any rent 
 therefor, upon the understanding that he should keep 
 the said Moor well and properly, and have the Wall- 
 brook cleansed for the whole of the term, clearing it 
 from dung and other filth thrown therein, he taking for 
 every latrine built upon the said watercourse twelve 
 pence yearly. And if, in so cleansing it, he should find 
 aught therein, he should have it for his own. But it 
 would seem that Thomas atte Ram did not properly 
 perform his contract, for at the expiration of it, namely 
 in 1383, we find by an Ordinance of the Common 
 Council that, ' whereas the watercourse of the Wall- 
 brook is stopped up by divers filth and dung thrown 
 thereinto by persons who have houses along the said 
 course, to the great nuisance and damage of all the 
 
 15
 
 226 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 City, the Aldermen of the Wards of Coleman Street, 
 Broad Street, Chepe, Wallbrook, Vintry and Dowgate, 
 through whose wards the said watercourse runs, shall 
 inquire if any person dwelling along the said course has 
 a stable or other house, whereby dung or other filth 
 may fall into the same ; or otherwise throws therein 
 such manner of filth by which the said watercourse is 
 stopped up, and they (the Aldermen) shall pursue all 
 such offenders. But it shall be lawful for those persons 
 who have houses on the said stream to have latrines 
 over it, provided they do not throw rubbish or other 
 refuse through the same . . . and every person having 
 such latrines shall pay yearly to the Chamberlain two 
 shillings for each of them."' 
 
 With such arrangements, and the constant increase 
 of buildings on the brook, and the decrease of water 
 supplied to it by the springs in Moorfields, which were 
 gradually being laid dry, the Wallbrook, from a clear 
 stream, became a foul ditch, an open sewer, so that it 
 was found necessary to convert it into a covered one 
 in reality. The brook was filled up with all kinds 
 of debris and partially bricked over, so that when 
 Stow wrote (in 1598) he was obliged to say : * This 
 watercourse . . . was afterwards vaulted over with 
 brick, and paved level with the streets and lanes . . . 
 and since that houses also have been built thereon, so 
 that the course of Wallbrook is now hidden under- 
 ground, and thereby hardly known.' The stream was 
 covered in at least three centuries before the covering 
 in of the Fleet river, but its course can still be traced 
 by the many important buildings which lined its banks. 
 Commencing at its influx to the Thames, there were
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 227 
 
 along its course on the western side the halls of the 
 Innholders, the Dyers, the Joiners, the Skinners, the 
 Tallow-chandlers, and the Cutlers ; the churches of 
 St. John, St. Michael, St. Stephen (which originally 
 stood on the western side), St. Mildred, and St. 
 Margaret ; also the Grocers' 1 and the Founders" 1 Halls, 
 the estates of the Drapers and Leathersellers, and in 
 Bucklersbury Cornet's Tower, a strong stone tower 
 which was erected by Edward III. as his ' Exchange of 
 money there to be kept. 1 In the sixteenth century it 
 seems to have come into the possession of one Buckle, 
 a grocer, who intended to erect in its place a ' goodly 
 frame of timber, 1 but, ' greedily labouring to pull down 
 the tower," 1 a part thereof fell upon and killed him. 
 
 In 1835 a curious discovery, the import of which was 
 then unsuspected, was made close to the Swan's Nest, a 
 public-house in Great Swan Alley, Moorgate Street. 
 A pit or well was laid open, in which was found a large 
 quantity of earthen vessels of various patterns. This 
 well had been carefully planked over with stout boards ; 
 the vases it contained were placed on their sides, em- 
 bedded in mud or sand, which had settled so closely 
 round them that a great number were broken in the 
 attempt to extricate them. A coin and some iron 
 implements were also found in the well, which was 
 about three feet square, and boarded on each side with 
 narrow planks about two feet long. The object with 
 which these vessels, etc., had been deposited in this 
 well was not at the time surmised, but it was made 
 clear by a subsequent discovery. When the National 
 Safe Deposit Company's premises, already referred to, 
 were built, a similar wooden framework was discovered 
 
 15—2
 
 228 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 at a depth of about thirty feet below the present level of 
 the street. It was of oak, and about three feet square, 
 and the contents of the box were similar to those found 
 at the Swan's Nest. Fortunately this find came under 
 the observation of Mr. John E. Price, F.S.A., and 
 Honorary Secretary of the London and Middlesex 
 Archaeological Society, who recognised the remains as 
 those of an area finalis, a monument employed by the 
 Roman surveyors to indicate the situation of limits of 
 public or private property, answering to a landmark or 
 boundary stone. Similar structures, occasionally of 
 stone or tiles, have been discovered in other parts of 
 England, as also on the Continent. It is therefore 
 evident that the box found higher up the stream was 
 also such an area. 
 
 To return once more to Wallbrook. A bridge across 
 it we have not yet mentioned was Horseshoe Bridge, 
 situate where the brook crossed Cloak Lane, which was 
 a famous shopping-place of the ladies of those early 
 days, fancy articles being mostly on sale there. It is, 
 however, time to leave the Wallbrook ; let us part from 
 it with such a picture on our minds as will leave a 
 vivid and pleasant impression. Remember that its 
 banks were favourite sites for villas, as is proved by all 
 the evidences of wealth and luxury of the ancient 
 dwellers on the Wallbrook ravine and adjoining streets, 
 now buried fathoms deep underground, which have been 
 found on and near the banks of the river. * A villa in 
 beautiful grounds on the Wallbrook to be let ' — think 
 of that ! 
 
 From the valley of the Wallbrook the ground of the 
 City rises gently towards St. Paul's, and Panyers Alley,
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 229 
 
 the highest point ; thence it falls almost precipitously 
 towards the valley of the Fleet River, so precipitously, 
 indeed, that one of the descents from the Old Bailey to 
 Farringdon Street obtained the name of Breakneck 
 Steps. When the increase of the population of the old 
 City rendered it desirable to seek new habitations, the 
 citizens looked across the river Fleet, and saw the 
 opposite Holborn, Back, and Saffron Hills as yet un- 
 occupied, stretching out as open country — though roads 
 had begun to be established thereon, such as Field Lane, 
 then in the fields — and began to erect dwellings on the 
 western bank of the river. This led to the erection of 
 bridges ; we think Holborn Bridge was the first to be 
 built. But before we enter into an account of the 
 bridges, it is necessary to speak of the river itself. 
 
 The Fleet, then, which once formed so important a 
 feature of London topography, took its rise in the 
 dense clay of the district just below Hampstead ; at 
 Kentish Town its volume was increased by an affluent 
 from Highgate Ponds ; it then made its way through 
 the hill near College Street — whence some writers infer 
 that the name of Oldbourne, by which the river was 
 known for some distance, was really a corruption of 
 Hole-bourne — and entered the valley formed by the 
 hills of Camden Town and the Caledonian Road, 
 pursuing its course to Battle Bridge — since 1830 known 
 as King's Cross — where it received an affluent from the 
 west, which rose in the high ground to the south of the 
 Hampstead Road. From Battle Bridge the river bent 
 round to the east, and flowed through the grounds of 
 Bagnigge Wells, once the residence of Nell Gwynne, 
 and thence, still with an easterly trend, past the walls
 
 230 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 of the House of Correction, thence across Baynes Row, 
 where it received another western affluent, taking its 
 rise at the western end of Guilford Street. Thence it 
 flowed to the northern end of Little Saffron Hill, and 
 in this part of its course it sometimes was called the 
 River of Wells, because it was fed by a number of 
 wells or springs, all situate in Clerkenwell, and known 
 as Clerks' 1 Well, Skinners' Well, Faggs' Well, Loder's 
 Well, Rad Well, and Todd's Well, this latter a 
 corruption of its proper name, God's Well, from which 
 Goswell Street took its name. The river thence flowed 
 down the valley between the old City and the Holborn 
 hills, and here it occasionally went by the name of 
 Turnmill Brook, because of the mills which here stood 
 on its banks. On its eastern side was a street called 
 Turnmill Street, which in later days acquired a very 
 bad reputation, its inhabitants being abandoned 
 characters. Originally it was a respectable street, the 
 houses having gardens going down to the river, which 
 was fenced on both sides. In its southward course the 
 river presently reached Holborn Bridge, where it re- 
 ceived the affluent called the Hol-bourne, which rose 
 somewhere near St. Giles'. The existence of this brook 
 is denied by some topographers, but it is distinctly 
 shown in a very old map of the manor of Blemundsbury 
 (Bloomsbury), reproduced in Mr. W. Blott's ' Chronicle 
 of Blemundsbury,' 1892. And we see no reason for 
 doubting the correctness of the map, and therefore 
 adopt the Holbourne as a fact. The Fleet then passed 
 under Chick Lane, afterwards called West Street, which 
 crossed the river at right angles, and in quite recent 
 times was the refuge of thieves, burglars, and other
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 231 
 
 criminals ; and means of concealment and of escape by 
 way of the river were revealed when, in the forties and 
 fifties, West Street was pulled down for the improve- 
 ments then in progress in that locality. After passing 
 under Holborn Bridge, the river was known as the 
 Fleet, not because of the fleetness of its course, as some 
 writers would have it, for it never had much of that 
 quality, but because of the flood or high tide it par- 
 ticipated in with the rise of the Thames. 
 
 Having thus traced the river from its source to its 
 mouth, we may describe the bridges which crossed it. 
 
 In the northern part of its course the river, where it 
 passed through what in the early days was still country, 
 was no doubt here and there crossed by bridges, but 
 they were probably wooden bridges of light con- 
 struction, as the traffic was but limited. The first solid 
 bridge we have any record of is the one which existed 
 at Battle Bridge, which derived its name from the 
 battle between Suetonius Paulinus and Boadicea, the 
 Queen of the Iceni, which is said to have been fought 
 on the spot, and from the brick bridge which in early 
 times there crossed the Fleet. Originally it was built 
 of wood, but at an uncertain date later on it was re- 
 placed by one of brick, consisting of a number of arches. 
 Battle Bridge, from the lowness of its situation, was 
 exposed to frequent inundations. In the Gentleman's 
 Magazine, May, 1818, we read : ' From the heavy 
 rain which commenced yesterday . . . Battle Bridge, 
 St. Pancras, and part of Somers Town was inundated. 
 The water was several feet deep in many of the houses, 
 and covered an extent of upwards of a mile. The 
 carcases of several sheep and goats were found . . . and
 
 232 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 property was damaged to a very considerable amount. 1 
 Various Acts were passed at the beginning of this 
 century for the improvement of the locality : the river 
 was completely arched over, and in 1830 the spot 
 assumed the name of King's Cross from the ridiculous 
 structure erected in the centre of the cross roads ; it 
 was of octagon shape, surmounted by a statue of 
 George IV. The basement was for some time occupied 
 as a police-station, then as a public-house, and the whole 
 was taken down in 1845, and a tall lamp erected on the 
 spot. 
 
 The Fleet was next crossed by an ornamental, some- 
 what rustic bridge in the grounds of Bagnigge Wells ; 
 of course it disappeared with the gardens and build- 
 ings of the Wells in 1841. In the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries, when Clerkenwell, from an almost 
 rural became an urban district, streets began to cross 
 the Fleet, such as Baynes Row, Eyre Street Hill, 
 Mutton Hill, Peter Street, and others. The next old 
 bridge we came to was Cow Bridge, by Cow Lane, or 
 the present Cow Cross. It dated from the middle of 
 the sixteenth century. Stow, writing, it will be re- 
 membered, in 1598, says: 'This bridge being lately 
 decayed, another of timber is made by Chick Lane. 1 
 In the time of Elizabeth the ground from Cow Cross 
 towards the Fleet River, and towards Ely House, on the 
 opposite bank, was either entirely vacant or occupied 
 with gardens. 
 
 We next come to Chick Lane, afterwards known as 
 West Street. Stow, writing in 1603, refers to Chicken 
 Lane, ' toward Turnmill Brook, and over that brook by 
 a timber bridge into the field.'' This must have been
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 233 
 
 Chick Lane, which was really a bridge of houses, the 
 most noticeable of which was one which once had been 
 known as the Red Lion Inn, and which at its demo- 
 lition is supposed to have been three hundred years old. 
 For the last hundred years of its existence it was used 
 as a lodging-house, and was the resort of thieves, 
 coiners, and other criminals. Its dark closets, trap- 
 doors, sliding panels, and secret recesses rendered it one 
 of the most secure places for robbery and murder ; 
 openings in the walls and floors afforded easy means of 
 getting rid of the bodies by dropping them into the 
 Fleet, which for many years before its final abolition 
 was only known as the Fleet Ditch. The history and 
 description of the houses in West Street were rendered 
 so well known at the time of their demolition that we 
 need not enter into them here ; besides, they are 
 beyond the scope of our inquiries. 
 
 South of Chick Lane was Holborn Bridge, which was 
 built of stone, and, according to Aggas 1 map of London 
 in 1560, had houses on the north side of it. The date 
 of its original foundation is not given in any chronicle, 
 but it must have gone far back, probably was coeval 
 with the building of London Bridge, since it was on the 
 great highway from east to west. At first it was, like 
 all the other bridges on the Fleet, constructed of wood ; 
 after its erection in stone, with a width of some twelve 
 feet, it seems to have been gradually widened to 
 accommodate the increasing; traffic. According to 
 Mr. Crosby, a great authority on the antiquities of the 
 Fleet valley, Holborn Bridge consisted of four different 
 bridges joined together at the sides. Yet in 1670 the 
 bridge was found to be too narrow for the traffic, and it
 
 234 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 had to be rebuilt, so that the way and passage might 
 run in a ' bevil line ' from a certain timber-house on 
 the north side, known by the name of the Cock, to 
 the Swan Inn. Wren built the new bridge on the 
 north or Holborn side accordingly, and the name of 
 William Hooker, Lord Mayor in 1673-74, was cut on 
 the stone coping of the eastern approach. What was 
 meant by the ' bevil line , is to us obscure, and we are 
 not much enlightened by what Sir William Tite says, 
 who in 1840 was present at the opening of a sewer at 
 Holborn Hill, and saw the southern face of the old 
 bridge disinterred. ' The arch, 1 he says, ' was about 
 twenty feet span. The road from the east intersected 
 the bridge obliquely, and out of the angle thus formed 
 a stone corbel arose to carry the parapet. 1 Of course, 
 with the disappearance of the Fleet Ditch the bridge 
 also vanished. 
 
 The next bridge we come to started from Fleet Lane 
 on the east side to Harp Alley on the Holborn side. 
 As it was about half-way between Holborn and Fleet 
 Street bridges, it was sometimes called Middle Bridge. 
 It was built of stone, with a stone rail and banister, 
 and was ascended by fourteen steps, and as high as 
 Bridewell and Fleet bridges, to allow vessels with 
 merchandise to pass under it. It had been erected in 
 1674, and disappeared with the other bridges on the 
 covering in of the Fleet. 
 
 The Fleet Bridge, which we reach next, joined 
 Ludgate Hill to Fleet Street. This bridge was, in 
 1431, repaired at the charges of John Wels, Mayor. 
 It was destroyed by the Great Fire, and the new one 
 erected in its stead was of the breadth of the street,
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 235 
 
 and ornamented with pineapples and the City arms. 
 But though larger in breadth, it had not the length of 
 the old bridge, the channel having then been already 
 considerably narrowed. The bridge was taken down 
 in 1765. 
 
 To the south of Fleet Bridge the river was spanned 
 by a building, which seems to have been a dwelling or 
 a warehouse. It is distinctly shown on Aggas" map. 
 
 Bridewell Bridge, the last over the Fleet before its 
 entering the Thames, and the last built (in the six- 
 teenth century), was at first a timber bridge, between 
 Blackfriars and the House of Bridewell, on the site of 
 the Castle Mountfiquet, which originally stood there. 
 In 1708, or thereabouts, it was replaced by one of 
 stone, much higher than the street, being ascended by 
 fourteen steps. It was for foot passengers only. It 
 was pulled down in 17G5. 
 
 We may now conclude our account of the Fleet with 
 a few statements concerning the vicissitudes it passed 
 through. 
 
 A great many antiquities — British, Saxon, and 
 Roman — have been found in the bed of this river, such 
 as coins of silver, copper, and brass, but none of gold ; 
 lares, spur rowels, keys, daggers, seals, medals, vases, 
 and urns. An anchor, three feet ten inches in height, 
 encrusted with rust and pebbles — a sketch of which 
 is given in the October number of the Gentleman 1 s 
 Magazine, 1843 — is said to have been discovered near 
 the site of Holborn Bridge, which may be genuine, as 
 ships are known to have ascended so far up the river 
 in the fourteenth century. But early in that century 
 already the river was choked up ' by the filth of the
 
 236 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 tanners and others, and by the raising of wharves, and 
 especially by a diversion of the water in the first year 
 of King John (1200) by them of the New Temple for 
 their mills without Baynard's Castle, and by other 
 impediments, the course was decayed, and ships could 
 not enter as they were used. 1 Upon this complaint of 
 Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, the river was cleansed, 
 the mills removed, and other means taken for its pre- 
 servation ; but it was not brought to its former depth 
 and w r idth, and so was soon filled with mud again. 
 The scouring of the river seems to have been necessary 
 every thirty or forty years, at a great expense to the 
 City. We find that it was so cleansed in 1502, and 
 once more rendered navigable for large barges, but the 
 dwellers on its banks would continue to make it the 
 receptacle of all the refuse, and the wharves built on 
 its banks proved unsuccessful, as vessels could not 
 approach them. Consequently, in 1733 the City of 
 London, seeing that all navigation had ceased, and that 
 the ditch, as it was then called, was a danger to the 
 public on account of its unsanitary state, and because 
 persons had fallen in and been suffocated in the mud, 
 began covering it in, commencing with the portion 
 from Fleet Bridge to Holborn Bridge, and the new 
 Fleet Market was erected on the site in 1737. The 
 part from Fleet Street to the Thames was covered 
 in when the approaches to Blackfriars were completed 
 between 1760 and 1768. One stubborn citizen, how- 
 ever, would not surrender a small filthy dock ; a barber, 
 from Bromley, in Kent, was, in 1763, found in it 
 standing upright and frozen to death. 
 
 Like all brooks descending from hills, the Fleet was
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 237 
 
 liable to sudden increases of volume, causing inunda- 
 tions.* The melting of snow and ice by a sudden thaw 
 and heavy and long-continued rains have frequently 
 turned the Fleet into a mighty and destructive torrent 
 flood. In 1679 it broke down the back of several 
 wholesale butcher-houses at Cow Cross, and carried off 
 cattle dead and alive. At Hockley-in-the-Hole barrels 
 of ale, beer, and brandy floated down the stream. In 
 1768 the Hampstead Ponds overflowing after a severe 
 storm, the Fleet grew into a torrent, and the roads and 
 fields about Bagnigge Wells were inundated ; in the 
 gardens of the latter place the water was four feet 
 deep ; in Clerkenwell many thousand pounds 1 worth of 
 damage was done. In 1809 a sudden thaw produced a 
 flood, and the whole space between St. Pancras and 
 Pentonville Hill was soon under water, and for several 
 days people received their provisions in at their windows. 
 In 1846 a furious thunderstorm caused the Fleet Ditch 
 to blow up. The rush from the drain at the north 
 arch of Blackfriars Bridge drove a steamer against one 
 of the piers and damaged it. The water penetrated 
 into basements and cellars, and one draper had i?3,000 
 worth of goods ruined. From Acton Place, Bag- 
 nigge Wells Road, to King's Cross, the roads were 
 impassable. In 1855 the Fleet, as one of the metro- 
 politan main sewers, became vested in the then newly- 
 established Metropolitan Board of Works. Shortly 
 
 ° Wherever there are such brooks the same phenomenon 
 appears. Visitors to Nice may have witnessed the sudden rise 
 of the Paillon, and the Birsig at Basle, usually a fine thread of 
 water, has repeatedly risen five or six feet high in the market- 
 place of that town.
 
 238 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 after the Metropolitan Railway was planned, and in 
 1860 the work was commenced. One of the greatest 
 initial difficulties the engineers of that enterprise had 
 to contend with was the irruption of the Fleet Ditch 
 into their works ; the Fleet gave, as does the last flare 
 of an expiring candle, its ' last kick, 1 made a final effort 
 to assert itself. The ditch, under which the railway 
 had to pass two or three times, suddenly though not 
 unexpectedly filled the tunnel with its dark foetid 
 liquid, which carried all before it; scaffoldings con- 
 structed of the stoutest timbers and solid stone and 
 brick walls and piers. But the Metropolitan Board of 
 Works and the railway company, by gigantic and 
 skilfully-conducted efforts, succeeded in forming an 
 outlet for the flood into the Thames ; the damage was 
 made good, and the work was successfully carried out. 
 
 Here we take our leave of the Fleet, and proceeding 
 westward, find nothing to arrest our steps till we come 
 to a spot which once went by the name of the Strand 
 Bridge ; not Waterloo Bridge, which originally was so 
 called, but a ' fair bridge," as Stow calls it, erected 
 many hundred years ago over a brook which crossed 
 the Strand opposite to the present Strand Lane, and 
 descended from the ponds in Ficketfs Fields, part of 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields, now all built over. This bridge 
 probably disappeared about the year 1550, when an 
 Act was passed for paving the streets east and west of 
 Temple Bar, and ' Strand Bridge ' is specially mentioned 
 in the Act ; the paving of the Strand seems to have 
 done away with the brook and the bridge over it. The 
 name of Strand Bridge was also given to the landing- 
 stage at the bottom of Strand Lane, which descends in
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 239 
 
 a tortuous line from the Strand down to the Thames. 
 In this lane there is at the present day the old Roman 
 bath, which, it is supposed, is supplied from the well 
 which gave its name to Holywell Street, and which 
 supply never fails. 
 
 There are no written records or other traces of any 
 brook descending from the northern heights through 
 London west of the Strand, till we come to the Tyburn. 
 
 This brook, like the Fleet, took its rise near Hamp- 
 stead, but turning westward, and receiving several 
 tributary streamlets, it ran due south through the 
 Regent's Park, where it was joined by another affluent 
 from the site of the present Zoological Gardens, from 
 which point it turned to the west and crossed the 
 Marylebone Road opposite Gloucester Terrace, and 
 after running parallel with it for a short distance it 
 took a sharp turn to the east, following the hollow 
 in which the present Marylebone Lane stands, the 
 windings of which indicate the course of the brook. 
 On reaching the southern end of High Street, it again 
 turned to the south, crossed Oxford Street, ran down 
 part of South Molton Street, turned west again to the 
 south of Berkeley Square ; thence it flowed through the 
 narrow passage between the gardens of Lansdowne 
 House and Devonshire House, whose hollow sound 
 seems to indicate the existence of the watercourse 
 below. It next crossed Piccadilly, ran due south 
 through the Green Park, passed under Buckingham 
 Palace, directly after which it divided into three 
 branches, one of which ran through the ornamental 
 water in St. James's Park, whence it fell into the 
 Thames : the middle branch ran into the ancient Abbev
 
 240 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 at Westminster, where it turned the mills the monks 
 had erected there. But from old maps it appears that 
 this arm of the Tyburn, at a point a little north-west 
 of the Abbey, threw out a branch which in a northerly 
 course rejoined the park, and then in a curved line to 
 the east reached the Thames at a point not far from 
 Westminster Bridge, and to the north-east of it. The 
 spot where this branch touched St. James's Park was 
 close to Storey's Gate. Now last year (1898) when the 
 ground was being excavated for the foundations of the 
 new Institute of Mechanical Engineers, the workmen 
 came upon the piles and brickwork of an ancient wharf. 
 The structure was wonderfully well preserved ; it had 
 evidently been well constructed, probably by the monks, 
 and may have been for the accommodation of the 
 fishermen bringing their goods to the monastery. But 
 at present, and until further information is obtained, if 
 ever it is obtained, we can only form conjectures as to 
 the purposes of the wharf; but its discovery on that 
 spot is curiously illustrative of the history which still 
 lies hidden under our streets. 
 
 We have yet to mention the third branch of the 
 Tyburn, which started south of Buckingham Palace. 
 It ran in a southerly direction across Victoria Street, 
 for a short distance skirted the Vauxhall Bridge Road, 
 then crossed it and ran through the marshy grounds 
 then existing down to the Thames a little to the west 
 of Vauxhall Bridge. 
 
 Such was the course of the Tyburn. Of the bridges 
 that once must have crossed it not a vestige remains : 
 but we have the record of one which was at the spot 
 which is now Stratford Place, and where the Lord
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 241 
 
 Mayor's Banqueting-house stood, to which he resorted 
 when he, the Aldermen, and other distinguished citizens 
 went to inspect the head conduits from which the City 
 conduits were supplied, on which occasions they com- 
 bined pleasure with business, hunting the hare before 
 and the fox after dinner. The Tyburn must at one 
 time have been a stream of considerable size ; in the 
 year 1238 it was so copious as to furnish nine conduits 
 for supplying the City with water. It had rows of 
 elms growing on its banks, and as it generally, but 
 erroneously, is supposed to have flowed past the southern 
 corner of the Edgware Road, the name of Elm Place 
 was given to a street (now pulled down) west of 
 Connaught Place. How this error arose we shall show 
 when speaking of the West Bourne. On the Tyburn 
 stood the church of St. Mary la bonne ; by the vulgar 
 omission of letters * burn , became ' bone, 1 hence Mary- 
 lebone. The Tyburn, like the other brooks already 
 discussed, is now a mere sewer. 
 
 Proceeding still further west, we come to the West- 
 bourne, which, like the other brooks, rose in the 
 northern heights above London. Around Jack Straw's 
 Castle at Hampstead various rills sprang from the 
 ground, which, forming a united stream a little north 
 of the Finchley Road, that stream, flowing west towards 
 the spot known as West End, continued its western 
 course till it reached Maygrove Road ; it crossed that 
 road, and taking a sudden turn south, it ran through 
 Kilburn down to Belsize Road, south of which a small 
 lake was formed, by its confluence there with a con- 
 siderable tributary in the form of a two-pronged fork 
 and its handle, coming from the lower southern heights 
 
 16
 
 242 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 of Hampstead. From the lake the Westbourne flowed 
 in a westerly course, and near Cambridge Road re- 
 ceived another affluent from the high ground where 
 Paddington Cemetery now stands ; still running west 
 at Chippenham Road, its volume was further increased 
 by the reception of a stream coming from the neigh- 
 bourhood of Brondesbury, and from this point it ran 
 due south, but with many windings, through Paddington, 
 and across the Uxbridge Road, through part of Ken- 
 sington Gardens, through the Serpentine in Hyde Park 
 and across the Knightsbridge Road, and what was then 
 called the Five Fields, a miserable swamp, and formed 
 the eastern boundary of Chelsea till it discharged itself 
 into the Thames, west of Chelsea Bridge, but divided 
 into a considerable number of small streams. 
 
 Such was its course, and from its description we see 
 that it was no insignificant stream, and may assume that 
 the first settlers in those northern parts of London must 
 be looked for on its banks. Like the Fleet, it had various 
 names in different localities ; thus at Kilburn it was 
 known as the Keele Bourne, Coldbourne, and Kilbourne ; 
 at Bayswater it was called the Bayswater Rivulet ; the 
 name of Bayswater itself is supposed to be derived from 
 Baynard, who built Baynard Castle on the Thames, 
 and also possessed lands at Bayswater. At the end of 
 the fourteenth century it was called Baynard's Watering- 
 place, which in time was shortened to its present 
 appellation. 
 
 The bridge which gave Knightsbridge its name was 
 a stone bridge ; by whom or when erected is not on 
 record, but probably Edward the Confessor, who 
 conferred the land about here on the Abbots of West-
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 243 
 
 minster, also built the bridge for their accommodation. 
 The road was the only way to London from the west, 
 and the stream was broad and rapid. The bridge was 
 situated in front of the present entrance into the Park 
 by Albert Gate, and part of it still remains underground, 
 while the other portion was removed for the Albert 
 Gate improvements. In the churchwardens 1 accounts 
 of St. Margaret's, Westminster, are the following entries 
 regarding- the bridge : 
 
 1630. Item, received of John Fennell and Ralph £ s. d. 
 
 Atkinson, collectors of the escheat, for repair 
 
 of Brentford Bridge and Knightsbridge . 23 6 4 
 
 1631. Item, paid towards the repairs of Brentford 
 
 Bridge and of Knightsbridge, etc. . . 24 7 10 
 
 The Westbourne was occasionally a source of in- 
 convenience and even danger to the inhabitants of 
 Knightsbridge. After heavy rains or in sudden thaws 
 it overflowed. On September 1, 1768, it did so, and 
 did great damage, almost undermining some of the 
 houses ; and in January, 1809, it overflowed again, and 
 covered the neighbouring fields so deeply that they 
 resembled a lake, and passengers were for several days 
 rowed from Chelsea to Westminster by Thames boatmen. 
 
 On the site now covered by St. George's Row, Pimlico, 
 there stood in the middle of the last century a house of 
 entertainment known as 'Jenny's Whim*' A long wooden 
 bridge over one of the many arms of the Westbourne 
 led up to the house. The present Ebury Bridge over 
 the Grosvenor Canal, which this river-branch has become, 
 occupies the site of this old bridge. ' Jenny's Whim ' 
 had trim gardens, alcoves, ponds, and facilities for duck- 
 
 16—2
 
 244 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 hunting ; in the gardens were recesses, where, by tread- 
 ing on a spring, up started different figures, some ugly 
 enough to frighten people, a harlequin, a Mother Shipton, 
 or some terrible animal. Horace Walpole occasionally 
 alludes to 'Jenny's Whim''; in one of his letters to 
 Montagu, he says : ' Here (at Vauxhall) we picked up 
 Lord Granby, arrived very drunk from Jenny's Whim.' 
 Towards the beginning of this century ' Jenny's Whim ' 
 began to decline ; at last it sank down to the condition 
 of a beershop, and in 1804 it was finally closed. The 
 origin of the name is doubtful. Davis, the historian of 
 Knightsbridge, accepts the account given him by an old 
 inhabitant, that it was so called from its first landlady, 
 who directed the gardens to be laid out in so fantastic a 
 manner as to cause the noun to be added to her own 
 Christian name. Other reports say that the place was 
 established by a celebrated pyrotechnist in the reign of 
 George I.; but that does not account for the name. 
 
 Like other London rivers, the Westbourne in the end 
 became a sewer ; it was gradually covered up ; of the 
 two chief branches by which it reached the Thames, 
 the eastern one became the Grosvenor Canal, and the 
 western the Ranelagh Sewer. The canal was crossed by 
 several other bridges, Stone Bridge being one of them. 
 
 We stated above that the Westbourne formed the 
 western boundary of Chelsea ; its eastern boundary was 
 also a river, or rather rivulet, which it appears never 
 even had a name, though in one old map I find it called 
 Bridge Creek. It rose in Wormwood Scrubs, skirted 
 the West London and Westminster Cemetery, and 
 entered the Thames west of Battersea Bridge, where, in 
 fact, there is still a creek going some distance inland.
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 245 
 
 The rest of the stream has been absorbed by the West 
 Kensington Railway. No vestige of it remains, and it 
 has no history. 
 
 Brook Green took its name from a brook which once 
 rose near Shepherd's Bush, but it has no records. 
 
 The next river we should come to, if we pursued our 
 journey westward, would be the Brent; but as that is 
 still existing- — how Ions; will it continue to do so ? — it 
 does not enter into the scope of our investigations. 
 
 Having now given an account of all the extinct brooks 
 north of the Thames, we will cross that river and see 
 what watercourses formerly existed on the Surrey side. 
 
 The southern banks of the Thames, being low and 
 flat, originally were a swamp, continually overflowed by 
 the river — Lambeth Marsh commemorates that condition 
 of the locality. Down to Deptford, Peckham, Camber- 
 well, Stock well, Brixton, and Clapham did the flood 
 extend. But by the gradual damming up of the southern 
 bank of the Thames, the erection of buildings on the 
 Surrey side, and the draining of the soil, the latter was 
 gradually laid dry, and the numerous rivulets which 
 meandered through the marsh were reduced to three 
 between the still-existing rivers — namely, the Ravens- 
 court to the east, and the Wandle to the west. The 
 first brook, again going from east to west, is the 
 Neckinger, which rose at the foot of Denmark Hill and 
 adjacent parts, and, after passing in two streams under 
 the Old Kent Road, united north of it, and reached the 
 Thames at St. Saviour's Dock, which, in fact, is the 
 enlarged mouth of the old river. But according to 
 some old maps we have consulted, it had a branch 
 running in a more easterly direction, and entering the
 
 246 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Thames at a point near the present Commercial Docks 
 Pier. But of this latter branch no trace remains, whilst 
 the northerly course to the Thames is indicated by 
 various roads, such as the Grange and the Neckinger 
 Roads. The brook ran past Bermondsey Abbey, up to 
 the gates of which it was navigable from the Thames. 
 The Grange Road took its name from a farm known 
 as the Grange, and here the Neckinger was spanned by 
 a bridge. When Bermondsey Abbey was destroyed, a 
 number of tanneries were established on the site, which 
 took their water from the Neckinger, in connection with 
 which a number of tidal ditches, to admit water from 
 the Thames, were cut in various directions. Near the 
 Upper Grange Road stood a windmill, and at the mouth 
 of the Neckinger a water-mill, the owner of which shut 
 off the tide when it suited his purpose, which led to 
 frequent disputes between him and the tanners. But 
 in time the latter sank artesian wells, the mill was driven 
 by steam-power, and the water of the Neckinger being 
 no longer required for manufacturing purposes, the river 
 was neglected and finally built over. The Neckinger 
 Mills had been erected in the last century by a company 
 to manufacture paper from straw ; but, this enterprise 
 failing, the premises passed into the hands of the leather 
 manufacturers. A street to the east of St. Saviour's 
 Dock, and parallel with it, is still known as Mill Street. 
 There was another bridge over the Neckinger where 
 it crossed the Old Kent Road, near the spot where the 
 Albany Road joins the latter road. It was known as 
 Thomas-a- Watering, from St. Thomas, the patron of 
 the dissolved monastery or hospital of that name in 
 South wark. The bridge was the most southern point
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 247 
 
 of the boundary of the Borough of Southwark, and in 
 ancient days the first halting-place out of London on 
 the road to Kent. Chaucer's pilgrims passed it on their 
 wav to the shrine of St. Thomas-a-Becket at Canter- 
 
 J 
 
 bury : 
 
 ' And forth we riden . . . 
 Unto the watering-place of St. Thomas, 
 And then our host began his hors arrest.' 
 
 Deputations of citizens used to go so far to meet 
 royal or other distinguished personages who came to 
 visit London. From the end of the fifteenth century 
 the spot was set apart for executions, and numerous are 
 the records of criminals who were hanged there until 
 about the middle of the last century. 
 
 In 1690 two very handsome Janus heads — i.e., heads 
 with two faces — were discovered near St. Thomas-a- 
 Watering. They were found near two ancient piers of 
 a large gate — Janus was the God of Gates. One was 
 taken up and set up on a gardener's door ; but the 
 other, being embedded in quicksand, from which springs 
 flowed out pretty freely, was left. Dr. Woodward, who 
 founded the Professorship of Geology in the University 
 of Cambridge, afterwards purchased the head which had 
 been saved, and added it to his collection of curiosities. 
 At the beginning of this century there was still a brook 
 running across the Kent Road on the spot mentioned 
 above, with a bridge over it, and the current from the 
 Peckham and Denmark hills was at times so strong as 
 to overflow at least two acres of ground. East of the 
 Mill Street above mentioned there is a spot which has 
 been rendered famous by Dickens in ' Oliver Twist ' — 
 namely, Jacob's Island. As the description he gives of
 
 248 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 it is known to everyone, we need not here repeat it ; it 
 applies, partially only, to the locality now. 
 
 It is, or to speak correctly was, a ' Venice of drains. 1 
 But it was not always so ; in the reign of Henry II. the 
 foul, stagnant ditch, which till recently made an island 
 of this pestilential spot, was a running stream, sup- 
 plied with the waters which were brought down in the 
 Neckinger from the southern hills. On its banks stood 
 the mills of the monks of St. John and St. Mary, 
 dependencies of the Abbey of Bermondsey, which were 
 worked by it. In those days the neighbourhood con- 
 sisted of blooming gardens and verdant meadows. Close 
 to Jacobs Island were Cupid's Gardens, a kind of 
 Ranelagh on a small scale, but still a very pleasant 
 place of public entertainment. Tanneries, and many 
 still more objectionable trades now carried on in the 
 locality, were then undreamt of. 
 
 Many of the horrors of Jacob's Island are now things 
 of the past. The foul ditch, in whose black mud the 
 juveniles used to disport themselves, undeterred by the 
 close proximity of the unsavoury carcasses of dead dogs 
 and cats, is now filled up and turned into a solid road. 
 Many of the tumble-down houses have been pulled 
 down — in fact, the romance of the place is gone. 
 
 Let us proceed westward ; we come to the once impor- 
 tant Eff'ra, which remained a running stream till within 
 the sixties, when it, like others, became a mere sewer. 
 It rose in the high grounds of Norwood, and ran down 
 Croxted Lane, till within the last two or three years a 
 perfectly rural retreat ; at the Half Moon Inn at Heme 
 Hill it received an affluent, which rose between Streatham 
 Hill and Knighfs Hill. Skirting the park of Brockwell
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 249 
 
 Hall, it ran along Water Lane, past the police-station 
 in the Brixton Road. Here it took a sharp turn to the 
 north, and ran parallel to the Brixton Road, access to 
 the houses on the eastern side being gained by little 
 bridges, till it reached St. Mark's Church, where it took 
 a sharp turn to the west. But before reaching that 
 point, a branch of the river, at a spot somewhere between 
 the present Clapham and South Lambeth Roads, in what 
 used formerly to be called Fentimans Fields, turned in 
 a northerly direction towards the South Lambeth Road, 
 flowing through what was then Caroon Park, afterwards 
 the Lawn Estate, a portion of which has recently become 
 Vauxhall Park. The river ran along the lane leading 
 by the side of the present Vauxhall Park to the Crown 
 AVorks of Messrs. Higgs and Hill, at the corner of the 
 lane turning almost at right angles up the South Lambeth 
 Road towards Vauxhall Cross. As in the Brixton Road, 
 little bridges here gave access to the houses on the 
 eastern side of the South Lambeth Road. According 
 to an old map, this branch of the Efrra sent off another 
 across the South Lambeth Road and a Mr. Freeman's 
 land, lying between it and the Kingston Highway, as 
 the Wandsworth Road was then called, and thus reached 
 the Thames. The main stream, which we left at 
 St. Mark's Church, continued its course along the south 
 side of the Oval, sending off in a north-westerly direc- 
 tion a branch which fell into a circular basin, probably 
 on the spot where the great gas-holders now stand in 
 Upper Kennington Lane. It then turned towards 
 Vauxhall, where it passed under a bridge, called Cox's 
 Bridge, and fell into the Thames a little northward of 
 Vauxhall Bridge. 
 
 \
 
 250 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 At Belair, one of the show-houses of Dulwich, a 
 branch of the Effra ran through the grounds ; the Effra 
 itself also traversed the Springfield Estate near Heme 
 Hill, now given up to the builders. The river there 
 appears to have been much wider than elsewhere, and 
 in depth about nine feet, with banks shaded by old trees. 
 The present writer remembers the Effra as a river, and 
 was told by a gardener, now deceased, who had worked 
 on the Caroon Estate, which extended from the present 
 Dorset Road to the Oval, for more than fifty years, that 
 he had often seen the Effra along Lawn Lane assume 
 the proportions of a river, wide and deep enough to 
 bear large barges, which statement gives countenance 
 to the tradition that Queen Elizabeth frequently in her 
 barge visited Sir Noel Caroon, the Dutch Ambassador, 
 who lived at Caroon House, on the site of which stand 
 the mansion and factory of Mark Beaufoy, Esq., who is 
 also the owner of the Belair House above-mentioned. 
 Dr. Montgomery, sometime Vicar of St. Mark's, and 
 now Bishop of Tasmania, in his ' History of Kennington," 
 says that, in 1753, the whole space occupied by the 
 Oval and a number of streets was open meadow through 
 which the Effra meandered at will. It was a sparkling 
 river running over a bright gravelly bottom, and sup- 
 plied fresh water to the neighbourhood. A bridge 
 crossed the Effra at St. Mark's, and was called Merton 
 Bridge, from its formerly having been repaired by the 
 Canons of Merton Abbey, who had lands for that 
 purpose. Curiously enough, the author from whom we 
 take this, Thomas Allen, in his ' History of Lambeth, 1 
 published in 1827, when the Effra was yet a running 
 stream, refers to it only on the above occasion, when he
 
 THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON 251 
 
 calls it a ' small stream." 1 ' Et cest ainsi qu'on ecrit 
 rhistoire.'' 
 
 One more ' lost river 1 remains on our list, the Falcon 
 Brook, which, rising on the south side of Balham Hill, 
 flowed almost due north between Clapham and Wands- 
 worth Commons to Battersea Rise, which it crossed, 
 after which it turned sharply to the west, ran along 
 Lavender Road, crossed the York Road, and discharged 
 itself into the Thames through Battersea Creek, which 
 is all that now remains of the river, except the under- 
 ground sewer which represents its former course. Once 
 many pleasant villas stood on its banks ; at the present 
 day the entire valley through which it flowed is covered 
 by one of the densest masses of dingy streets to be seen 
 anywhere near London. Nothing remains to recall even 
 its name, except the Falcon Road, and a newly-erected 
 public-house which has supplanted the original Falcon, 
 a somewhat rustic building, which, however, harmonized 
 well with the then surroundings, which were of a per- 
 fectly rural aspect, such as, looking at the present scene, 
 we can scarcely realize. But it can be seen in a rare 
 print of the river, engraved by S. Rawle, after an original 
 drawing by J. Nixon. He was an artist, who, passing 
 the Falcon, which was then kept by a man named Robert 
 Death, saw a number of undertaker's men reo-aling 
 themselves after a funeral on the open space in front of 
 the inn. They were not only eating and drinking and 
 smoking, but indulging in various antics, endeavouring 
 to make the maids of the inn join in their hilarity. 
 This scene, and the queer coincidence of the landlord's 
 strange name, induced Nixon to make a sketch of it, 
 which was engraved and published in 1802, the following
 
 252 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 lines from Blair's poem 'The Grave 1 being added to 
 the print : 
 
 ' But see the well-plumed hearse comes nodding on, 
 Stately and slow, and properly attended 
 By the whole sable tribe, that painful watch 
 The sick man's door, and live upon the dead, 
 By letting out their persons by the hour 
 To mimic sorrow, when the heart's not sad.' 
 
 A cantata was also published about the same time, 
 supposed to be sung by undertakers' 1 merry men, to 
 celebrate the pleasure and benefit of burying a nabob, 
 and drink to their 
 
 ' . . . next merry meeting and quackery's increase !' 
 
 Here we close our journey and our records at a funeral. 
 Well, the finale is not inappropriate. Have we not been 
 attending the funerals of so many gay and bright and 
 sparkling, joyfully leaping and rushing, and sometimes 
 roaring, brooks and rivers, descending from the sunny 
 hillsides, finally to be buried in dark and noisome 
 sewers ? And the lost river, alas ! is but too often the 
 type of the lost life. But moralizing is not in our line 
 — we think it sad waste of time ; it is no better than 
 doctors' prescriptions. We would rather remind the 
 reader, who in these notes may miss elegance of style 
 and picturesqueness of description, that such qualities 
 were incompatible with the compactness of details the 
 space at our command imposed upon us. Besides, a 
 more florid style must borrow something from imagina- 
 tion ; but here we had only to deal with facts, and if 
 the reader finds as much pleasure in studying as we did 
 in collecting them, though the labour was great, he will 
 not regret the time bestowed on their perusal.
 
 XVI. 
 
 ROGUES ASSORTED. 
 
 ON Horwood's Map of London, dated 1799, just one 
 hundred years ago, there is shown a road, starting 
 from Blue Anchor Lane, Bermondsey, at almost 
 a right angle to the latter, and running in an easterly 
 direction, but with a considerable curve in it, and this 
 road is called Rogues - ' Lane. It is more than half a 
 mile long, perfectly solitary, not a house on or near it, 
 the land around it being a wild waste, and as deserted 
 as a lonely moor in the recesses of Wales or Cornwall. 
 How did this lane acquire its name ? Did the in- 
 habitants of the East End of London construct it as a 
 kind of sewer for carrying off into the outlying wilder- 
 ness the rogues who infested their streets ? or did the 
 rogues of that day, openly or tacitly acknowledging 
 themselves to be such, choose the lane as a kind of 
 rendezvous, as a sort of peripatetic exchange for the 
 transaction of their rascally schemes ? The East End 
 of London seems, indeed, in those days, to have been 
 a favourite resort of rogues — Stepney had its Rogues 1 
 Well — now they prefer the West End. But the rogues 
 of old were somewhat different from the modern speci-
 
 254 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 mens ; they were chiefly thieves, footpads, burglars, 
 sneaks, low cheats, sham cripples, and such mean fry — 
 modern civilization, with its panacea of education, had 
 not yet asserted itself. Culture, which licks all the 
 world into shape, has even reached the rogues ; the 
 petty scoundrels of old are replaced by the magnificent 
 swindlers of the present day, who deal not in paltry 
 pence, but in weighty sovereigns — who do not cheat a 
 silly countryman out of the few shillings his purse may 
 contain, but wheedle trusting spinsters and mad and 
 greedy speculators out of thousands of pounds. The 
 modern rogue is either a promoter of bogus companies, 
 or a director who issues bogus shares, an embezzling 
 bank-manager or trustee, or a man who lives far bevond 
 his means, even when he knows that all his available 
 assets are gone in betting, racing, and Stock Exchange 
 speculation, or a fraudulent bankrupt. And there is 
 no slitting of noses, no whipping, not even exposure on 
 the pillory ominously looming at the end of their career ; 
 when the game is up, no more cash to be obtained by 
 loans, and the infuriated creditors become troublesome, 
 he attempts one more big haul, the proceeds of which, 
 if successful, he prudently settles on his wife, and then 
 the unfortunate victim of circumstances, over which, as 
 he pathetically says, he had no control, leisurely takes 
 a walk to Carey Street, has a comfortable wash and 
 brush up in the financial lavatory which hospitably 
 stands open there, and he comes out, thoroughly white- 
 washed and rid of all importunate claims upon him, 
 after which he hires a fine mansion in Belgravia, fares 
 sumptuously every day, and bespatters with the mud of 
 his chariot-wheels the deluded shareholders and trades-
 
 ROGUES ASSORTED 255 
 
 people whom his wily schemes have ruined. It is all, 
 or nearly all, the outcome of modern education, which, 
 by ramming notions totally unsuited to the minds and 
 characters under tuition into juvenile minds, bears such 
 bitter fruit. But educational cranks have it all their 
 own way now, though it is wrong to call them ' educa- 
 tional '; they fancy that education means ' cramming, 1 
 never mind whether the food is assimilated with the 
 body, whilst education really means the very opposite — 
 namely, a drawing out, not a putting in : a drawing 
 out of the hidden properties of mind and character. 
 But let us come to our theme — the London rogues of 
 old ; their evil deeds were done long ago, and will there- 
 fore not rile as does the rascality we see around us now. 
 We will take the beggars first : not all beggars are 
 rogues, but the majority are. They fared variously 
 under various Kings ; some protected, some persecuted 
 them. Strange it is that, under the juvenile, gentle 
 Edward VI., one of the most severe laws was passed 
 against them : a servant absenting himself for three 
 days or more from his work was to be, on his re-capture, 
 marked with a hot iron with the letter V (vagabond), 
 and be his master's slave for two years, and fed on bread 
 and water ; should he run away again, he was, on being 
 caught, to be marked on his forehead or cheek with a 
 hot iron with the letter S (slave), and be his master's 
 slave for life ; for a third escape the punishment was 
 death. This diabolical law was repealed two years after. 
 Under Elizabeth sturdy beggars were whipped till the 
 blood came. James I. rather sympathized with them ; 
 he, like them, always was in need of ' siller.' Hence the 
 country, and especially London, swarmed with rogues
 
 256 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 of every description, known by various cant terms, such 
 as Rufflers, Upright Men, Hookers, Rogues, Pallyards, 
 Abraham Men, Traters, Freshwater Mariners or Whip- 
 jacks, Dommerars, Swadders, Bawdy Baskets, Doxies, 
 with many other names of the same slang category ; 
 and, of course, the object of all the members of these 
 various associations was to cheat the unwary and 
 charitable. In course of time some of these terms went 
 out of use — the cant of rogues is always on the move — 
 but new ones took their places ; and, in spite of all the 
 laws passed against them, beggars continued to flourish. 
 In 1728 a spirited presentment to the Court of King's 
 Bench was made by the Grand Jury of Middlesex against 
 the unusual swarms of sturdy and clamorous beggars, 
 as well as the many frightful objects exposed in the 
 streets ; and, the nuisance not abating, a similar pre- 
 sentment was made in 1741, with the same unsatisfactory 
 result. And as long as there are people who will not, 
 and people who cannot, work, and as long as there are 
 thoughtless people who will indiscriminately give alms, 
 beggars will infest our streets. Referring to such, Sir 
 Richard Phillips, in his ' Morning's Walk from London 
 to Kew 1 (1820), tells us that the passage from Charing 
 Cross to St. James's Park through Spring Gardens was 
 a favourite haunt of beggars. Says he : ' A blind woman 
 was brought to her post by a little boy, who, carelessly 
 leading her against the step of a door, she gave him a 
 smart box on the ear, and exclaimed, " Damn you, you 
 rascal ! can't you mind what you are about ?" and then, 
 leaning her back against the wall, in the same breath 
 she began to chaunt a hymn.' Even now you may hear 
 a psalm-singing woman, who has hired two or three
 
 ROGUES ASSORTED 257 
 
 children to render the show more effective, when these 
 get weary, growl, in a hoarse whisper between her 
 Hallelujahs, ' Sing out, ye devils f The Rookery in 
 St. Giles's, demolished to make room for New Oxford 
 Street, was the very paradise of beggars. They there 
 held an annual carnival, to which Major Hanger on 
 one occasion accompanied George IV., when still Prince 
 of Wales. The chairman, addressing the company, and 
 pointing to the Prince, said : ' I call upon that "ere 
 gemman with a shirt for a song. 1 The Prince got 
 excused on his friend agreeing to sing for him, who 
 then sang a ballad called ' The Beggar's Wedding ; or, 
 the Jovial Crew,* 1 with great applause. The beggars 
 drank his health, and he and the Prince soon after 
 managed to make good their retreat. 
 
 Among the most infamous rogues of the last century 
 were men of the Jonathan Wild stamp — agents provo- 
 cateurs, as we should now style them — who not only 
 led people into crime, but shared the proceeds of it 
 with the felons ; nay, worse, they got persons who were 
 quite innocent convicted, by perjured witnesses, of crimes 
 which had never been committed. It was practices like 
 these which at last brought Jonathan Wild himself to 
 the scaffold. 
 
 The tricks of rogues change their names, but remain 
 the same ; what is now known as the ' confidence trick, 1 
 which, though it has been exposed in police-courts and 
 reported in the press thousands of times, even in our 
 day finds ready victims, was formerly called 'coney- 
 catching," 1 and there were generally three confederates — 
 the Setter, the Verser, and the Barnacle. The Setter, 
 strolling along the Strand, Fleet Street, or Hoi born, on 
 
 17
 
 258 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 the look-out for flats, on espying a coney, whom his 
 dress and general appearance pronounced to be a man 
 from the country, would make up to him, and, as a rule, 
 quickly find out what county he came from, his name, 
 and other particulars. If he could not induce him to 
 have a drink with him, he would manage to convey to 
 his confederate, the Verser, close by, the information 
 gained, whereupon the Verser would suddenly come upon 
 the countryman, salute him by his name, and ask after 
 friends in the country. He proclaimed himself the near 
 kinsman of some neighbour of the coney, and asserted 
 to have been in the latter's house several times. The 
 countryman, though he could not remember these visits, 
 was yet taken unawares, and readily accepted the invita- 
 tion to have a drink. They then induced him to play 
 at cards, and soon left him as bare of money as an ape 
 is of a tail, for in those days coney-catching was practised 
 by the assistance of a pack of cards. But if all these 
 lures were wasted on the coney, the Setter or Verser would 
 drop a shilling in the street, so that the coney must see 
 it fall, when he would naturally pick it up, whereupon 
 one of the confederates would cry out, ' Half-part f and 
 claim half the find. The countryman would readily 
 agree to exchange the money, but the Setter or Verser 
 would say, ' Nay, friend ; it is unlucky to keep found 
 money, 1 and the farce would end in the money being 
 spent in drink at a tavern ; then cards would be called 
 for, and the coney induced to take an interest in them 
 by being initiated into a new game called ' mum-chance, -1 
 at which he was allowed to win money. While so 
 engaged, the door would be opened by a stranger, the 
 Barnacle, who, on seeing the players, would say, ' Excuse
 
 ROGUES ASSORTED 250 
 
 me, gentlemen : 1 thought a friend of mine was here. 1 
 The stranger would be invited to have a glass of wine, 
 and join in the game, which he would readily do, ' to 
 oblige the company'; and the end would be that the 
 coney, after having been allowed to win for some time, 
 would gradually begin to lose his money, then his watch, 
 or any other valuables he might have about him, and 
 finally be left with no property but the clothes he was 
 standing up in. This, as we have stated, was called 
 ' coney -catching,' or ' coney -catching law? for those 
 rogues possessed a great regard for law ; all their 
 practices went by the name of ' law ' — ' high law ' meant 
 highway robbery ; ' cheating law, 1 playing with false 
 dice ; ' versing law, 1 the passing of bad gold ; ' figging 
 law, 1 the cutting of purses. 
 
 Vagrants and tramps in those days called themselves 
 by the more dignified appellation of 'cursitors 1 ; and 
 the counterfeiter of epilepsy was a ' counterfeit crank ' ; 
 money-dropping and ring-dropping were even then old 
 tricks of cozenage. Those who are acquainted with the 
 modern way of coney-catching, or the confidence trick — 
 and who is not that lives in London ? — will know that the 
 trick is now much simplified, and yields much quicker 
 and more satisfactory results — to the rogues. And 
 though, as we mentioned above, the trick has been 
 exposed over and over again, new fools are found every 
 day to go into the trap. In fact, all the old rogueries 
 flourish at the present time, besides a few new ones 
 invented in this century. The holders of sham auctions ; 
 the horse-makers, who, by means of drugs and other 
 devices, make old horses look as good as new till they 
 are sold ; the free foresters, who during the night rob 
 
 17—2
 
 260 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 suburban gardens of roots and flowers, and sell them 
 next day off their barrows, all 'a-growing and a-blowing 1 ; 
 the dog stealers ; the beer and spirit doctors, who 
 double and treble Master Bung's stock by vile adultera- 
 tion ; the sellers of established businesses, which never 
 had any actual existence — all these are types of vener- 
 able institutions which survive to this day, and not only 
 survive, but flourish in everlasting youth. The racing, 
 betting and Stock Exchange swindles perform their 
 eternal merry-go-round, as they did when first started 
 several centuries ago, and the home employment decep- 
 tion still draws the last shillings from the purses of 
 poor people. And in most cases, unfortunately, the 
 law is powerless to reach the rogues ; our foolish 
 humanitarianism, the interests of trade, the freedom of 
 the subject to contract, the technicalities and quibbles 
 of legislative acts, and the uncertainty as to their 
 meaning, are at the bottom of all this failure of justice. 
 We ought to cease prating about the dignity of man — 
 as if there were any dignity in such paltry rogues ! — 
 and return, perhaps in a modified form, to the drastic 
 remedies of our forefathers, who retaliated on those 
 who made their neighbour suffer in health or in purse 
 by inflicting on them bodily pain and personal disgrace, 
 and not merely fining them, as is the custom with us. 
 In the 'Memorials of London and London Life, 1 ex- 
 tracted from the City Archives, and extending from the 
 years 1272 to 1419, will be found between twenty and 
 thirty condemnations to the pillory, the stocks, im- 
 prisonment, and being drawn through the city on a 
 hurdle, for deficiency of weight in bread, coals, etc., for 
 false measure, for enhancing the price of wheat, for
 
 ROGUES ASSORTED 261 
 
 swindling, such as selling brass rings and chains for 
 gold, for selling false bowstrings, putrid meat, fowls and 
 fish, and in these latter cases the articles condemned 
 were burnt under the noses of the culprits, as they stood 
 in the pillory. Even women had to undergo the 
 punishment of the pillory, one specially constructed for 
 them being: used on such occasions ; it was called the 
 thewe. 
 
 At the commencement we referred to a Rogues 1 Lane 
 at Bermondsey, but there was another lane of that 
 name in the very centre of London, Shire Lane, which 
 was close to Temple Bar, and pulled down when room 
 had to be made for the new Law Courts. The Kit-Kat 
 Club held its meetings in that lane ; but in spite of the 
 dukes and lords frequenting that club, the lane never 
 was considered respectable, and in the days of James I- 
 was known as Rogues' Lane, it being then the resort of 
 persons coming under that denomination. In the Bible 
 public-house — a printers 1 house of call — there was a 
 room with a trap in it, by which Jack Sheppard, who 
 used the house, could drop into a subterranean passage 
 which led to Bell Yard. The Angel and Crown, 
 another public-house in the same lane, was the scene of 
 the murder of a Mr. Quarrington, for which Thomas 
 Carr and Elizabeth Adams were hanged at Tyburn. 
 One night a man was robbed, thrown downstairs and 
 killed in one of the dens of Rogues 1 Lane. Nos. 13 
 and 14 were bad houses; Nos. 9, 10 and 11, where 
 thieves used to meet, was known as ' Cadgers 1 Hall ' ; 
 Nos. 1, 2 and 3 were houses of ill-fame, and there existed 
 a communication with the house No. 242, Strand, 
 through which the thieves used to escape after ill-
 
 262 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 treating their victims. In Ship Yard, close to Shire 
 Lane, there stood a block of houses which were let out 
 to vagrants, thieves, sharpers, smashers and other dis- 
 reputable characters. Throughout the vaults of this 
 rookery there existed a continuous passage, so that easy 
 access could be obtained from one to the other, facilitating 
 escape or concealment in the case of pursuit. The end 
 house of this block was selected for the manufacture of 
 bad coin, and was known as the ' Smashing Lumber. 1 
 Every room had its secret trap or panel, and from the 
 upper story, which was the workshop, there was a draft 
 connected with the cellar, to which the base coin could 
 be lowered in case of surprise. 
 
 It is astonishing, and shows us the hollowness of the 
 pretence to civilization and decency set up on behalf of 
 the velvet-dressed, lace and gold-bedizened aristocrats 
 of those days, that persons, not only of respectability, 
 but of rank and title, could live in such close quarters 
 with thieves and vagabonds of the lowest grade. Yet, 
 as already mentioned, the Kit-Kats had their club in 
 Shire Lane; in 1603 there was living in it Sir Arthur 
 Atie, in early life secretary to the Earl of Leicester; 
 Elias Ashmole also inhabited the lane, so did Hoole, 
 the translator of Tasso, and James Perry, the editor 
 of the Morning Chronicle, who died worth £1 30,000. 
 
 London in the last century, and even in this, was full 
 of retreats for criminals. The demolition of West 
 Street, formerly Chick Lane, and of Field Lane, so 
 recent as to be still fresh in the memory of living 
 persons, brought many of them to light. The Dog, a 
 low public-house in Drury Lane, was known as the 
 ' Robbers 1 Den 1 ; in fact, the whole street had a bad
 
 ROGUES ASSORTED 263 
 
 reputation, and is even now a disgrace to London. But 
 beside these private retreats, the rogues and villains of 
 the past had their public refuges, where even the officers 
 of the law had to leave them unmolested — the sanctuaries 
 at Westminster, St. John of Jerusalem, St. MartinVle- 
 Grand, Whitefriars and the Mint, and Montague Close 
 in Southwark, some of which retained their privileges 
 to the middle of the last century. The name Sanctuary, 
 still given to a certain spot near Westminster Abbey, 
 commemorates the actual sanctuary formerly existing in 
 that locality, and the narrow street called Thieving 
 Lane, now demolished, received that name because 
 thieves, on their way to Gate House Prison, were taken 
 through it, to prevent their escape into the sanctuary. 
 
 It is said that when rogues fall out honest men come 
 to their own again. Yes, when their 'own' is still corae- 
 atable, but as a rule it is not ; rogues seldom keep what 
 they gain by trickery — lightly earned, lightly spent is 
 the rule with them. Rogues are as great fools as are 
 the fools they cheat, and the fools at heart are rogues 
 too, without the wit of the rogues. The fool who is 
 done out of his money or other property by trusting a 
 perfect stranger is so done because he fancies himself 
 more clever than the cheat, and hopes to beat him. 
 The victim scarcely deserves any pity, for it is only a 
 case of diamond cut diamond. And unfortunately, as 
 we intimated above, honest men do not come to their 
 own again, when rogues fall out, or are detected. The 
 rogue who has cheated a commercial firm out of goods 
 to the value of thousands of pounds, which he imme- 
 diately pawns for half they are worth, rushes off to 
 a turf tipster or bookie, and though his betting turns
 
 264 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 out lucky, he cannot get his winnings from the said 
 bookie, who resists payment on the plea that the trans- 
 action was illegal. The rogues fall out, a lawsuit is the 
 result, the speculator loses his case, but the firm do not 
 get their money ; that is irretrievably gone. Plenty of 
 such cases happened hundreds of years ago, and continue 
 to happen to the present day, and there are various 
 resorts in the City and West End of London where it 
 might truthfully be written up, Si sceleratos quceris, 
 circumspice !
 
 XVII. 
 BARS AND BARRISTERS. 
 
 THE profession of a barrister is a curious one. 
 Theoretically, he is the champion and protector 
 of right and justice ; but, practically, he often 
 is but the hired advocate of wrong and injustice. It is 
 only when he has attained high distinction at the Bar 
 that he can, like Serjeant Ballantine, be independent 
 enough to say that he will undertake no case of the 
 justice of which he is not fully satisfied. True, counsel 
 is assumed to base his arguments on behalf of his client 
 on the instructions he receives from the solicitor who 
 employs him ; yet he, counsel, having had a legal educa- 
 tion, and practice, too, cannot fail to see the weak 
 points, supposing there are any, in the case before him, 
 and the evidence adduced in examination and cross- 
 examination must very soon satisfy him as to the real 
 merits of his case ; hence we often see counsel throwing 
 up his brief. It is related in Laud's Diary that, when 
 he was standing one day near his unfortunate master, 
 then Prince Charles, the Prince said that, if necessity 
 compelled him to choose any particular profession, he 
 could not be a lawver, ' for,' said he, ' I could neither
 
 266 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 defend a bad cause, nor yield in a good one. 1 By the 
 Roman laws every advocate was required to swear that 
 he would not undertake a cause which he knew to be 
 unjust, and that he would abandon a defence which 
 he should discover to be supported by falsehood and 
 iniquity. This is continued in Holland at this day, 
 and if an advocate brings forward a cause there which 
 appears to the court plainly to be iniquitous, he is 
 condemned in the costs of the suit ; and if, in con- 
 sequence of this, a cause, just in itself, should not be 
 able to find a defender because of some strong 1 and 
 general prejudice concerning it, the court has authority 
 to appoint a counsel. 
 
 The universal opinion that advocates are ready to 
 support injustice for the sake of gain— that they will 
 undertake more work than they can possibly attend to 
 — is of very ancient date. The Lord Keeper Puckering 
 directing attention to the grasping habits which too 
 frequently disgraced the leaders of the Bar, observed : 
 ' I am to exhort you also not to embrace multitude of 
 causes, or to undertake more places of hearing causes, 
 than you are well able to consider of or perform, lest 
 thereby you either disappoint your clients, when their 
 causes be heard, or come unprovided, or depart when 
 their causes be in hearing.' That the administration 
 of justice is much improved in modern days is sufficiently 
 proved by the fact that now no judge would be allowed, 
 as he was in the closing years of the fourteenth century, 
 to give opinions for money to his private clients, although 
 he was forbidden to take gold or silver from any person 
 having ' plea or process hanging before him. 1 
 
 It is, in fact, still a moot point, and, we suppose,
 
 BARS AND BARRISTERS 267 
 
 always will be, what lengths an advoeate may go to, 
 consistently with truth and honour, in pleading the 
 cause of a client whom he knows to be guilty. The 
 conduct of Charles Phillipps, in defending Courvoisier, 
 has always been condemned. Courvoisier did not confess 
 his guilt to his counsel, but admitted to him that he 
 had made away with some plate from Lord William 
 Russell's house immediately after the murder. This 
 was damning evidence, but the communication was made 
 by the prisoner not to admit his guilt, but merely to 
 prepare his counsel to deal with the evidence. But 
 Phillipps made a remark in his speech which the Bar 
 considered as unjustifiable. He said : ' Supposing him 
 to be guilty of the murder, which is known to God 
 Almighty alone, I hope, for the sake of his eternal soul, 
 he is innocent. 1 These words were not only in bad taste, 
 but conveyed a positive falsehood. Counsel's part is to 
 lay before the jury possibilities, and not his own opinion 
 of the prisoner's guilt or innocence ; and a strange 
 feature of the etiquette of the Bar is that if counsel is 
 prepared to throw up his brief because he sees his cause 
 to be bad, yet he is bound, after accepting the retainer, 
 to continue defending the case if his client insists on his 
 doing so. He may then be compelled to go on arguing 
 on behalf of a man whom he knows to be a thorough 
 scoundrel. 
 
 Barristers were first appointed by Edward I. about 
 1291, but there is an earlier mention of professional 
 advocates in England, who were of various ranks, as 
 King's or Queen's Counsel, Serjeants, etc. At more 
 recent dates we read of utter or outer and inner 
 barristers ; these terms appear to have been derived
 
 268 LOxNDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 from local arrangements in the halls of the Inns of 
 Court. In the public meetings held in these halls, the 
 benchers and readers — superior to barristers — occupying 
 the dais, which was separated by a bar, some of the 
 hamsters who had attained a certain standing were 
 called from the body of the hall to the bar — that is, 
 to the first place outside the bar — for the purpose of 
 arguing doubtful questions and cases, whence they prob- 
 ably obtained the name of outer barristers. The course 
 of legal education consisted principally of readings and 
 mootings. The readings were expositions of important 
 statutes. These readings being accompanied by costly 
 entertainments, especially at Lincoln's Inn, their original 
 object was forgotten in the splendour of the tables, 
 for which the benchers were severely reprimanded by 
 Charles I. The readings were eventually suspended, 
 but were revived about 1796. Mootings were questions 
 on doubtful points of law, argued between certain of 
 the benchers and barristers in the hall. There was also 
 another exercise in the Inns of Court, called 'bolting 1 
 — not gastronomically — which was a private arguing of 
 cases by some of the students and barristers. The term 
 was probably derived from 'bolter,'' a sieve, with reference 
 to the sifting of cases. 
 
 As to the fees paid to barristers, how they have 
 altered ! In 1500 the Corporation of Canterbury paid 
 for advice regarding their civic interests 3s. 4d. to each 
 of three Serjeants, and gave the Recorder of London 
 6s. 8d. as a retaining-fee. Five years later Mr. Serjeant 
 Wood received a fee of 10s. from the Goldsmiths' 
 Company. In the sixteenth century it was customary 
 for clients to provide food and drink for their counsel.
 
 BARS AND BARRISTERS 269 
 
 i bill c 
 find 
 
 In a bill of costs in the reign of Edward IV. we 
 
 s. d. 
 For a breakfast at Westminster to our counsel . 1 6 
 To another time for boat hire and breakfast . 1 6 
 
 In like manner the accountant of St. Margaret's, West- 
 minster, entered in the parish books : ' Paid to Roger 
 Fylpott, learned in the law, for his counsel given, 3s. 8d., 
 with 4d. for his dinner." 
 
 In Elizabeth's reign, and during the time of her 
 successors, barristers'' fees showed a tendency to increase. 
 Counsel then received 20s. fees, though 10s. was the usual 
 fee. A ten-shilling piece was then called an 'angel," 1 
 whence arose the witty saying : ' A barrister is like 
 Balaam's ass, only speaking when he sees the angel.' 
 When Francis Bacon was created King's Counsel to 
 James I., an annual salary of i?40 was assigned to him ; 
 but at present the status of a Q.C. is simply an affair of 
 professional precedence, to which no fixed emolument is 
 attached. But Francis Bacon, though he received as 
 his official salary £i0 only, made =£6,000 in his pro- 
 fession ; other King's Counsel earned even larger sums 
 in fees. But the barristers were not all greedy. In the 
 days of Sir Matthew Hale, professional etiquette per- 
 mitted clients and counsel to hold intercourse without 
 the intervention of an attorney. When those who came 
 to Hale for his advice gave him a sovereign, he used to 
 return half, saying his fee was 10s. When appointed 
 arbitrator, he would take no fees, because, as he said, 
 he acted in the capacity of a judge, and a judge should 
 take no money. If he took bad money, as he often did, 
 he would not pass it on again, but kept it by him. At
 
 270 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 last he had a great heap of it, and his house being once 
 entered by burglars, this accumulation of bad money 
 attracted their attention, and they carried it off in 
 preference to other valuables, fancying that this must 
 be the lawyer's hoarded treasure. 
 
 Readers who wish to know in what estimation lawyers 
 were held in the seventeenth century should study the 
 pamphlets and broadsides of the Commonwealth, which 
 show how universal was the belief that wearers of ermine 
 and gentlemen of the long robe would practise any sort 
 of fraud or extortion for the sake of personal advantage. 
 How happy we are to live in this century, when the 
 legal profession is in a state of high purification ! It 
 does, indeed, sometimes surprise an outsider that so 
 many barristers should be necessary to carry through 
 one case — it looks as if they were brought in merely for 
 the benefit of the lawyers ; but, in justice to the pro- 
 fession, let us say that this is not so. Barristers have 
 their special gifts, and a long and involved case brings 
 them all into play to the advantage of the client. One 
 man has unrivalled powers of statement ; another is 
 sound in law ; another excels in cross-examination ; 
 another in reply ; another has the ear of the court, or 
 is all-persuasive with the j ury. A barrister, to be success- 
 ful at the Bar, needs, indeed, many qualifications. Lord 
 Brougham states that Mansfield's powers as an advocate 
 were great ; he possessed an almost surpassing sweetness 
 of voice, and it was said that his story was worth other 
 men's arguments, so clear and skilful were his statements. 
 Concerning Lord Erskine, another famous debater in 
 the forensic lists, juries declared that they felt it im- 
 possible to remove their looks from him when he had
 
 BARS AND BARRISTERS 271 
 
 riveted and, as it were, fascinated them by his first 
 o-lance: and it used to be a common remark of men, 
 who observed his motions, that they resembled those of 
 a blood-horse — as light, as limber, as much betokening 
 strength as speed. His voice was of surpassing sweet- 
 ness, clear, flexible, strong, less fitted, indeed, to express 
 indignation or scorn than pathos. Lord Sandwich, 
 First Lord of the Admiralty, having brought an action 
 for libel against persons who had charged him with 
 having appointed landsmen as Greenwich pensioners to 
 serve his own electioneering purposes, Erskine undertook 
 the defence, and such was the effect of his speech that, 
 before he left the court, thirty retainers were presented 
 to him. Fortune comes to those who can wait. Lord 
 Ellenborough first distinguished himself as the leading 
 counsel for Warren Hastings, and soon after rose to 
 the head of the Northern Circuit ; Lord Brougham 
 attained his subsequent position by his defence of 
 Queen Caroline. 
 
 But counsel must not only be able to expound his case 
 clearly, bringing into prominence all its favourable points, 
 and effacing or putting out of sight all those of an 
 opposite character, but he must also be observant and 
 quick enough on the spur of the moment to take 
 advantage of any rift in his opponent's flute, of any 
 weakness in his argument ; he must be sharp in dealing 
 with the plaintiff, supposing he is for the defendant, 
 and especially so with his witnesses. He should, in civil 
 cases, by skilful cross-questioning, entrap the principal 
 or his witnesses into damaging admissions and contra- 
 dictions. The following case, if not vero, is ben trovato 
 to illustrate our meaning. A man brought an action
 
 272 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 against a coach proprietor, for having by the careless- 
 ness of the lattei -1 s servants suffered bodily hurt, to wit, 
 been thrown from the coach on to the ground, the 
 hind wheels of which passed over his body, and in j ured 
 his chest and lungs. In his examination-in-chief he 
 testified to these facts. Then the defendant's counsel 
 took him in hand. As the plaintiff was about to leave 
 the box, ' One moment, my friend, 1 said counsel quite 
 blandly. 'According to the evidence you have just 
 given, you obviously have suffered much ; your voice is 
 gone, you say ? 1 
 
 ' Yes, sir ; I cannot speak above a whisper/ 
 
 * Very sad. The coach, you say, gave a sudden lurch 
 backwards, and thus threw you off the hind seat under 
 the coach wheels ? Were you sitting or standing just 
 then T 
 
 ' Well, I was standing up just then. 1 
 ' What made you stand up whilst the coach was in 
 motion P 1 
 
 ' Well, you would have stood up had you been there. 1 
 
 * Just answer my question ; never mind what I should 
 have done. 1 
 
 ' 1 don't know why I should answer this question. 1 
 
 The judge pointed out to him that he must answer it. 
 
 ' Well, I wanted to look at a pretty girl who had 
 passed the coach ; you would have done so. 1 
 
 ' Possibly. 1 Counsel might have given him a sharper 
 reply, but he did not want to lose his hold over 
 the witness by riling him. So he went on : ' Pos- 
 sibly. And then, like the gallant gentleman you are, 
 you kissed your hand to the lady, and then the accident 
 happened T
 
 BARS AND BARRISTERS 273 
 
 4 That's about it,' innocently replied the plaintiff. 
 
 ' That's how it happened, 1 said counsel, turning to 
 the jury. 
 
 And then, turning to the plaintiff again : ' And the 
 coach-wheels passing over you broke no bones, but 
 ruined your voice, which we all can hear is very weak ; 
 this must be a sad affliction, for you especially, because 
 I am given to understand that you were before this 
 accident a famous singer at free-and-easies and other 
 convivial meetings, and made much money by your 
 voice T 
 
 ' That's the fact, 1 hoarsely whispered the plaintiff. 
 
 ' Very sad. I am told your voice was not only 
 melodious, but very powerful. Perhaps, 1 continued 
 counsel in the most insidiously flattering tones, 'you 
 might give his Lordship and the jury a specimen of 
 what your voice was before this unlucky accident.' 
 
 And the fool, entrapped by counsel's apparent sym- 
 pathy and the petty vanity clinging to all singing men 
 to show off, actually broke forth into a rollicking drink- 
 ing song, which shook the walls of the building. There- 
 upon counsel asked for a verdict for his client the 
 defendant, and for costs, and got the first, if not the 
 second. 
 
 The terms barrister and counsel are often used indis- 
 criminately ; every barrister is a counsel, but not every 
 counsel a barrister. There are barristers whose names 
 are in everybody's mouth, and who earn their thousands 
 a year ; there are counsel unknown to the public, who 
 never, or only under peculiar circumstances, appear at 
 the Bar, but who are well known to the legal profession, 
 and make more than twice as much as the barrister 
 
 18
 
 274 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 practising at the Bar; they are 'consulting' counsel. 
 When you go to a joiner and tell him to make you a 
 cabinet, he takes your order, and sets about making the 
 piece of furniture you want ; he does not say that, as 
 such an article is not one he ever heard of in his trade, 
 he will go and learn from someone more experienced 
 than himself how to execute your order, and that you 
 will have to pay for his improving himself in joinery. 
 But if you go to your lawyer with a case which is not 
 of the most usual description, he informs you that he 
 must have counsel's opinion, for which you have to pay 
 from two to five guineas, to improve your lawyer's legal 
 knowledge. And he sends a number of questions to a 
 ' consulting ' counsel. Now, as every lawyer of any 
 standing has in his library all the legal handbooks and 
 reports of cases which are the consulting counsel's only 
 guides, the lawyer might as well look up the precedents 
 himself, but that would not be etiquette, nor so profit- 
 able all round, and so the more expensive method must 
 be followed. The consulting counsel sits in his cham- 
 bers as the soothsayers of old sat in their temples, whence, 
 like them, he sends forth oracular utterances as obscure 
 and ambiguous as those of the ancient mummers, and 
 straightway solicitors and clients feel relieved of all 
 anxiety : they have counsel's opinion and their case is as 
 good as won. For their counsel's opinion is favourable, 
 or, at all events, this is the interpretation they put on 
 it, though counsel's opinion on the same case on the 
 other side reads the very reverse. Should it so happen 
 that on the day in which counsel has given his opinion 
 a case should be decided in a law-court, which shows 
 that his opinion is not worth a rap, will counsel rush off
 
 BARS AND BARRISTERS 275 
 
 to the lawyer to tell him so ? Not he ; he is not going 
 to admit that he is fallible. And he will not give his 
 opinion on the same case twice. A lawyers clerk having 
 obtained such an opinion from counsel, and passing a 
 pub, where he had agreed to meet a friend of his to 
 settle a little betting transaction, left the opinion in 
 the omnibus in which he had come, and did not discover 
 his loss till it was too late to go to counsel again the 
 same day. So he went the next day, prepared to pay 
 out of his own pocket for another copy of the document. 
 Counsel honestly said : ' I could not do that, my friend 
 for to-day I might give you an opinion totally opposed 
 to the one I gave you yesterday, which would be 
 awkward if the first should turn up.' 
 
 Sometimes consulting counsel will condescend to 
 come into court to argue some disgustingly technical 
 point about ' contingent remainders , or ' conveyancing.'' 
 On such occasions they evince unbounded contempt 
 for the court, whose ignorance necessitates their presence. 
 They will consume a whole day in dull and dry argu- 
 ments, and send some judges to sleep, and those who 
 remain awake after counsel's speech know less of the 
 matter than they knew before ; their brains are muddled 
 with the legal rigmarole they have been listening to. 
 The ecclesiastical counsel, who flourished in the days 
 before the Probate and Divorce Courts were established, 
 and from 'doctors 1 became ' counsel," 1 when called out 
 into the general practice of the new system, were like 
 so many owls suddenly brought into daylight, Sir 
 Cresswell Cresswell so bedevilled them, and yet did it so 
 politely that they could not complain. 
 
 Barristers had a good time of it in those old days of 
 
 18—2
 
 276 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 the Ecclesiastical Courts ; the system of appeal was 
 splendidly organized — the pettiest case could gradually 
 be raised into one of great importance. There were 
 courts throughout the country — royal, archiepiscopal, 
 episcopal, decanal, sub - decanal, prebendal, rectorial, 
 vicarial, and manorial. A case arises in any one of 
 these courts, and the verdict being unsatisfactory to 
 one of the parties, he appeals to the courts of the 
 archdeacons and others, where the case is again heard, 
 decided, and again appealed against. Poor men, who 
 cannot go on for ever, must stop ; but the party who 
 can afford it goes to the Consistorial Court, where the 
 whole process of hearing, deciding, and appealing is 
 repeated. The third step is the Chancellor's Court ; 
 the fourth the Court of Arches. If the appellant still 
 has some money left, he may go to the Privy Council — 
 formerly to the Court of Delegates at Doctors 1 Commons, 
 now abolished. This is no mere imaginary case. ' There 
 was a case,' says Dr. Nicholls, ' in which the cause had 
 originally commenced in the Archdeacon's Court at 
 Totnes, and thence there had been an appeal to the 
 Court at Exeter, thence to the Arches, and thence to 
 the Delegates ; and the whole question at issue was 
 simply the question which of two persons had the right 
 of hanging his hat on a particular peg. Fancy, what 
 an army of barristers must have grown fat on this 
 oyster I 1 
 
 Success at the Bar comes to barristers in the most 
 capricious manner. In this profession, as in many 
 other pursuits, modest merit but slowly makes its way. 
 Manners make the man, but impudence an advocate ; 
 without this latter quality even high connections and
 
 BARS AND BARRISTERS 277 
 
 powerful patronage often seem ineffectual. Earl Camden, 
 the son of Chief Justice Pratt, was called to the Bar in 
 his twenty-fourth year, and remained a briefless barrister 
 for nine long years, when he resolved to abandon West- 
 minster Hall for his College Fellowship ; but at the 
 solicitation of his friend Healey, afterwards Lord 
 Chancellor Northington, he consented once more to go 
 the Western Circuit, and through his kind offices received 
 a brief as his junior in an important case. His leader's 
 illness threw the management of the case into Mr. Pratt's 
 hands ; his success was complete, and, after many years' 
 lucrative practice, he was made Attorney-General, and 
 three years after, in 1762, raised to the Bench as Chief 
 Justice of the Common Pleas. In 1766 he was made 
 Lord Chancellor, and raised to the peerage. The Earl 
 of Eldon was on the point of retiring from the contest 
 for clients, when fortune unexpectedly smiled upon him, 
 and the records of the Bar are full of similar instances. 
 
 We have spoken of cross-examination. Its legitimate 
 object is not to produce startling effects, but to elicit 
 facts which will support the theory intended to be put 
 forward ; but in most cases the first is aimed at, and 
 frequently with success. Counsel, however, must perform 
 this operation with much discretion. To a barrister 
 who was recklessly asking a number of questions in the 
 hope of getting at something, Mr. Baron Alderson said : 
 ' You seem to think that the art of cross-examination 
 consists in examining crossly. , Judges frequently give 
 hints to counsel ; to one who was terribly long-winded, 
 the judge said : 'You have stated that before, but you 
 may have forgotten it — it was so long ago." Counsel 
 must not allow himself to be carried away by the fervour
 
 278 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 of his oratorical powers, and thus overshoot the mark. 
 Arabin, the Commissioner, a shrewd, quaint little man, 
 uttered absurdities without knowing he did so. ' I 
 assure you, gentlemen, 1 he one day said to the jurv, 
 ' the inhabitants of Uxbridge will steal the very teeth 
 out of your mouth as you walk through the streets. / 
 know it from experience? When technical expressions 
 are likely to be brought up in a case before the court, 
 counsel should be careful to get posted up in them, or 
 he may make a strange and laughable mess of it. A 
 question of collision between two boats down the river 
 Thames was being investigated. The master of one of 
 the boats was in the witness-box. 
 
 ' Now,' said counsel, cross-examining him, ' what time 
 was it when the other boat ran into you, as you say T 
 
 ' It was during the dog-watch, 1 replied the mariner. 
 
 ' You hear this, gentlemen P 1 said counsel, turning to 
 the jury. 'According to this man's evidence, a boat, 
 laden with valuable merchandize, is left in charge of a 
 dog ! And, guilty of such contributory negligence, this 
 man has the impudence to come into court and claim 
 compensation and damages I 1 And, turning to the 
 witness again : ' Was your boat attached to a landing- 
 stage T 
 
 1 No ; to a buoy. 1 
 
 ' A boy ! These are curious revelations. A mere 
 boy is made to hold the boat ! And where was the 
 boy P 1 
 
 ' Why, in the water, of course I 1 
 
 ' This is getting more strange every moment. The 
 poor boy is actually kept standing in the water whilst 
 he is holding the boat ! I had no idea such cruelties
 
 BARS AND BARRISTERS 279 
 
 were practised in the shipping — shipping interest. The 
 Legislature should see to this.' Then, fumbling among 
 his papers, counsel went on : ' You said, when questioned 
 by my learned friend, that you had gone on shore? 
 Why did you go on shore P 1 
 
 ' To get a man to bleed the buoy. It wanted bleeding 
 very much." 
 
 ' You went to get a surgeon, you mean P 1 
 
 ' No ; a workman from the yard. 1 
 
 * What, to bleed a boy ! To perform so delicate an 
 operation on a boy, then standing in the water, and, in 
 the state of health he was in, no doubt in great pain, 
 whilst holding the boat all the time — shocking in- 
 humanity f 
 
 Here judge and jury thought it time to interfere. 
 They all knew the meaning of the technical terms ; but 
 as they enjoyed the fun of seeing counsel getting deeper 
 and deeper into the mire, they allowed him to go on, 
 and the court being full of sailors, who cheered counsel 
 vociferously as he stumbled from blunder to blunder, 
 the trial was one of the most amusing in that court, 
 and gave judge and jury a splendid appetite for their 
 lunch. 
 
 Some counsel are very fond of reminding a witness at 
 every other question they put to him that he is ' on his 
 oath. 1 The practice is absurd, the very reminder sounds 
 sarcastic. This ' taking the oath 1 is a relic of ancient 
 barbarism and superstition ; for the man who means to 
 tell the truth it is unnecessary, and on the man who 
 intends to tell a lie it is no check ; he looks on the pro- 
 ceeding as a ridiculous ceremony. The very official who 
 administers the oath in court, by the way he rattles it
 
 280 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 oft, shows in what estimation he holds it. Nay, in 
 matters far more important than the mere stealing of a 
 piece of cheese off a counter, on occasions when one 
 would expect taking the oath to be invested with some 
 solemnity, how is it done ? I once accompanied an 
 Italian friend of mine, who was being naturalized in 
 this country, to the court where he was to take the 
 oath of allegiance. This is how the official authorized 
 to administer the oath rushed through it : 'I A. B. do 
 swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to 
 Her Majesty Queen Victoria her heirs and successors 
 according to law so help me God it will be half a crown. 1 
 My friend produced the half-crown, which, I suppose, 
 stood in place of a seal, and the performance was 
 over. With the court ' So help me God it will be half 
 a crown ' was evidently the chief point, the crowning 
 glory and confirmation of the allegiance business. 
 
 Swearing children as witnesses leads to very ludicrous 
 scenes, enough to cover the whole proceeding with 
 contempt, and show its utter futility. Montagu 
 Williams, Q.C., tells a good story: 
 
 At a trial a discussion arose as to whether or no a 
 boy of very tender age was old enough to be sworn. 
 The judge, at the suggestion of counsel for the prosecu- 
 tion, interrogated the boy : ' Do you know what will 
 become of you if you tell an untruth ? 
 
 The boy, evidently brought up in the Spurgeon 
 school, replied : ' Hell fire. 1 
 
 ' What will become of you if you play truant, and do 
 not go to school T 
 
 ' Hell fire,' again answered the boy. 
 
 ' What if you spill the milk T
 
 BARS AND BARRISTERS 281 
 
 * Hell fire; 
 
 His lordship ran through a list of trifling faults ; the 
 punishment was always the same — ' Hell fire. 1 
 
 Counsel then suggested that the boy was scarcely 
 intelligent enough to be sworn. But the judge thought 
 otherwise, and expected he would grow up a very good 
 man, seeing he believed that the most trifling error 
 involved the penalty of hell fire, and the boy was sworn. 
 The boy, of course, was a fool, through no fault of his, 
 but through that of his bigoted teachers. 
 
 It was mentioned above that in the days of Sir 
 Matthew Hale professional etiquette allowed clients to 
 have interviews with counsel without the intervention 
 of a solicitor. But gradually, after his time, the public 
 were deprived of this privilege, and a rigid rule was 
 enforced that all communications to counsel must be 
 through the solicitor only, a rule highly detrimental to 
 litigants, since it caused constant misunderstandings and 
 misleading instructions. It is a roundabout way of 
 doing business, which would not be tolerated for a day 
 in any commercial transaction. It was from the first a 
 tyrannical assumption on the part of the profession that 
 the public should submit to a restriction, based 
 nominally on professional etiquette, but really on 
 professional interest. The public have begun to object 
 to the rule, and in 1888 the Attorney-General (Sir R. 
 Webster), on being asked to express his views in 
 reference to the occasions when a barrister may advise 
 and otherwise act for a client without the intervention 
 of a solicitor, replied that in contentious business, 
 necessitating inquiry into facts, which could not possibly 
 be undertaken by a barrister, it was essential that the
 
 282 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 latter should have the advice of a solicitor. But might 
 this advice not be given in the presence of the client to 
 exclude the possibility of misapprehension ? As to 
 non-contentious business Sir Richard allowed of direct 
 communication between counsel and client. My own 
 rule, whenever it has been my misfortune to be involved 
 in a legal dispute, has always been to push aside this 
 bogie of professional etiquette, and insist on telling 
 counsel my own story myself. 
 
 The profession, as we hardly need remind the reader, 
 has produced many distinguished characters ; to choose 
 from amongst them those most deserving of praise 
 would be difficult, and perhaps invidious ; still, the 
 actions of those whose conduct has not imparted to 
 them the mere splendour of passing meteors, but has 
 conferred permanent benefits on the country, seem to 
 entitle them to a certain pre-eminence. A man entitled 
 to such pre-eminence and the grateful remembrance of 
 Englishmen was Sir Samuel Romilly. His father was 
 a jeweller in Frith Street, Soho ; the boy was first 
 placed with a solicitor, then with a merchant, and 
 finally articled to one of the sworn clerks of Chancery. 
 At the expiration of his articles he qualified himself for 
 the Bar, but he had to wait long before he was rewarded 
 with any practice. But when briefs came, they came in 
 a flood ; his income rose to about =£?9,000 a year. He 
 was returned to Parliament in 1806 by the electors of 
 Westminster, without the expenditure of a shilling on 
 his part — a significant fact of his merits in those days 
 of bribery and corruption. He was also appointed 
 Solicitor-General and knighted. He distinguished him- 
 self in the House by his speeches in favour of the
 
 BARS AND BARRISTERS 283 
 
 abolition of the slave trade, but his great claims to the 
 gratitude of the nation are the efforts he made to 
 mitigate the Draconic code of the criminal law, in 
 which nearly three hundred offences, varying from 
 murder to keeping company with a gipsy, were punish- 
 able with death. The first success he had was the repeal 
 of the statute of Elizabeth which made it a capital 
 offence to steal privately from the person of another. 
 He next tried to get several statutes repealed which 
 made it a capital offence to privately steal from a house 
 or a shop goods to the value of five shillings. But this 
 Bill was lost. What bloodthirsty savages the members 
 of the House must have been in those days ! Some of 
 this savagery remains in their blood now, for when the 
 abolition of training children to become acrobats, con- 
 tortionists and similar horrors, the abolition of vivisection 
 and such-like cruelties, are mooted in the House, the 
 introducer of the Bill is hooted down. Romilly, as we 
 have seen, did not succeed in all his humane efforts, but 
 he kept on agitating session after session, and cleared 
 the way for the modification and mitigation of the 
 ferocious laws which turned England into human sham- 
 bles. And what Romilly had been striving for was a 
 long time in coming. In the first decades of this 
 century it was no unusual sight to see from a dozen to 
 twenty criminals, many for slight offences only, hanged 
 in one morning in front of Newgate. The end of 
 Romilly was sad ; it showed the malignity of fate. He 
 who had spent his life in endeavouring to lighten the 
 lot of others was terribly stricken himself. In 1818 he 
 lost his wife, whom he had married twenty years before, 
 and her loss was such a shock to him that he fell into
 
 284 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 delirium, and in an unwatched moment he sprang from 
 his bed, cut his throat, and expired almost instantly. 
 
 Nowadays briefless barristers utilize their legal know- 
 ledge as financiers and company promoters ; before 
 those two honest pursuits had been invented they 
 had to turn their attention to other specs. Thus 
 Francis Forcer the younger, the son of Francis Forcer, 
 a musician, had received a liberal education, and, on 
 leaving Oxford, entered Gray's Inn, and was afterwards 
 called to the Bar, where he practised for a short time. 
 He was very gentlemanly in his manners, and in person 
 remarkably tall and athletic. In 1735, having been 
 disturbed by legal interference, or some other cause, he 
 petitioned Parliament for a license for Sadler's Wells, 
 which application, we are told, was rejected at first, 
 but in the end it must have been granted, for we are 
 informed that he was the first who exhibited there the 
 diversions of rope-dancing and tumbling, and perform- 
 ances on the slack wire. It is doubtful whether the 
 speculation paid, for at the time of his death (he died 
 in 1743) he directed by his will that the lease of the 
 premises, together with the scenery, implements, stock, 
 furniture, household stuff and things thereunto belong- 
 ing, should be sold for the purpose of paying his debts, 
 which direction was carried out soon after his decease. 
 This seems as if the refreshment bar, for which 
 Mr. Forcer had left the legal Bar, had not proved very 
 remunerative ; perhaps he had better have stuck to 
 the litigation oyster, than to the native he dispensed 
 at Sadler's Wells.
 
 XVIII. 
 
 THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKERS AND THE 
 KIT-KAT AND ROTA CLUBS. 
 
 THE last two centuries were very prolific in the 
 production of clubs, founded to gratify rational 
 purposes or fanciful whims. In those days, as soon 
 as a set of men found themselves agree in any particular, 
 though ever so trivial, they immediately formed them- 
 selves into a fraternity called a club. The Apollo Club, 
 which held its meetings at the Devil tavern in Fleet 
 Street, comprised all the wits of Ben Jonson's day ; 
 the Cauliflower in Butcher Hall Lane was the sober 
 symposium of Paternoster Row booksellers. Humdrum 
 clubs were composed of peaceable nobodies, who used to 
 meet at taverns, sit and smoke and say nothing. A 
 few of these latter clubs survive. But Addison, who 
 knew something of the club life of his day, said : ' All 
 celebrated clubs were founded on eating and drinking, 
 which are points wherein most men agree, and in which 
 the learned and the illiterate, the dull and the airy, the 
 philosopher and the buffoon can all of them bear a part.' 
 Just so, though not every club would acknowledge it ; 
 but the Beefsteakers boldly proclaimed their object in
 
 286 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 the name they assumed ; theirs was the worship of beef- 
 steaks. 
 
 Now, chops and steaks are relics of barbarism, of ages 
 when men, having not as yet invented cooking apparatus, 
 made a fire between some stones, and laid their slices of 
 raw meat on the top, and ate them when half burnt 
 and blackened. Steaks done on a gridiron are ante- 
 diluvian enough, but mutton chops diffusing, when 
 undergoing this roasting process, throughout the room 
 the stench of a tallow candle just blown out, are enough 
 to turn the stomach, not of the refined gourmet only, 
 but of the untutored savage. It is only custom which 
 enables the visitor to the grill-room to stand its effluvium, 
 and to eat the food placed before him. Steaks are not 
 so bad, because they have not the sickening smell of the 
 chop, and so they actually found a set of worshippers, 
 who formed themselves into a society to pay due adora- 
 tion to their idol. Of course, in this age of higher 
 culture and more widely diffused intelligence, such a 
 proceeding must appear to us not only childish, but 
 somewhat degrading ; it was, however, a phase of the 
 convivial life and tendency of the Georgian era, and as 
 such merits a record ; but lest we, in producing it, 
 should be suspected of sympathizing with it, we deem it 
 necessary to preface it with the above remarks. 
 
 The Beefsteak Club* was founded in the reign of 
 Anne, and was composed of the ' chief wits and great 
 men of the nation, 1 who were, however, silly enough to 
 
 * Not to be confounded with the ' Sublime Society of Steaks,' 
 founded a few years after the club, and of which we shall speak 
 more fully presently as the more important of the two associa- 
 tions.
 
 THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKERS 287 
 
 wear suspended from the neck by a green silk ribbon a 
 small gridiron of gold, the badge of the club. Dick 
 Estcourt the player, and landlord of a tavern called the 
 Bumper, in Covent Garden, was made caterer of the 
 club. He was, we are told, a man of good manners and 
 of infinite wit, or of what in those days passed for wit, 
 though much of it at the present time would be declined 
 by the editor of the poorest comic paper. Steele, how- 
 ever, grows quite enthusiastic over him. The club first 
 established itself at the sign of the Imperial Phiz, just 
 opposite the famous conventicle in the Old Jewry ; here 
 the superintendent of the kitchen was wont to provide 
 several nice specimens of their beef-steak cookery. 
 Eventually the boys of Merchant Taylors 1 School 
 were accustomed to regale the club on its nights of 
 meeting with uproarious shouts of ' Huzza, Beefsteak I 1 
 But these attentions in course of time became irksome, 
 and the club withdrew to more quiet quarters, but its 
 final fate is left in the dark. Ned Ward, in his ' Secret 
 History of Clubs,' from whom we get our chief informa- 
 tion concerning the Beefsteak Club, simply says : ' So 
 that now, whether they have healed the breach, and are 
 again returned into the Kit-Kat community, whence it 
 is believed, upon some disgust, they at first separated 
 ... I shan't presume to determine, . . . but, though 
 they are much talked of, they are difficult to be found.'' 
 The Beefsteak Society, or the ' Sublime Society of 
 Beefsteaks, 1 as they chose to designate themselves, 
 whilst severely objecting to be called a club, originated 
 with George Lambert, the scene-painter of Covent 
 Garden Theatre during Rich's management (1735), 
 where Lambert often dined from a steak cooked on the
 
 288 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 lire in his painting-room, in which he was frequently 
 joined by his visitors. This led to the foundation of 
 the society in a room in the theatre. Afterwards the 
 place of meeting was at the Shakespeare tavern in the 
 Piazza, and subsequently at the Lyceum, and on its 
 destruction by fire (1830), at the Bedford Hotel, and on 
 its being rebuilt in 1834, at the theatre again. The 
 members used to meet on Saturdays, from November to 
 the end of June, to partake of a dinner of beefsteaks. 
 The room in which they met was appropriately fitted 
 up, the doors, wainscoting and roof, of English oak, 
 being ornamented with gridirons ; Lambert's original 
 gridiron, saved from two fires, formed the chief ornament 
 in the centre of the ceiling. 
 
 Among the members of this society, restricted to 
 twenty-five, were George, Prince of Wales, and his 
 brothers, the Dukes of York and Sussex, Sheridan, 
 Lord Sandwich, Garrick, John Wilkes, the Duke of 
 Argyle, the Duke of Leinster, Alderman Wood, and 
 many other men of note. The club had its president 
 and vice-president, its bishop, who said grace, and its 
 ' boots,'' as the steward was called ; the Dukes of Sussex 
 and Leinster in their turn discharged the office of 'boots.'' 
 Its festivals were of a somewhat bacchanalian character ; 
 the chief liquors consumed were port and punch, and 
 fun, the more rampant the more relished, followed the 
 feast. They had their bard, or laureate, Captain Morris, 
 who had been in the Life Guards. Here is a stanza of 
 one of his songs : 
 
 ' Like Britain's island lies our steak, 
 A sea of gravy bounds it ; 
 Shallots, confusedly scattered, make 
 The rockwork that surrounds it.
 
 THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKERS 289 
 
 » 
 
 Your isle's best emblem there behold, 
 
 Remember ancient story ; 
 Be, like jour grandsires, first and bold, 
 
 And live and die with glory.' 
 
 Now what can we think of the literary taste then 
 prevailing in the highest quarters, when we are told 
 that this song rendered Morris so great a favourite with 
 the Prince of Wales that he adopted him in the circle 
 of his intimate friends, and made him his constant guest 
 both at Carlton House and the Pavilion at Brighton ? 
 Truly, in those days fame and distinction were lightly 
 earned ! But does not our own time admire, or pretend 
 to admire, the jerky platitudes of a Tennyson, and the 
 jejune prose, cut up into measured lines, of a Browning 
 as poetry ? By the society Morris was presented with 
 an elegant silver bowl for his 'pottery. -1 
 
 In the decline of life and fortune Morris was hand- 
 somely provided for by his fellow-steak, the Duke of 
 Norfolk, who conferred upon him a charming retreat at 
 Brockham in Surrey, which he lived to enjoy until the 
 year 1838, surviving his benefactor by twenty-three 
 years, whilst hundreds of men of real merit were left to 
 fight the battle of life unaided and unrewarded. But 
 those who amuse the idle hours of fools with foolish 
 nonsense are always more highly thought of than those 
 who instruct and impart useful knowledge. There is 
 more money spent at a State or Municipal banquet in 
 one evening than would suffice for maintaining a 
 scientific institution for a whole year. What did the 
 Queen's Jubilee cost the nation, and what lasting- 
 benefit has this extravagant expenditure conferred on 
 the nation ? Of all this firework, what remains but the 
 
 19
 
 290 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 sticks and the burnt-out cartridge tubes? Carlyle, 
 with whom we agree in few things, was right in what 
 he said about the aggregate of fools. But return we 
 to the ' sublime , Beefsteakers. The epithet they 
 assumed reminds us that there is indeed but one step 
 from the sublime to the ridiculous. When a society, 
 formed for the mere purpose of gorging and swilling, 
 and howling drinking songs, the most stupid of all 
 songs, calls itself ' sublime, -1 may we not ask, Where are 
 the ' Lofty Taters-all-'ot ' and the ' Exalted Tripe and 
 Onioners P 1 
 
 There were some queer members in the society. A 
 wealthy solicitor, named Richard Wilson, popularly 
 called Dick, having been to Paris, and not knowing a 
 word of French, praised French cookery, and said that 
 its utmost perfection was seen in the way in which they 
 dished up a ' rendezvous ' ; he meant a ?is de veau. 
 Being asked if he ate partridge in France, Dick said 
 'Yes, 1 but he could not bear them served up in 'shoes' 1 ; 
 he meant perdrix mix clioux. William Taylor, another 
 member, believed firmly that Stonehenge was formed 
 by an extraordinary shower of immense hailstones which 
 fell two thousand years ago. The society, we know, 
 claimed to be a literary society, and had actually offered 
 a prize of <£400 for the best comedy. It had many 
 dramatic authors among its members. One of them 
 was Cobb, who, among other plays, wrote ' Ramah 
 Drug 1 — drug or droog meaning in India, where the 
 scene was laid, a hill-fort ;* he was complimented by his 
 
 * The tower known as Severndroog on Shooter's Hill com- 
 memorates the taking of the fort of that name on the coast of 
 Malabar.
 
 THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKERS 291 
 
 fellow-members on the happy titles he always chose for 
 his pieces. ' What could be better for your last attempt 
 to ram a drug down the public throat than " Ramah 
 Druo-"?"' said one of the Beefsteakers. But Arnold, a 
 rival dramatist, disputed Cobb's claim to admiration on 
 this account. ' What worse title,' said he, ' could he 
 have chosen for his "Haunted Tower"? Why, there 
 is no spirit in it from beginning to end I 1 
 
 When the Beefsteak Society was broken up in 1869, 
 the pictures of the former members, mostly copies, were 
 sold for only about £10. The plate, however, brought 
 high prices ; the forks and table-spoons, all bearing the 
 emblem of the club, a gridiron, fetched about a sovereign 
 apiece ; the punch-ladle realized £14> 5s. ; a cheese- 
 toaster brought i?12 6s.; an Oriental punch-bowl, 
 £17 15s. Wine-glasses, engraved with the gridiron, 
 sold for from 27s. to 34s. a pair. The actual gridiron, 
 plain as it was, fetched 5£ guineas. Eulogies have 
 been written on the society, as if it had been a really 
 meritorious institution, and endless anecdotes are told, 
 chiefly illustrating the gluttony of the members; but 
 such details are neither attractive in themselves nor 
 profitable to the reader, and we will not enter into 
 them. We agree with Thackeray's estimate of the 
 club-life of the last century: 'It was too hard, too 
 coarse a life. . . . All that fuddling and punch-drink- 
 ing, that club and coffee-house boozing, reduced the 
 lives and enlarged the waistcoats of the men of that 
 age. 1 But such were the convivial clubs of the past ; it 
 is as well to see the other side of things. 
 
 Addison, in support of his assertion that all clubs 
 were founded on eating and drinking, says that the 
 
 19—2
 
 292 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Kit-Kat Club itself is said to have taken its original 
 from mutton-pies. If he means its name, he is, as far 
 as can now be known, right ; but if he means that its 
 object was the consumption of pies, as the consumption 
 of steaks was that of the ' Sublime ' Beefsteaks, he was 
 wrong. The Kit-Kat was the great Whig club of 
 Queen Anne's time ; it consisted of the principal noble- 
 men and gentlemen who had opposed the arbitrary 
 measures of James II., and was instituted about the 
 year 1700 for the purpose ostensibly of encouraging 
 literature and the fine arts, but really for promoting 
 loyalty and allegiance to the Protestant succession in 
 the House of Hanover. Among the forty -eight 
 members were the Dukes of Marlborough and New- 
 castle ; the Earls of Halifax, Dorset, and Wharton ; 
 Sirs Robert Walpole, John Vanbrugh, Richard Steele, 
 Samuel Garth, Godfrey Kneller; Addison, Congreve, 
 Pulteney, Walsh, and other persons, illustrious for rank 
 or talent. 
 
 The real founder of the club is said to have been 
 Jacob Tonson, the bookseller; he was for many years 
 their secretary, and, in fact, the very pivot upon which 
 the society revolved. Their meetings were originally 
 held at a house in Shire Lane, close to Temple Bar, a 
 lane which in time became infamous as the resort of 
 thieves, rogues, and ruffians of every kind, though in 
 previous years it had been fashionable. The house 
 where they met was kept by one Christopher Katt, a 
 pastrycook, famous for his mutton pies, which im- 
 mortalized his name, since they became known by it, 
 Kit being then a vulgar abbreviation of Christopher, 
 and Katt being his surname, and from these pies the
 
 THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKERS 293 
 
 club took its name, the pies always forming part of its 
 bill of fare. It seems strange that with so simple a 
 derivation the origin of the name Kit-Kat should have 
 been unknown even to Pope or Arbuthnot — it is un- 
 certain to whom the lines are attributable — who wrote : 
 
 • Whence deathless Kit-Kat took his name 
 
 Few critics can unriddle : 
 Some say from pastrycook it came, 
 
 And some from Cat and Fiddle. 
 From no trim beaus its name it boasts, 
 
 Grey statesmen or green wits, 
 But from this pell-mell pack of toasts, 
 
 Of old Cats and young Kits.' 
 
 Surely the name is simply that of the pastrycook, Kit 
 (Christopher) Katt, given to his pies, and has no 
 reference to old cats or young kits or kittens. 
 
 As regards the pies, Dr. King, in his 'Art of 
 Cookery,'' wrote : 
 
 ' Immortal made as Kit-Kat by his pies ;' 
 
 and in the prologue to ' The Reformed Wife, 1 a comedy, 
 1700, is the line : 
 
 ' A Kit-Kat is a supper for a lord.' 
 
 Tonson had his own and the portraits of all the 
 members painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller ; each member 
 gave him his.* The canvas was 36 inches by 28 inches, 
 sufficiently long to show a hand, and the size is still 
 known as the Kit-Kat. There were forty-two of those 
 portraits, and they were first hung up in the club-room, 
 but Tonson in time removed them to his country-house 
 
 <s They were all engraved in mezzotinto by the younger 
 Faber.
 
 294 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 at Barn Elms, where he built a handsome room for 
 their reception, and where the club frequently met. 
 At his death in 1736, Tonson left them to his great- 
 nephew, also an eminent bookseller, who died in 1767. 
 The paintings were then removed to the house of his 
 brother at Water-Oakley, near Windsor, and on his 
 death to the house of Mr. Baker, one of the sons of Sir 
 William Baker, who had married the elder of the two 
 daughters of old Tonson ; the house of this Mr. Baker 
 is called the Park, situate at Hertingfordbury, where 
 they still remain. 
 
 As regards the room at Barn Elms referred to above, 
 Sir Richard Phillips, in his ' Morning Walk from 
 London to Kew, 1 in 1816, gives an account of his visit 
 to it. 
 
 ' A lane,' he says, ' brought me to Barn Elms, where 
 now resides a Mr. Hoare, a banker, of London. The 
 family were not at home, but on asking the servants if 
 that was the house of Mr. Tonson, they assured me, 
 with great naivete, that no such gentleman lived there. 
 I named the Kit-Kat Club as accustomed to assemble 
 here, but the oddity of the name excited their ridicule, 
 and I was told that no such club was held there ; but 
 perhaps, said one to the other, the gentleman means 
 the club that assembles at the public-house on the 
 common. . . . One of them exclaimed : " I should not 
 wonder if the gentleman means the philosopher's room.'' 1 
 "Aye, 11 rejoined his comrade, " I remember somebody 
 coming once before to see something of this sort, and 
 my master sent him there. 11 I requested, then, to be 
 shown to this room, distinguished by so high an appella- 
 tion, when I was conducted across a detached garden
 
 THE SUBLIME BEEESTEAKEliS 295 
 
 and brought to a handsome erection in the architectural 
 style of the early part of the last century, evidently 
 the establishment of the Kit-Kat Club ! . . . The 
 man unfastened the decayed door of the building, and 
 showed me the once elegant hall filled with cobwebs, a 
 fallen ceiling, and accumulated rubbish. On the right 
 the present proprietor had erected a copper, and con- 
 verted one of the parlours into a wash-house. The 
 door on the left led to a spacious and once superb stair- 
 case, now in ruins, presenting pendant cobwebs that 
 hung from the lofty ceiling, and which seemed to be 
 deserted even by the spiders. ... I ascended the 
 staircase ; here I found the Kit-Kat Club-room nearly 
 as it existed in its days of service. It was about 18 feet 
 high, 40 feet long, and 20 wide. The mouldings and 
 ornaments were in the most superb fashion of the day, 
 but the whole was tumbling to pieces from the effects 
 of the dry rot. . . . The marks and sizes [of the 
 portraits] were still visible, and the numbers and names 
 remained as written in chalk for the guide of the 
 hanger. . . . On rejoining Mr. Hoare's man in the 
 hall below ... he told me that his master intended to 
 pull [the room] down. . . . Mr. Tonson's house had 
 a few years since been taken down."' 
 
 In ' A Pilgrimage from London to Woolstrope, 1 
 communicated to the Monthly Magazine of June, 1818, 
 the then home of the Kit-Kat Club pictures is thus 
 referred to : 'I reached Hartingfordbury, and the 
 magnificent seat of Win, Baker, Esq. . . . Here I 
 paid my homage to the forty-two portraits of the Kit- 
 Kat Club, and found myself in a splendid apartment. 
 They [the portraits] are all in as fine a condition as
 
 296 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 though they had been painted but last year. I 
 regretted, however, that the characteristic features are 
 lost or disguised by the enormous perukes which dis- 
 figured the human countenance in their age. The 
 whole looked like a wiggery, and the portrait of 
 Tonson in his velvet cap was the only relief afforded 
 by the entire assemblage. - ' 
 
 But even the Kit-Kat Club in time 
 
 ' Descended from its high politic flavour, 
 Down to a sentimental toasting savour.' 
 
 Byron improved. 
 
 The club was invaded by a spirit of gallantry. 
 When a number of fashionable gentlemen meet, politics 
 are all very well for a time ; horses will afford the next 
 subject of entertainment, but the women must come in 
 in the end. And so the members of the Kit-Kat Club 
 established the custom of every year electing some 
 reigning beauty as a toast. To the queen of the year 
 the members wrote epigrammatic verses, which were 
 etched with a diamond on the club glasses, or a separate 
 bowl was dedicated to her worship, and the lines 
 engraved thereon. Some of the most celebrated of the 
 toasts had their pictures hung up in the club-room. 
 How Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, when only eight 
 years old, was introduced and declared the beauty of 
 the year, has often been told. Of course, to our more 
 refined ideas of propriety the conduct of her father, the 
 Duke of Kingston, in thus thrusting his infant daughter 
 into the society of his roistering boon -companions, 
 cannot but appear as highly reprehensible. Among 
 the more celebrated of the toasts were the four
 
 THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKERS 297 
 
 daughters of the Duke of Marlborough : Lady Godol- 
 phin, Lady Sunderland, generally known as the Little 
 Whig, Lady Bridgewater, and Lady Monthermer. 
 Swift's friend, Mrs. Long, and the niece of Sir Isaac 
 Newton were two others. Others were the Duchesses 
 of Bolton, St. Albans, Richmond and Beaufort; also 
 Lady Molyneux, who, Walpole says, died smoking a 
 pipe. 
 
 We will conclude our account of this club with a few 
 stray notes. 
 
 Three o'clock in the morning seems to have been no 
 uncommon hour for the club to break up. Addison 
 and Steele usually got drunk, so did Dr. Garth, the 
 poet laureate of the club, wherefore a Tory lampooner 
 said that at this club the youth of Anne's reign learned 
 
 1 To sleep away the days, and drink away the nights.' 
 
 When Tonson had gone to live at Barn Elms, the 
 members generally held their meetings at his house. 
 In the summer they would resort to the Upper Flask 
 tavern, near Hampstead Heath ; but this practice did 
 not continue long : there was too much difficulty in 
 getting home after strong potations. The Upper 
 Flask eventually became a private house, and was 
 occupied by George Steevens, the celebrated critic and 
 antiquary, till his death. The Kit-Kat Club died out 
 before the year 1727, and we now take leave of it. 
 
 We have given accounts of a purely convivial, of a 
 literary and artistic, and now will shortly describe a 
 purely political club, of which, however, but little is 
 known, namely, the Rota. It took its name from its 
 object, namely, to promote the changing of certain
 
 298 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Members of Parliament annually by rotation. It held 
 its meetings at the Turk's Head, otherwise known as 
 Miles" Coffee-house, in New Palace Yard, not far from 
 the residence of James Harrington, which was in the 
 Little Ambry (Almonry), looking into the Dean's yard. 
 It was founded in 1659 for the dissemination of republi- 
 can ideas, which Harrington had glorified in his 
 ' Oceana, 1 and for resisting Cromwell's attempt to do 
 without a Parliament and to establish an undisguised 
 military despotism. The republicans took the alarm, 
 and formed themselves into a debating society, says the 
 Royalist Anthony Wood, to discuss the best form of 
 government. Their discourses, according to this author, 
 of ordering a commonwealth were the most ingenious 
 and smart ever heard, for the arguments in the Parlia- 
 ment House were flat to these. This gang had a 
 balloting box . . . the room was every evening very 
 full. Beside James Harrington and Henry Nevil, who 
 were the prime men of the club, were Cyriac Skinner, 
 Major Wildman, Roger Coke, author of the 'Detection 
 of the Four Last Reigns, 1 William Petty and Maxi- 
 milian Petty, and a great many others. The doctrines 
 were very taking, and the more so because to human 
 foresight there was no possibility of the King's return. 
 The greatest of the Parliament men hated this rotation 
 and balloting, as being against their power. Henry 
 Nevil proposed it to the House ; the third part of the 
 House should vote out by ballot every year, and not 
 be re-eligible for three years to come, so that every 
 ninth year the Senate would be wholly changed. No 
 magistrate was to continue above three years, and all 
 were to be chosen by a sort of ballot. It is probable
 
 THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKERS 299 
 
 that Milton was a member of the Rota; Aubrey 
 belonged to it in 1659. After the death of Cromwell 
 the Rota gave great publicity to its proceedings, and 
 acquired a high reputation for learning, talent, and 
 eloquence, so that it became a question whether it were 
 more honourable to belong to the Rota or the Society 
 of Virtuosi, which had been designated by Boyle in 
 1646 'the Invisible or Philosophical Society/ The 
 members of the Rota threw into the teeth of their 
 rivals that they had an excellent faculty of magnifying 
 a louse and diminishing a commonwealth. Charles II., 
 who was a virtuoso himself, avenged this taunt by erect- 
 ing, in 1664, the Virtuosi into the Royal Society, by 
 dispersing the members of the Rota, and exiling 
 Harrington for life to the island of St. Nicholas, near 
 Plymouth ; but he was afterwards released on bail, and 
 died at his house in the Almonry in 1677. The state- 
 ment that the Royal Society was established for 
 political reasons, though it has often been contradicted, 
 would thus seem not to be without foundation. In the 
 third canto of the second part of ' Hudibras,"' Sidrophel 
 is said to be 
 
 '. . .as full of tricks, 
 As Rota-men of politicks.'
 
 XIX. 
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE AND ITS MASTERS. 
 
 I. — Hampton Court Palace. 
 
 npHE environs of London are very beautiful, and 
 
 ■*■ full of scenic and architectural contrasts. Let 
 
 us render our exact meaning clear by taking two 
 
 of the most striking contrasts. To the north of London 
 
 lies the vast expanse of Hampstead Heath, a locality 
 
 famous for charms due to Nature alone, whilst to the 
 
 south of London we have Hampton Court, which all 
 
 the arts of the highest civilization and noblest genius 
 
 have for centuries striven to invest with a grandeur and 
 
 loveliness found in few other spots. Painting and 
 
 sculpture, architecture and horticulture, have here 
 
 found their grandest exponents, and Time, which alone 
 
 could do it, has added thereto the dignity of historic 
 
 interest and the fascination of romantic associations. 
 
 Not only are the rooms and halls, the corridors and 
 
 courtyards of the palace, artistic caskets in themselves, 
 
 they are filled with treasures of art. And how easily 
 
 can imagination re-people these now usually deserted 
 
 chambers and passages, and with the mind s eye see
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 301 
 
 again the famous — and sometimes infamous — men who 
 here disported themselves, the charming lovely — and 
 sometimes the reverse — women, whose dazzling beauty, 
 lofty demeanour, dangerous and bewitching glances, led 
 those men to fortune or the scaffold. But that imagina- 
 tion may do this, not only is an accurate knowledge of 
 the localities needed, but also of the historic occurrences 
 which have taken place therein, wherefore our account 
 of Hampton Court Palace, which we have undertaken 
 to give in a necessarily condensed form, will after 
 describing the structure architecturally record, briefly 
 also, the events it has been the scene of. 
 
 We assume the local position of the Palace to be 
 sufficiently well known, and therefore not necessary to 
 be described. It has, not inappropriately, been called 
 the St. Cloud of Londoners. In the time of Edward 
 the Confessor Hampton Manor belonged to Earl Algar, 
 a powerful Saxon nobleman, and its value then was 
 estimated at i?40 per annum. After the Norman Con- 
 quest it is mentioned in Doomsday Book as held by 
 Walter de St. Valeri, who probably gave the advowson 
 of the living to the Priory of Takeley, in Essex, which 
 was a cell to the Abbey of St. Valeri, in Picardy ; from 
 the port adjoining it William the Conqueror sailed for 
 England. Hampton Manor subsequently became the 
 property of Sir Robert Gray, whose widow in 1211 left 
 by her will the whole manor and the manor-house of 
 Hampton, the site of the present Hampton Court 
 Palace, to the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of 
 Jerusalem, whose chief residence in England was the 
 Hospital of St. John, Clerkenwell, and of which now 
 nothing but the gate remains. The manor thus
 
 302 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 bequeathed was of enormous extent. It comprised 
 within its boundaries the lesser manors of Kingston- 
 on-Thames, Walton Legh, Byflete, Weybridge, East 
 and West Moulsey, Sandon, Weston, Innworth, Esher, 
 Oatlands, together with the manors of Hampton, Han- 
 worth, Eeltham, Teddington, and even Hounslow 
 Heath. 
 
 Tradition says that Cardinal Wolsey, at the summit 
 of his power, was desirous of building a palace suitable 
 to his rank ; but he was equally desirous of enjoying 
 health and long life, and employed the most eminent 
 physicians in England, and even called in the aid of 
 learned doctors from Padua, to select the most healthy 
 spot within twenty miles of London. They agreed 
 that the parish of Hampton was the most healthy soil, 
 and the springs in Coombe Wood, south of Richmond 
 Park, the purest water within the limits assigned to 
 their researches. Upon this report the Cardinal 
 bargained for a lease with the prior of St. John of 
 Jerusalem, and the following is a precis of the lease as 
 still extant in the Cottonian MS. in the British Museum, 
 and first published in the Gentleman's Magazine for 
 January, 1834. 
 
 The indenture was made between Sir Thomas 
 Docwra, prior of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem 
 and his brethren knights of the one part, and Cardinal 
 Wolsey, Primate of England, of the other part. It 
 granted a lease of ninety-nine years, to date from 
 January 12, 1514, to Cardinal Wolsey at a yearly rent 
 of ^oO, the lessee agreeing to the usual covenants of a 
 repairing lease. If the rent should remain unpaid 
 during two whole years, the lessors to have the right
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 303 
 
 of re-entry, and a new lease to be granted for another 
 ninety-nine years should such be desired by the lessee. 
 The lessors did not foresee the future, which would, by 
 force majeure, put an end to all their lease-granting. 
 
 As soon as Wolsey had obtained the lease, he pulled 
 down the old manor-house, in which hitherto a prior 
 and a few knights had been accommodated, and began 
 erecting in a style of grandeur, heretofore unsurpassed 
 in this country, a mansion of unparalleled magnificence. 
 But who was this Wolsey ? 
 
 A most unmitigated villain, on a par with that other 
 villain, Henry VIII. , whose master, through being his 
 pimp, he was for a time, till, in perfect accordance with 
 his character, he became his abject whining slave. I 
 am well aware that it is not usual to apply such a term 
 as villain to a King or his chief adviser — courtly 
 historians have flowery terms for the crimes of Kings 
 by the 'grace of God, 1 and holy ' Fathers-in-God, 1 who 
 misuse the powers foolish nations have entrusted them 
 with to the vilest purposes — but the spirit of justice, 
 which directs thinking and logical minds, rejects the 
 flimsy arguments of sycophantic apologists ; it will not 
 have Nero whitewashed. 
 
 Thomas Wolsey was born at Ipswich in March, 1471. 
 He was the son of a butcher, who also possessed some 
 land, and was sufficiently well off to send his son to the 
 University of Oxford. In those days the chief and 
 easiest avenue to distinction, office, and wealth was 
 through the Church, and Thomas appears to have been 
 an apt scholar, for at fourteen years of age he was 
 Bachelor of Arts, and thence was called the Boy 
 Bachelor. He soon after became Master of Arts, and
 
 304 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 had charge of the school adjoining Magdalen College, 
 where he educated the three sons of Thomas Grey, 
 Marquis of Dorset, who presented him in 1500 to the 
 rectory of Lymington. This was indeed a rapid rise 
 for the son of a butcher. But he had not long resided 
 on his benefice when Sir Amias Paulet, a justice of the 
 peace, set him in the stocks for being drunk and making 
 a disturbance at a fair in the neighbourhood. Wolsey 
 was mean enough to take a cruel revenge for this 
 punishment, which, no doubt, he richly deserved, and 
 which must at the time have been approved by the 
 community, for it was no trifling thing in those days to 
 set a rector in the stocks. When Wolsey was Lord 
 Chancellor he sent for Sir Amias, and after a severe 
 jobation confined him for six years in that part of the 
 Temple which long passed for Henry VIII. and Wolsey "s 
 palace, and afterwards was Nando's, a famous coffee- 
 house. Wolsey compelled Paulet to almost entirely 
 rebuild the house. When Wolsey^ patron, the Marquis 
 of Dorset, died, the former looked out for new means 
 to push his fortunes, for his avarice was boundless. He 
 accordingly got himself admitted into the family of 
 Henry Dean, Archbishop of Canterbury ; but that 
 prelate dying in 1502, he found means of ingratiating 
 himself with Sir John Nanfan, treasurer of Calais, who 
 being weakened by age and other infirmities, committed 
 the direction of his post to Wolsey, who by his recom- 
 mendation was made one of the King^ chaplains, and 
 in 1506 was instituted to the rectory of Redgrave, in 
 the diocese of Norwich. But it was on the accession of 
 Henry VIII. that he had the opportunity of developing 
 his ambitious and covetous schemes by the vilest means.
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 305 
 
 He recommended himself to the King's favour by adapt- 
 ing himself to his capricious temper and vicious inclina- 
 tions, acting as his pimp, and participating in all his 
 debaucheries. And so well did he play his cards with 
 the King that shortly after the attainder of Sir 
 Richard Empson — executed with his coadjutor Dudley 
 in 1510, nominally for extortion, but really because 
 that extortion was not practised on the King's behalf, 
 but on their own — shortly after this attainder the King 
 conferred on Wolsey a grant of several lands and tene- 
 ments in the parish of St. Bride's, Fleet Street, which 
 by the knight's forfeiture devolved to the Crown. In 
 the grant Wolsey is styled counsellor and almoner to 
 the King. In the same year he was presented by his 
 royal master to the rectory of Torrington, in the diocese 
 of Exeter. Early in the following year he was made a 
 Canon of Windsor and Registrar of the Order of the 
 Garter. In 1512 he was advanced by Archbishop 
 Bambridge to the prebend of Bugthorp, in the church 
 of York, of which afterwards he also was made a Dean. 
 In 1513 he attended the King in his expedition to 
 France, who committed to him the direction of the 
 supplies and provisions to be made for the army — a 
 profitable concession, which Wolsey knew how to turn 
 to his own good account. On the taking of Tournay 
 Henry VIII. made Wolsey Bishop of that city, and not 
 long after Bishop of Lincoln. In 1814, on the death 
 of Cardinal Bambridge, he was translated to the Arch- 
 bishopric of York. The utter recklessness with which 
 the King bestowed on one man so many high offices, 
 the duties of which from their very multiplicity must 
 be totally neglected by this one man, this recklessness 
 
 20
 
 306 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 in the bestowal of ecclesiastical dignities and emolu- 
 ments on an upstart whose moral character was of the 
 vilest in every respect, and openly known to be such, 
 was only equalled by the greed and vanity of the 
 recipient. But Fortune had greater favours yet in 
 store for him. In September, 1515, he was, by the 
 interest of the two Kings of England and France, made 
 Cardinal of St. Cecilia, and in December of the same 
 year Lord Chancellor of England, which dignity had 
 been resigned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who 
 resented the arrogance of, and the powers conferred on, 
 Wolsey. The Archbishop's resignation led to the 
 retirement of all the other great officers of the Crown, 
 and thus Wolsey became absolute master of the situa- 
 tion, and whilst he was really carrying . out his own 
 schemes, he had the address to persuade the King, 
 jealous of his own power, that he was only blindly 
 executing his royal master's behests and wishes. The 
 position of England between the Emperor and the 
 King of France rendered Henry VIII. to some extent 
 the arbitrator of Europe. Wolsey cleverly exploited 
 the situation ; he first secured the goodwill of Francis I. 
 of France by restoring to him, in 1516, Tournay, 
 receiving in return an annuity of 12,000 livres. But 
 the Pope was the most anxious to secure the Minister's 
 friendship, and therefore, after the recall of Cardinal 
 Campeggio, made Wolsey his Legate a Latere, or Extra- 
 ordinary Envoy, which virtually raised him to the rank 
 of Pope of England. Though Wolsey's income was 
 already tremendous from the various bishoprics and 
 other high offices he held, and the presents and pensions 
 he received from foreign princes, the Pope granted him
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 307 
 
 an annuity of 7,500 ducats on the bishoprics of Toledo 
 and Placentia. With Wolsey "s increase of power rose 
 his arrogance, his covetousness, and his love of ostenta- 
 tion ; the beggar was put on horseback. His revenues 
 almost exceeded those of the Crown ; the splendour 
 displayed in his mode of living was greater than that 
 of many Kings. When, after the election of Charles V. 
 as Emperor of Germany, the latter quarrelled with 
 Francis I., each endeavoured to draw the Cardinal to 
 his side. In 1520 he arranged an interview between 
 the three Sovereigns, but at last sided with the 
 Emperor, who granted him an annuity of 7,000 ducats, 
 and held out to him the prospect of the Papal crown. 
 After having, in 1521, attempted at Calais a reconcilia- 
 tion between Henry VIII. and Francis I., he entered 
 into a secret treaty with the Emperor, according to 
 which the English King was to declare war against 
 France. The death of Leo X. and the subsequent 
 election of Hadrian VI. to the Papal dignity almost led 
 to a breach between him and the Emperor ; but the 
 latters promise that after old Hadrian's death he would 
 certainly procure him the Papal crown satisfied Wolsey, 
 especially as the Emperor added 2,500 ducats to the 
 former annuity, and gave him besides another of 9,000 
 dollars in gold for his loss of the French pension. In 
 1522 Henry VIII. commenced the war against his 
 former ally by entering and devastating France. 
 Wolsey having to find money for this war, he had 
 recourse to financial oppression, which roused the in- 
 dignation of the English people. But at the new 
 Papal election in 1523 Wolsey saw himself again 
 passed over, which induced him to lead the King to 
 
 20—2
 
 308 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 take the part of Francis L, who was then a prisoner. 
 Henry VIII. had to retire from the war, to enter in 
 1525 into an alliance with the French Regency, for 
 which service Wolsey received a present of 100,000 
 crowns, and in 1528 to declare war against the Emperor. 
 Thus the proud and blustering Henry VIII. became the 
 mere tool of an ambitious and disappointed priest, who 
 used him and the resources of England to avenge the 
 slight the Emperor had put upon him at the last Papal 
 election. After the peace of Cambray in 1529, Wolsey 
 was on the summit of his power, but also terribly near 
 to his fall. At first he had, from hatred of her nephew, 
 Charles V., not opposed the King's desire to obtain a 
 divorce from Catherine of Aragon ; but when he found 
 that the King wanted to marry Anne Boleyn, he dis- 
 approved of the divorce, as he feared that Anne's 
 relatives might endanger his position at Court. In 
 obedience to the King's orders, he indeed for some 
 time urged on the suit, but grew less zealous when he 
 found that the Pope himself, out of consideration for 
 the Emperor, was against the divorce. Henry VIII. 
 looked upon the delay as due to the intrigues of 
 Wolsey, in which opinion he was strengthened by 
 Anne Boleyn, who had a special reason to hate him, 
 for it was through him that her marriage with young 
 Lord Percy, a member of Wolsey's establishment, 
 one of the many scions of the nobility who were 
 placed under the guidance of the Cardinal, had been 
 broken off. When Anne, who had been dismissed the 
 Court, after her recall found it necessary to augment 
 her rising influence over the King to dissemble, and 
 therefore treated Wolsey with the greatest outward
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 309 
 
 respect, she secretly took every opportunity to foster 
 the dislike Henry had taken to him, and it was her 
 underhand influence which hastened his downfall, and 
 not reasons of statecraft, as ' philosophical , historians 
 would have us believe. Long before the catastrophe 
 Wolsey, who had not failed to notice that the brutal 
 tyrant's favourable sentiment stowards his minion were 
 on the wane, had tried to conciliate the King by pre- 
 senting Hampton Court to him in 1526; but the gift 
 had not been one of love, but of fear and despair, and 
 the chief cause of the surrender, according to tradition, 
 was the fol lowing: : 
 
 The King's fool was paying a visit to the Cardinal's 
 fool — for both the King and the Cardinal were such 
 fools themselves as to find pleasure in the gabbling of 
 professional fools — and the couple went down into the 
 wine vaults. For fun one of them stuck a dagger into 
 the top of a cask, and, to his surprise, touched some- 
 thing that gave a metallic sound. The fools thereupon 
 set to work, got the head of the cask out, and found it 
 to be full of gold pieces. Other casks, by the sound, 
 indicated that they held wine. The King's fool stored 
 up the fact in his memory, and one day when the King 
 was boasting about his wine, the fool said, ' You have 
 not such wine as my Lord Cardinal, for he has casks in 
 his cellar worth a thousand broad pieces each ;' and then 
 he told what he had discovered. Whether this be true 
 or not, it is certain that Wolsey was awake to the fact 
 that he was losing his power over the King, and so he 
 threw him the magnificent sop of his palace, which, 
 however, did not save him ; the King was determined 
 to be rid of him. In October, 1529, the Great Seal was
 
 310 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 demanded of him, his palace at Whitehall and all his 
 goods were seized for the King's use, and he was ordered 
 to retire to his palace at Esher. The King, indeed, 
 promised Wolsey his protection, and that he should 
 continue to hold the bishoprics of York and Winchester. 
 As Wolsey was travelling towards Esher, he was over- 
 taken by a messenger from the King, who brought him 
 that comfortable assurance, whereupon the Cardinal 
 dismounted from his mule, knelt down, and blessed the 
 ground on which he had received so gracious a message ; 
 and to show his gratitude to his King, he made him 
 a present of — what do you think? — his fool. Had 
 Wolsey in his disgrace shown any manliness or dignity 
 of character, we might think that this present to the 
 King was ' kinder sarcastic," 1 intimating that a fool was 
 about the only individual fit to be Henry's companion, 
 and whom he could appreciate. But from Wolsey's 
 conduct during the closing years of his life, we cannot 
 give him credit for so much wit and moral courage as 
 the attempt to give the King such a hint would have 
 implied, and we must therefore assume that the gift 
 was a bond fide one ; and as in those days it was con- 
 sidered the proper thing for great people to associate 
 with fools, and take delight in their forced and artificial 
 jokes, too poor for a halfpenny comic paper of the 
 present day, there was nothing extraordinary in the 
 gift, and no doubt the King thought it highly compli- 
 mentary to himself. But however favourably the King 
 might at certain moments feel disposed towards Wolsey, 
 and though, from his influence in the country as head 
 of the Church, it was necessary to go to work cautiously, 
 his ruin was determined on. Parliament, which, after
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 311 
 
 an interval of seven years, was allowed to reassemble in 
 
 1529, impeached him by a charge of forty-four articles, 
 relating chiefly to the exercise of his legatine power 
 contrary to law, and the scandalous irregularities of his 
 life. The impeachment passed the House of Lords ; 
 but when it came to the House of Commons it was 
 effectually defeated by the energy and address of Thomas 
 Cromwell, who had been his servant, so that no treason 
 could be fixed upon him. He remained in his retire- 
 ment at Esher until about Easter, 1530, when he was 
 ordered to repair to his diocese of York, where, in 
 November of the same year, he was arrested by the 
 Earl of Northumberland for high treason, and com- 
 mitted to the custody of the Lieutenant of the Tower, 
 who had orders to bring him to London. This so 
 affected his mind that he fell sick at Sheffield, in the 
 Earl of Shrewsbury's house, whence, by short stages, he 
 went as far as Leicester, where he is said to have taken 
 poison, which no one knowing his really pusillanimous 
 character will believe ; however, he died on November 29, 
 
 1530, and was buried in the Abbey of Leicester. The 
 words attributed to him as his last utterances, that if 
 he had served God as he had served his King, he would 
 not be thus forsaken, were false in substance and con- 
 temptible in form. He never served the King but when 
 it served his own purposes, and a mean-spirited coward 
 only would have attributed his fall to such a cause. He 
 fell most ignominiously, without even an attempt of 
 resistance against the King's arbitrary decrees, without 
 a struggle to reassert his former ascendancy over his 
 royal master. But probably the ascendancy was irre- 
 coverable ; he had himself resigned it when he sur-
 
 312 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 rendered his palace of Hampton Court to Henry in an 
 access of cowardly panic ; and no ascendancy which is 
 not moral or intellectual ever has any vitality in it, and 
 that of Wolsey over the King had never been any other 
 than that of the practised debauchee over the unpractised 
 one. Wolsey was Henry's senior by twenty years. When 
 the pupil had become as depraved as his teacher, he 
 required his assistance no longer, and in moments of 
 reflection, which come to the most frivolous, he must 
 have felt how debased such teaching had been, and the 
 greater its iniquity the greater the pupil's abhorrence 
 of the instructor, whose constant presence must act as 
 a perpetual reproach ; when the orange is sucked dry, the 
 shapeless husk becomes an offensive object to look at. 
 
 Cardinal Wolsey is credited with a love of learning 
 and schemes to promote it, as his foundation of a college 
 at Oxford, now Christ Church, which, however, he only 
 partly accomplished, and his school at Ipswich. But 
 these were not so much establishments to advance learn- 
 ing as to support and glorify the Church, of which he 
 was the chief pillar and personal representative, and 
 which therefore it was his pride and interest to strengthen 
 and exalt, even at some personal sacrifice. 
 
 Such was the man who built the palace of Hampton 
 Court, to the description and history of which we must 
 now proceed. 
 
 We stated above that immediately on having entered 
 into possession of the estate, Wolsey pulled down the 
 ancient manor-house ; early in 1515 he began the new 
 buildings. All researches have failed to bring to light 
 the architect employed by the Cardinal. The name of 
 James Bettes occurs as master of the works, as also that 
 of Nicholas Townley as chief comptroller, and that of
 
 HAMPTON CO CRT PALACE 313 
 
 Laurence Stubbes, paymaster of the works, and that of 
 Henrv Williams, surveyor ; but probably the design 
 of Hampton Court must be attributed to Wolsey him- 
 self, who had the examples of other mediaeval prelatic 
 builders to guide him. In fact, we are inclined to think 
 that the entrance to the first court was somewhat of an 
 imitation of the centre of Esher Place, on the river 
 Mole, a building erected by William of Waynfleet, 
 Bishop of Winchester, in 1447. Of this building nothing 
 now remains but the two octagonal towel's of the centre, 
 just as the gateway of Wolsey's college at Ipswich only 
 remains, which also bears a striking resemblance to that 
 of Esher Place. 
 
 One of the distinguishing features of Wolsey's palace 
 at Hampton Court was that it did not present to the 
 beholder a moat,* a drawbridge, or loopholes, or frown- 
 ing battlements or watch-towers, without which up to 
 that time no nobleman had thought of erecting a 
 mansion. Wolsev. beino- a Churchman, naturally selected 
 the monastic style, and the first and second courts, all 
 that remains of Wolsey 's original building, display it 
 in all its picturesque features. At present the palace 
 consists of three courts, the two just referred to, and 
 the third, built by William III., comprising the build- 
 ings surroundino; the Fountain Court. On the north 
 side of the palace there are a number of minor courts 
 and passages, around which are grouped domestic offices, 
 stables, and other dependencies of a large mansion. 
 
 And here by way of interscript, though the reader 
 may have seen that we hold Cardinal Wolsey "s character 
 
 * In Law's 'History of Hampton Court Palace' we are told 
 that a moat surrounded the whole of the palace, but Hollar's 
 view of it (temp. Henry Till.) shows no indication of one.
 
 314 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 as a Churchman in but slight estimation, we must give 
 him credit for proofs of aesthetic culture, which was 
 unusual in his age, when even the most affluent nobles 
 of the land lived in a state of rude habits and surround- 
 ings. At the conclusion of the reign of Henry VII. 
 the annual expenses of the powerful family of Percy 
 scarcely exceeded the sum of ^1,100. The furniture of 
 even princely households was coarse and comfortless; 
 homely plenty and stately reserve in their entertain- 
 ments was the rule. The love of pomp and refined 
 pleasure must have been acquired by Wolsey through 
 his visits and residences abroad, and though he indulged 
 in both from personal inclination and political purpose, 
 yet, whatever his motive, his practice led to the ameliora- 
 tion of national taste and manners favourable to the 
 growth of art and the development and advance of 
 home industries. His palace became an example of an 
 interior arrangement suited to liberal, polished, and 
 dignified entertainment. It afforded hints for the im- 
 provement of domestic architecture. Till then the 
 attainment of security had been the chief object of the 
 builder; the times having become less turbulent, the 
 external and internal embellishment and comfort of the 
 mansion, no longer a mere castle, became the ruling 
 principle, and Wolsey led the way in these improve- 
 ments in the palace he built at Hampton. 
 
 Originally, as Camden and Hentzner assert, there 
 were five courts. Camden calls them ' large ' courts, 
 and the palace is traditionally said to have extended 
 further towards the east, but this is very doubtful ; 
 probably the ground-plan of the palace now embraces 
 as much space as it did at any time. As stated above,
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 315 
 
 it now consists of three courts ; but there are several 
 minor courts appertaining to parts of the original 
 structure, and it is possible that Camden, when he 
 called the courts large, had the really large ones in his 
 mind, and that Hentzner, the German traveller, who 
 visited England in 1598, and greatly admired all he 
 saw amongst us, included them in his enumeration, so 
 as to justify the eulogy he bestows on the palace. 
 ' The rooms,'' he said, ' being very numerous [there are 
 altogether about 1,000 rooms in the palace], are adorned 
 with tapestry of gold, silver, and velvet, in some of 
 which were woven history pieces ; in others, Turkish and 
 Armenian dresses, all extremely natural. In one 
 chamber are several excessively rich tapestries, which 
 are hung up when the Queen [Elizabeth] gives audience 
 to foreign ambassadors. All the walls of the palace 
 shine with gold and silver. Here is likewise a certain 
 cabinet, called ' Paradise, 1 where, besides that everything 
 glitters so with silver, gold, and jewels as to dazzle 
 one's eyes, there is a musical instrument made all of 
 glass except the strings. . . . The chapel of this 
 palace is most splendid, in which the Queen's closet is 
 quite transparent, having its windows of crystal. . . . 
 In her bedchamber the bed was covered with very costly 
 coverlids of silk. At no great distance from this room 
 we were shown a bed, the tester of which was worked 
 by Anne Boleyn, and presented by her to her husband, 
 Henry VIII. ... In the hall are these curiosities : a 
 very clear looking-glass, ornamented with columns and 
 little images of alabaster ; a portrait of Edward VI., 
 brother to Queen Elizabeth ; the true portrait of 
 Lucretia ; a picture of the battle of Pavia ; the history
 
 316 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 of Christ's passion, carved in mother-of-pearl; the 
 portrait of Mary Queen of Scots ; the picture of 
 Ferdinand, Prince of Spain, and of Philip, his son ; 
 that of Henry VIII., under which was placed the Bible, 
 curiously written upon parchment ; an artificial sphere ; 
 several musical instruments. In the tapestry are repre- 
 sented negroes riding upon elephants ; the bed in which 
 Edward VI. is said to have been born, and where his 
 mother, Jane Seymour, died in childbed. 1 Grotius 
 (b. 1583, d. 1645) also described it as the most splendid 
 palace in Europe. Says he : 'If e'er a Briton what is 
 wealth don't know, let him repair to Hampton Court, 
 and then view all the palaces of the earth, when he will 
 say : " Those are the residences of Kings, but this of 
 the gods." ' 
 
 The above descriptions, of course, apply to a period 
 posterior to the occupation of the palace by Wolsey, 
 but we shall presently see how great was its splendour 
 in the days of the Cardinal, before the alterations made 
 by Henry VIII., who wished as much as possible to 
 extinguish Wolsey 's memory ; but the old dark-red 
 brick walls, with still darker lines of bricks in diamond 
 shapes running along them, the mixture of Gothic 
 archways and square mullioned windows, the turrets 
 and cupolas, and tall twisted and cross-banded chimneys 
 of the first and second courts, all belong to the period 
 of Wolsey. 
 
 Let us enter these courts. 
 
 The usual approach to the palace is from the west. 
 Here on the right and left are seen ranges of sub- 
 ordinate chambers and domestic offices, which, it would 
 seem, appear formerly to have taken a wider circuit
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 317 
 
 than at present, as on Hampton Court Green are many 
 coeval buildings, including a handsome gateway. The 
 kitchens with their dependent offices were on the north 
 side of the palace, where they still remain, and are 
 provided with avenues and suitable passages, communi- 
 cating with the great hall and principal rooms. The 
 entrance to this office range is by a plain but handsome 
 gateway in the western front, to the left of the chief 
 gateway, which gives admittance to the first court. 
 This gateway, built of brick, with stone embellish- 
 ments, has over the portal a bay-window, adorned with 
 the royal arms, and divided by mullioned compartments 
 into two series of lights. This central division of the 
 west front is flanked by octagon towers. The gateway 
 was originally provided with fine oak gates ; these were 
 for many years put aside as lumber, but have lately 
 been rehung, after undergoing careful repair. They 
 are of massive dimensions, are ornamented with the 
 usual linen-fold pattern, and are evidently of Wolsey's 
 time. Their outer face is pierced with shot and bullet 
 holes, which may have been occasioned during the 
 skirmishes in the civil wars, when fighting was going 
 on outside the palace between the Cavaliers and Round- 
 heads, or, as has been suggested, the holes may have 
 been made through the gates having been set up as 
 targets for the villagers of Hampton. Before then 
 bows and arrows were the arms used in war, but it 
 appears that during the great rebellion the practice of 
 archery fell into disrepute. However, at the restoration 
 of Charles II. the noble sport was again revived ; in 
 1682 the Finsbury archers marched to Hampton Court, 
 and there, in front of the palace, shot for prizes.
 
 318 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Charles II. patronized their exercise by his presence, 
 but the day being rainy, after staying for about two 
 hours he was obliged to quit the field. There is 
 nothing new under the sun ; a modern military com- 
 mander stopped a review on account of the rain ! He 
 should have taken an example by the British workman, 
 who scorns to carry an umbrella, whilst the foreign 
 mason or carpenter never goes to his work without one 
 should the day look threatening. 
 
 Through the portal just mentioned you enter the 
 first or entrance court, which is 167 feet 2 inches from 
 north to south, and 162 feet 7 inches from east to west. 
 On the west side of this court is a bay-window, cor- 
 responding in character with that over the west front 
 of the arched entrance, and, like that, enriched with the 
 royal arms ; on the turrets are placed the initials E.R. 
 Over the portal in the centre is a bay-window of con- 
 siderable beauty, with octangular towers on each side, 
 and on the face of the towers are introduced busts of 
 Roman emperors in terra cotta, which had been sent to 
 Cardinal Wolsey by Leo X. On the left is seen the 
 western end of the Great Hall, which here has a broad 
 and richly designed window. In this court also are 
 rooms appropriated to families who have obtained small 
 Government pensions. 
 
 Through a groined archway, finely ornamented, we 
 pass to the second or middle, or Clock Tower court. 
 This court is somewhat smaller than the former, 
 measuring 133 feet from north to south, and about 
 100 feet from east to west. The exterior of the build- 
 ings surrounding this court appears to have experienced 
 little alteration since the days of the founder. The
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 319 
 
 general effect of this court is superb. The eastern side 
 comprises a third portal, flanked with octangular turrets, 
 and is of greater richness than the preceding fronts. 
 On the face of each turret are again introduced busts 
 of the Caesars. Some repairs were effected in this 
 division by George II. in 1732, as is signified by an 
 inscription on the exterior. On the north side is the 
 Great Hall. Wolsey had projected it ; it formed so 
 important a feature in the design of the mansion, that 
 the exterior walls may safely be ascribed to the Cardinal, 
 but he did not live to finish the work ; the interior was 
 not completed till 1536, by Henry VIII. It is 106 feet 
 long, 40 wide, and 60 high. The roof is elaborately 
 carved. There are seven large windows on one side 
 and six on the other, with a large window at each 
 end. A bay-window on the dais, extending from the 
 upper part of the wall nearly to the floor, contributes 
 greatly to the cheerful aspect of the hall. The window 
 at the eastern end is an oriel window, divided into com- 
 partments by mullions of stone. There was formerly a 
 lantern in the roof, but, for some reason unexplained, 
 it was removed ; the compartment, however, whence it 
 took its springing remains. Near the east end of the 
 hall is the withdrawing room, of noble dimensions, and 
 displaying externally, as well as internally, more of the 
 character of the ancient structure than any other room 
 of equal extent throughout the palace. 
 
 A highly interesting object in this court is the 
 astronomical clock in the tower and gateway giving 
 access to the third court. The original clock was, 
 according to a notice engraved on the wrought-iron 
 framework, put up in 1540 by N. O. Who is meant
 
 320 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 by these initials is quite unknown. It was, till its 
 removal, the oldest clock in England that kept pretty 
 correct time. From an entry mentioned in Wood's 
 ' Curiosities of Clocks and Watches, 1 we learn that a 
 payment was made in 1575 to one George Gaver, 
 ' serjeant painter, 1 ' for painting the great dial at 
 Hampton Court Palace, containing hours of the day 
 and night, the course of the sun and moon. 1 No doubt 
 since Gaver decorated the dial -plate many clockmakers 
 must have repaired and altered the works. In 1649 a 
 striking part had been added to the works. In 1711 it 
 was found that in consequence of the removal of certain 
 wheels and pinions, probably by ignorant or careless 
 workmen, the clock could not for a long time past have 
 performed its functions correctly. It seems indeed to 
 have been left neglected for many years. Somewhere 
 in the thirties of this century G. P. R. James, the 
 novelist, addressed a poem of eleven stanzas to the 
 ' Old Clock without Hands at Hampton Court. 1 The 
 first and last stanzas we reproduce, not for their merit, 
 but because apposite to our subject : 
 
 ' Memento of the bygone hours, 
 Dost thou recall alone the past ? 
 Why stand'st thou silent midst these towers, 
 
 Where time still flies so fast ? 
 ***** 
 ' The future ? Yes ! at least to me 
 Thus plainly thus thy moral stands ! 
 Good deeds mark hours ! Let not life be 
 A dial without hands !' 
 
 In 1835 the works of the old clock were removed, 
 but what became of them is not known ; probably they
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 321 
 
 were sold for old brass and iron. A new clock was put 
 up, and on the removal of this in 1880 there was found 
 this inscription on the works: 'This clock, originally 
 made for the Queen's Palace in St. James 1 Park, and 
 for many years in use there, was a.d. 1835, by command 
 of His Majesty King William IV., altered and adapted 
 to suit Hampton Court Palace by B. L. Vulliamy, clock- 
 maker to the King , ; and on another plate on the clock : 
 1 Vulliamy, London, No. 352, a.d. 1799.' Vulliamy's 
 address was 74, Pall Mall, which was then the first 
 house at the south-western end of the street, next to 
 the entrance-gates to Marlborough House. The motive 
 power of this clock had evidently not been sufficient to 
 drive in addition the asti-onomical dial, and the useless 
 dial had been taken down and stowed away in a work- 
 shop in the palace, the gap left being filled by a painted 
 board. This antiquated timepiece was entirely removed, 
 and in 1880 a new clock erected by Messrs. Gillett and 
 Bland, which shows not only the hours of the day and 
 night, but also the day of the month, the motion of 
 the sun and moon, the age of the moon, its phases and 
 quarters, and other interesting matters connected with 
 lunar movements. The dial is composed of three separate 
 copper discs of various sizes, with a common centre, but 
 revolving at various rates. 
 
 We have yet to notice on the south side of this court 
 the colonnade, supported by Ionic columns, built by Sir 
 Christopher Wren ; the effect produced by the intro- 
 duction of this classical colonnade amidst the venerable 
 turrets and parapets of Wolsey's building is discordant 
 and unpleasing. But William III. would have it so, 
 and the great architect had to comply. 
 
 21
 
 322 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 We will now pass through the gateway leading into 
 the third or Fountain Court. Here we are surrounded 
 by a totally different style of architecture, again that 
 of William III. Wren had been appointed to the 
 office of Surveyor-General of His Majesty's Works in 
 ]668, and employed by him to pull down part of the 
 old palace, and to build in its place the quadrangle 
 now under notice. It is not a favourable specimen of 
 his art. The studies made by him from the buildings 
 of Louis XIV. had but too visible an effect on his 
 palaces and private buildings, so that, as Horace 
 Walpole says, ' it may be considered fortunate that the 
 French built only palaces, and not churches, and there- 
 fore St. Paul's escaped, though Hampton Court was 
 sacrificed to the god of false taste. 1 But the King's 
 fancies were paramount, though he readily took the 
 blame on himself, for when the arrangement of the low 
 cloisters in the Fountain Court was criticised, he admitted 
 that it was due entirely to his orders. 
 
 The Fountain Court is nearly a square, more than 
 100 feet each way. In the centre there is a fountain 
 playing in a circular basin. This court occupies the 
 site of the chief or grand court, which was described by 
 Hentzner in the reign of Queen Elizabeth as ' paved 
 with square stone, and having in its centre a fountain, 
 finished in 1590, which throws up water, covered with 
 a gilt crown, on the top of which is a statue of Justice, 
 supported by columns of black and white marble.' 
 The alterations were made gradually ; the south and 
 east sides of the old court were first taken down, and 
 the present state apartments in those divisions erected. 
 The west and north sides, comprising a room of com-
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 323 
 
 munication 109 feet in length, and the Queens Guard 
 Chamber and Great Presence Chamber, retain internal 
 marks of ancient structure ; but a new front was given 
 to the whole by Sir Christopher Wren. As we are not 
 writing a guide-book, we need not enter into a descrip- 
 tion of the state apartments, or of the external 
 appearance of the building containing them; it will 
 be sufficient to mention that this modern portion of 
 Hampton Court was commenced in 1690, and finished 
 in 1694 ; that the south and eastern facades are each 
 about 330 feet long ; that the eastern front faces the 
 grand gravel walk, open to the public; whilst the 
 south front opens on the Privy Garden, which was sunk 
 10 feet for the purpose of obtaining from the lower 
 apartments a view of the river Thames. 
 
 Of the state of the gardens and park, about 44 
 acres in extent, surrounding the palace and forming a 
 regular peninsula, the east and west sides being entirely 
 enclosed by the Thames, whilst the northern boundary 
 is formed by the road from Kingston — of the then 
 state of the gardens and park we have but scanty 
 accounts, but they no doubt corresponded in beauty, 
 as far as the comparatively short time of his occupancy 
 of the palace would allow him, with Wolsey's sumptu- 
 ous pile. Certes the situation did not seem inviting. 
 The Thames, so lovely in many of its windings, is here 
 skirted on both shores by a dull expanse of level wood- 
 less soil, which the utmost efforts of taste and skill 
 seemed scarcely able to render picturesque, and in the 
 time of the founder of the palace, and even in the days 
 of Henry VIII., landscape gardening had not yet become 
 an art. At that period a park was chiefly valued for 
 
 21—2
 
 324 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 the security of lair it afforded to the deer sheltered in 
 the royal chase. An old guide to Hampton Court of 
 the year 1774 says that ' notwithstanding the immediate 
 vicinity of the Thames, the park and garden are not in 
 the least incommoded by the rise of the waters, which 
 in other places is too often occasioned by sudden floods, 
 and though not far from the reflux of the tides, yet 
 they are at such a convenient distance as never to be 
 influenced by any impurities which the flowing of the 
 tides is apt to create." 1 This may have been one of the 
 reasons which induced Wolsey's hygienic advisers to 
 select the spot for its salubrity. 
 
 The gardens were greatly improved by Elizabeth and 
 Charles II. Norden, writing in the time of the former, 
 describes the enclosures appertaining to the palace as 
 comprising two parks, ' the one of deer, the other of 
 hares, 1 both of which were environed with brick walls, 
 except the south side of the former, which was paled 
 and encircled by the Thames. A survey, made in 1653, 
 divides these enclosures nominally into Bushey Old 
 Park, the New Park, the Middle or North Park, the 
 Hare-warren and Hampton Court course. This latter 
 division seems to have comprised the district now termed 
 Hampton Court Park. But it was not till the reign of 
 William III. that the grounds were brought to the 
 perfection in which we see them now. They are in his 
 favourite, the Dutch, style — lawns, shaped with mathe- 
 matical precision, bordered by evergreens, placed at 
 regular distances ; straight canals ; broad gravel walks, 
 statues, and vases. At this period the art of clipping 
 yew and other trees into regular figures and fantastic 
 shapes reached its highest point, and was greatly
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 325 
 
 favoured by the King. But he also laid out and 
 planted the ' Wilderness ' to hide the many smaller 
 buildings, outhouses, courts, and passages to the north 
 of the palace. In this part of the grounds is the maze. 
 A broad gravel walk extends from the Lion Gates, 
 which give admission from the Kingston road to the 
 gardens and to the Thames. These gates, adjoining the 
 King's Arms inn, are very handsome, being designed in 
 a bold and elegant style. The large stone piers are 
 richly decorated, their cornices supported by fluted 
 columns, and surmounted by two colossal lions, couchant. 
 The elegant ironwork of the gates was the work of 
 Huntingdon Shaw.* At the south-west corner of the 
 gardens is the pavilion, erected by Sir Christopher 
 Wren, and occasionally occupied by the rangers of the 
 park. Throughout the park there are fine trees, and 
 here and there masses of verdure less formally disposed. 
 There may also be seen some lines of fortifications, 
 which were originally constructed for the purpose of 
 teaching the art of war to William, Duke of Cumber- 
 land, when a boy — the same Duke who afterwards 
 became so famous in the Scottish rising of 1745. In 
 the centre of the park there is a stud -house, founded 
 by the Stuarts, but greatly extended in its operations 
 of breeding race-horses by George IV. The cream- 
 coloured horses used on state occasions by the Sovereign 
 are kept here. They are descended from those brought 
 over from Hanover by the princes of the Brunswick 
 line ; they are the last representatives of the Flemish 
 horses, once so fashionable. The canal in the grounds 
 is fed by the Cardinal's or Queen's River, issuing from 
 c Or, according to Mr. Law, of Jean Tijou, a Frenchman.
 
 326 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 the river Colne, near Longford, and passing over Houn- 
 slow Heath and through Hanworth and Bushey Parks. 
 We stated, when mentioning the reasons which 
 induced Cardinal Wolsey to fix on Hampton Court as 
 his future residence, that the springs in Coombe Wood 
 supplied excellent water ; with this water the palace is 
 supplied. It is brought to it in leaden pipes, for which 
 some 250 tons of lead were employed, and as that 
 metal was then £5 per ton, the cost of the material 
 alone amounted to a large sum ; the pipes pass under 
 the Hogsmill River, near Kingston, and under the 
 Thames at a short distance from the palace, and their 
 whole length is upwards of three miles, so that Mr. Law, 
 the latest historian of Hampton Court, may not be far 
 out in estimating the cost of the whole work at some- 
 thing like i?50,000 of our present money. 
 
 The tennis-court, said to be the largest and most 
 complete in Europe, is where Charles I. passed many 
 hours of his captivity when detained a prisoner, or 
 quasi-prisoner, by the Parliament. 
 
 The Home Park is separated from the gardens by a 
 modern iron railing, 600 yards long, having at every 
 50 yards wrought-iron gates, 7 feet high, of most 
 elegant workmanship, and some ornamented with the 
 initials of William and Mary ; others with the thistle, 
 rose, and harp. They were erected by William III. 
 
 II. — Its Masters. 
 
 In the foregoing description of the palace and 
 grounds several historical incidents have already been 
 introduced, but such casual notices are insufficient for
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 327 
 
 our purpose ; the topographical warp and woof of our 
 canvas has to be embroidered with the facts — nay, the 
 romance — of human action to present a living picture 
 of the past, to put animation and reality into the silent 
 shadows which flit around us on all sides. We there- 
 fore proceed to enter into details, within the limits of 
 our space, of the lives and fortunes of those persons 
 whose connection with the palace invest it with a 
 personal interest. 
 
 We have seen that Wolsey lived in regal splendour 
 at Hampton Court — nay, his train, his furniture, were 
 more numerous and gorgeous than that of the King, 
 which at an early stage roused the latter^ envy. The 
 Cardinal had no less than 800 persons in his suite. In 
 his hall he maintained three boards with three several 
 officers : a steward who was a priest, a treasurer who 
 was a knight, and a comptroller who was an esquire ; 
 also a confessor, a doctor, three marshals, three ushers 
 of the halls, and two almoners and grooms. In the 
 hall kitchen were two clerks, a clerk comptroller and 
 surveyor of the dresser, a clerk of the spicery ; also two 
 cooks with assistant labourers and children turnspits, 
 four men of the scullery, two yeomen of the pastry, and 
 two paste-layers under them. In his own kitchen was 
 a master cook, who was attired daily in velvet or satin, 
 and wore a gold chain, under whom were two cooks and 
 six assistants ; in the larder, a yeoman and a groom ; 
 in the scullery, a yeoman and two grooms ; in the ewry 
 (linen-room), two yeomen and two grooms; in the 
 cellar, three yeomen and three pages ; in the chandry 
 (candle-room), two yeomen ; in the wardrobe of the 
 dormitory, the master of the wardrobe and twenty
 
 328 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 different officers ; in the laundry, a yeoman, groom and 
 thirteen pages, two yeomen purveyors and a groom 
 purveyor; in the bakehouse, two yeomen and two 
 grooms ; in the wood-yard, one yeoman and a groom ; 
 in the barn, one yeoman ; at the gate, two yeomen and 
 two grooms ; a yeoman in the barge and a master of 
 the horse ; a clerk of the stables and a yeoman of the 
 same ; a farrier and a yeoman of the stirrup ; a maltster 
 and sixteen grooms, every one keeping four horses. In 
 the Cardinal's great chamber and in his privy chamber 
 were the chief chamberlain, a vice-chamberlain, and 
 two gentlemen ushers ; there were also six gentlemen 
 waiters and twelve yeomen waiters. At the head of all 
 these people, ministering to the state of this priest of a 
 religion whose founder had not where to lay His head, as 
 he must often have proclaimed from the pulpit in his 
 preaching days, were nine or ten lords, with each their 
 two or three servants. There were also gentlemen cup- 
 bearers, gentlemen carvers, six yeomen ushers and 
 eight grooms of his chamber. In addition to these 
 there were twelve doctors and chaplains, the clerk of 
 the closet, two secretaries, two clerks of the signet, and 
 four counsellors learned in the law. He also retained 
 a riding-clerk, a clerk of the crown, a clerk of the 
 hamper, fourteen footmen ' garnished with rich riding- 
 coats."' He had a herald -at -arms, a physician, an 
 apothecary, four minstrels, a keeper of his tents ; he 
 also kept a fool. All these were in daily attendance, 
 for whom were continually provided eight tables for 
 the chamberlains and gentlemen officers, and two other 
 tables, one for the young lords and another for the sons 
 of gentlemen who were in his suite.
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 329 
 
 Such is the account given of the Cardinal's house- 
 hold. Of his own daily habits we are told : The Cardinal 
 rose early, and as soon as he came out of his bed- 
 chamber he generally heard two masses. Then he 
 made various necessary arrangements for the day, and 
 about eight o'clock left his privy chamber ready dressed 
 in the red robes of a Cardinal, his upper garment being 
 of scarlet or else of fine crimson taffeta or satin, with a 
 black velvet tippet of sables about his neck, and hold- 
 ing in his hand an orange, deprived of its internal 
 substance, and filled with a piece of sponge, wetted 
 with vinegar and other confections against pestilent 
 airs (surely there could not be any at Hampton Court, 
 chosen because of its very salubrity !), which he com- 
 monly held to his nose when he came to the presses 
 (crowds) or was pestered with many suitors. (Were 
 such unsavoury people allowed to come between the 
 wind and his nobility?) This may account for so 
 many portraits representing him with an orange in his 
 hand. The Great Seal of England and the Cardinal's 
 hat were both borne before him by ' some lord or some 
 gentleman of worship right solemnly,' and as soon as 
 he entered the presence chamber, the two tall priests 
 with the two tall crosses were ready to attend upon 
 him, with gentlemen ushers going before him bare- 
 headed, and crying : ' On, masters, before, and make 
 room for my lord !' The crowd thus called on consisted 
 not only of common suitors, but often of peers of the 
 realm, who chose, or by circumstances were obliged, 
 thus to crouch to an upstart. In this state the 
 Cardinal proceeded down his hall, with a sergeant-at- 
 arms before him, carrying a large silver mace, and two
 
 330 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 gentlemen, each carrying a large plate of silver. On 
 his arrival at the gate or hall-door, he found his mule 
 ready, covered with crimson velvet trappings. The 
 cavalcade which accompanied him when he took the air 
 or went to preside over some meeting was of course 
 equally pompous, consisting of men-at-arms and a long 
 train of nobility and gentry. 
 
 Fancy what a life to lead day after day ! None but 
 the vainest of coxcombs, the most conceited, arrogant, 
 and ostentatious of small-minded parvenus, could have 
 borne it for any length of time. But it agreed with 
 Wolsey's shoddy greatness ; he delighted in all that has 
 ever delighted small minds — idle show and pompous 
 exhibitions. Both at Whitehall and Hampton Court 
 he held high revel, as we learn from George Cavendish, 
 his gentleman usher, especially when the King paid 
 him a visit. ' At such times, 1 says Cavendish, ' there 
 wanted no preparations or goodly furniture, with viands 
 of the finest sorts . . . such pleasures were then devised 
 for the Kingfs comfort and consolation as might be 
 invented or by man's wit designed. , Of course, Caven- 
 dish wrote like the flunkey he was : ' The banquets 
 were set forth with masks and mummeries in so 
 gorgeous a sort and costly manner that it was a heaven 
 to behold. , 
 
 Pageantry has indeed at all times been the device of 
 rogues to catch fools. Of course, sometimes the rogue 
 takes as much pleasure in getting up and participating 
 in the show as the fool does in beholding it. Wolsey 
 took delight in it, because it enabled him to display his 
 wealth ; but there was also policy in it when such dis- 
 play seemed to prove his loyalty. But the exhibition
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 331 
 
 is not without its dangers. When it is made to a man 
 who is envious and covetous, and, moreover, has not 
 only the will but the power to gratify his avaricious long- 
 ings, the risk is very great. As we have already seen, 
 it was fatal in Wolsey "s case. He had to surrender 
 Hampton Court to Henry VIII. much as a traveller 
 gives up his purse and watch to the well-armed high- 
 wayman. True, for this truly princely present Henry 
 bestowed upon Wolsey the manor-house of Richmond, 
 an old and favourite residence of his predecessor, 
 Henry VII., and also of Henry VIII. himself in the 
 early part of his reign ; but it was particularly galling 
 to the ancient servants of Henry VII. to see the recent 
 habitation of their Sovereign occupied by one whom 
 they considered an upstart, and they joined in the 
 popular outcry against Wolsey, concerning whom it 
 was remarked that strange things had come to pass 
 since 'a bochers dog should live in the manor of 
 Richmond. 1 
 
 But though the palace of Hampton Court was now 
 the King's property, Wolsey 's connection with it was 
 not totally severed from it at once. In 1527 Wolsey, 
 by the desire of the King, feasted the ambassadors from 
 the King of France in the building. The preparations 
 for, and the feast itself, are related with terrible prolixity 
 by the gentleman usher Cavendish, already quoted ; as 
 his description gives a fair specimen of what was then 
 a grand banquet, we quote from it the following pas- 
 sages : 
 
 ' Then there was made great preparation for this 
 great assembly at Hampton Court. The Cardinal called 
 before him his principal officers, as steward, treasurer,
 
 332 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 controller and clerk of his kitchen . . . commanding 
 them neither to spare for any cost, expense, or travail, 
 to make such a triumphant banquet as they might not 
 only wonder at it here, but also make a glorious report 
 of it in their country. . . . They sent out caters, pur- 
 veyors, and divers other persons ; they also sent for all 
 the expert cooks within London or elsewhere. The 
 purveyors provided, and my lord's friends sent in such 
 provision as one would wonder to have seen. The 
 cooks wrought both day and night with subtleties and 
 many crafty devices ; the yeomen and grooms of the 
 wardrobe were busy in hanging of the chambers and 
 furnishing the same with beds of silk and other furniture. 
 Then wrought the carpenters, joiners, masons, and all 
 other artificers. There was the carnage and re-carriage 
 of plate, stuff, and other rich implements. There was 
 also provided two hundred and eighty beds furnished 
 with all manner of furniture to them belonging. . . . 
 The day was come to the Frenchmen assigned, and they 
 ready assembled before the hour of their appointment, 
 whereof the officers caused them to ride to Hanworth, 
 a park of the King's within three miles, there to hunt 
 and spend the day until night, at which time they 
 returned to Hampton Court, and every one of them was 
 conveyed to their several chambers, having in them 
 great fires, and wine to their comfort and relief. The 
 chambers where they supped and banqueted were ordered 
 in this sort : first the great waiting chamber was hanged 
 with rich arras, as all others were, and furnished with 
 tall yeomen to serve. There were set tables round 
 about the chamber, banquetwise covered ; a cupboard 
 was there garnished with white plate, having also in
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 333 
 
 the same chamber, to give the more light, four great 
 plates of silver set with great lights, and a great fire of 
 wood and coals. The next chamber, being the chamber 
 of presence, was hanged with rich arras, and a sumptuous 
 cloth of estate furnished with many goodly gentlemen 
 to serve the tables. Then there was a cupboard being 
 as long as the chamber was broad, garnished with gilt 
 plate and gold plate, and a pair of silver candlesticks 
 gilt, curiously wrought, and which cost three hundred 
 marks. This cupboard was barred round about, that 
 no man could come nigh it, for there was none of this 
 plate touched in this banquet, for there was sufficient 
 besides. The plates on the walls were of silver gilt, 
 having in them large wax candles to give light. When 
 supper was ready the principal officers caused the 
 trumpeters to blow ; the officers conducted the guests 
 from their chambers into the supper rooms, and when 
 they all had sat down their service came up in such 
 abundance, both costly and full of subtleties, with such 
 pleasant music, that the Frenchmen (as it seemed) were 
 wrapt into a heavenly paradise. You must understand 
 that my lord Cardinal had not yet come, but he came 
 in before the second course, booted and spurred, and 
 bade them " preface " [a contraction of four French 
 words, meaning " Much good may it do you !"], at 
 whose coming there was great joy, every man rising 
 from his place. He, the Cardinal, being in his apparel 
 as he rode [why he did so is not very clear], called for 
 a chair, and sat among them as merry as ever he had been 
 seen. The second course with many dishes, subtleties, 
 and devices, above a hundred in number, which were of 
 such goodly proportion and so costly, that I think the
 
 334 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Frenchmen never saw the like. There were castles with 
 
 images ; beasts, birds, and personages most lively made ; 
 
 a chessboard of spiced plate with men thereof, which 
 
 was put into a case to be taken to France. Then took 
 
 my lord a bowl of gold filled with ippocrass, and drank 
 
 to his lord the King, and next to the King of France. 
 
 The guests, of course, did the same, and the cups went 
 
 so merrily around that many of the Frenchmen were 
 
 fain to be led to their beds. Then rose up my lord, 
 
 went into his privy chamber to pull off his boots, and 
 
 then went he to supper, making a slight repast, and 
 
 then rejoined his guests, and used them so lovingly and 
 
 familiarly that they could not commend him too much. 1 
 
 Cavendish's account of the banquet, which he evidently 
 
 wrote con amore, is much longer than our extract, and 
 
 that probably is too long for our readers. To them we 
 
 apologize for entertaining (?) them with so tedious a 
 
 description of trivialities,* but in a special historic 
 
 precis of Hampton Court such details must necessarily 
 
 be inserted, just as in making an inventory of the 
 
 * In the Middle Ages and Renaissance days banquets, masks 
 and revels were thought a great deal of ; yea, so great was the 
 rage for them that nowhere were masks more frequently per- 
 formed than at the very last place one would expect them to 
 be indulged in, namely, at the Inns of Court, where grave 
 and learned lawyers, under the presidency of the Master of 
 the Revels — an office which led more readily to knighthood 
 than professional merit — discussed the cut and colour of the 
 shepherdesses' kirtles. Whoso likes to read of such doings -will 
 find plenty about them in the ' Progresses of Queen Elizabeth,' 
 and in Whitelock's 'Memorials.' An account of the revival of 
 the 'Maske of Flowers' at Gray's Inn in July, 1887, will be 
 found in the journals of that date.
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 335 
 
 contents of a mansion, not the grand furniture of the 
 drawing and dining-room only has to be enumerated, 
 but also the humble pots and pans of the scullery. 
 
 The banquet just described took place, as already 
 mentioned, after Wolsey's surrender of the palace to 
 the King, and by the latters orders. Henry VIII. no 
 doubt knew that the Cardinal was the man to carry 
 them out well, for he would take a personal interest 
 and pleasure in so doing, seeing that the banquets and 
 masques so prevalent in that King's reign had nowhere 
 been more magnificently ordered than at Hampton Court 
 and Whitehall, as already intimated above. But it is 
 strange that the King should have abstained from 
 appearing at the banquet given to his royal friend's 
 ambassadors. 
 
 As soon as Henry had obtained possession of Hampton 
 Court, he began making extensive alterations in the 
 buildings; the Great Hall as it now appears was his 
 work. Having a taste for art,* he employed Holbein, 
 many of whose works are now at Hampton Court. 
 Items of the expenses of building have come down to 
 us. Thus in 1527, from February 26 to March 25, 
 there was paid to the Freemason builders, to the master, 
 John Molton, at 12d. per day, 6s. ; to the warden, 
 William Reynolds, at 5s. the week, 20s. ; to the setters, 
 
 A superstition has been cherished from classical days 
 that artistic and literary culture softens and refines manners. 
 Henry VIII. had both, and yet what a brute, brutal in every 
 respect, he was ! Dr. Johnson was another instance of bearish- 
 ness coupled with learning ; and Porson, soaked though he was 
 with Greek and Latin lore and wisdom, was a savage, with 
 whom no gentleman could associate for any length of time. 
 Emolliet mores, what a delusion !
 
 336 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Nicholas Seyworth and three others, at 3s. 8d. per 
 week, 13s. 8d. ; to others, at 3s. 4d. the week, 13s. 4d. 
 Some of the workmen evidently took frequent holidays. 
 The clerk of the works had 8d. a day, and the writing 
 clerks 6d. each. 
 
 The Great Hall was on many occasions during the 
 reign of Henry VIII. used for royal banquets, but as 
 one banquet is very much like another, the reader need 
 not be wearied with a repetition of the one already 
 described : banquets mean eating and drinking, and 
 undergoing the wet-blanket of dreary speeches one day, 
 and what the Germans elegantly call 'pussy's lamenta- 
 tion'' the next. In 1536 Henry married Jane Seymour, 
 and in the following year she died at Hampton Court, 
 after giving birth to Edward VI. On this occasion the 
 English Bluebeard went into mourning, and compelled 
 the Court to do the same. Having been married to 
 Jane but seventeen months, he had probably not had 
 time to get tired of her. He actually remained a 
 widower for some time, but eventually, in order to 
 strengthen the Protestant cause in England, at the 
 suggestion of Thomas Cromwell he married, much 
 against his inclination, the ' Flanders mare,' Anne of 
 Cleves. In less than six months he obtained a divorce 
 from her, and sent Cromwell to the block. Then in 
 1540 the ill-fated Catharine Howard was openly shown 
 as the future Queen at Hampton Court Palace, and the 
 marriage performed with great pomp and joyous 
 celebrations. But in less than two years the royal 
 voluptuary cut off her head on account of faults she 
 had committed before knowing him. At Hampton 
 Court also Henry married his last wife, Lady Catherine
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 337 
 
 Parr, who survived him, but her head was once in great 
 danger. She opposed the King on some religious 
 question, and in great wrath he ordered an impeach- 
 ment to be drawn up against her ; but she, being warned 
 of her danger, spoke so humbly of the foolishness of her 
 sex that when the Chancellor came to arrest her Henry 
 ordered the ' beast , to be gone. 
 
 In 1538 Henry VIII., who was particularly fond of 
 hunting, but who was then so fat and unwieldy that 
 he required special facilities for following his favourite 
 sport, and needed them close at hand, extended his 
 chase through fifteen parishes. These he kept strictly 
 preserved for his own use, and they were enclosed by a 
 wooden paling, which was removed after his death, the 
 deer sent to Windsor, and the chase thrown open. 
 
 During the Christmas of 1543, Henry VIII. entertained 
 Francis Gonzaga, the Viceroy of Sicily, at Hampton 
 Court, and Edward VI. on this occasion likewise pre- 
 sided, in puerile magnificence, over the table in the 
 high place of the hall, an occurrence over which grave 
 historians grow quite enthusiastic, Avhilst at the same 
 time describing the splendour of the entertainment. 
 But after reading all this gush it is quite a relief to 
 come on a passage like the following, showing the 
 seamy side of regal pomp. It is from a curious old 
 manuscript, containing some very singular directions 
 for regulating the household of Henry VIII. : 
 
 ' His Highness -1 baker shall not put alum in the 
 bread, or mix rye, oaten or bean flour with the same, 
 and if detected he shall be put in the stocks. [This 
 prohibition implies that the thing had been done, and 
 by the King's own highly-paid baker !] His Highness" 1 
 
 22
 
 338 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 attendants are not to steal any locks or keys, tables, 
 forms, cupboards, or other furniture out of noblemen's 
 or gentlemen's houses where they go to visit. [The 
 King's attendants must have been worse than modern 
 burglars, who are not known to steal tables and cup- 
 boards !] Master cooks shall not employ such scullions 
 as go about naked, or lie all night on the ground 
 before the kitchen fire. [" High life below stairs " was, 
 it would seem, then in its infancy with scullions going 
 about naked !] The officers of his privy chamber shall 
 be loving together, no grudging or grumbling, nor talk- 
 ing of the King's pastimes. [Fancy the officers of the 
 privy chamber, those grand gentlemen, having to be 
 taught how to behave, and not to indulge in shindies 
 among themselves, nor, like a parcel of low lackeys, to 
 sit in judgment on their master's doings !] The King's 
 barber is enjoined to be cleanly, not to frequent the 
 company of misguided women, for fear of danger to the 
 King's royal person. [A wise King, knowing that his 
 barber was given to such practices, would have sent 
 him to the deuce, and given up being shaved !] There 
 shall be no romping with the maids on the staircase, 
 by which dishes and other things are often broken. 
 [The crockery being smashed was his Majesty's chief 
 concern in this matter !] Care shall be taken that the 
 pewter spoons and the wooden ones used in the kitchen 
 be not broken or stolen. [What a lot of paltry thieves 
 there must have been in the royal household !] The 
 pages shall not interrupt the kitchen maids. [Those 
 pages then, as now, must have been awful fellows !] 
 The grooms shall not steal his Highness' straw for beds, 
 sufficient being allowed for them. [How those grooms,
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 339 
 
 who were, as we have seen, so busy in furnishing the 
 rooms with 280 beds of silk, must have enjoyed the 
 straw they slept on !] Coal only to be allowed to the 
 King's, Queen's, and Lady Mary's chambers. [Rather 
 hard on the other inmates of the palace !] The brewers 
 are not to put any brimstone in the ale. [His Majesty 
 did not want to taste sulphur before his time !]' 
 
 When the Knights Hospitallers of St. John granted 
 the lease of Hampton Court to Cardinal Wolsey, they 
 were on or before its expiry prepared to renew it ; but 
 they never had the chance of doing so, for as in 1540 
 Henry VIII. suppressed all the monasteries and con- 
 fiscated their property, the Knights Hospitallers shared 
 that fate, and Hampton Court became royal property. 
 On Henry's death the palace was chosen by the 
 guardians of Edward VI., then a minor, as his residence; 
 he was placed under the special care of his uncle, the 
 Duke of Somerset, Protector of the Council of Regency. 
 But serious dissensions arose amidst the Council, and 
 it was proposed to deprive the Duke of his royal ward, 
 and an alarm having been given that this was to be 
 done bv force, the household and the inhabitants of 
 Hampton armed themselves for the protection of the 
 young King. The Protector, however, removed him to 
 Windsor Castle, lest the Council should obtain posses- 
 sion of his person. In 1550 Edward and his attendants 
 removed from London to Hampton Court, in conse- 
 quence of an alarm that the ' black death ' had made 
 its appearance there — in fact, two of Edward's servants 
 were said to have died of it. In 1552 Edward held a 
 chapter of the Order of the Garter at Hampton Court 
 Palace ; the knights went to Windsor in the morning, 
 
 22—2
 
 340 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 but returned to this palace in the evening, where they 
 were royally feasted, and where Henry Grey, Marquis 
 of Dorset, was created Duke of Suffolk, and John 
 Dudley, Earl of Warwick, Duke of Northumberland. 
 
 In 1553 Mary I. became Queen of England, and in 
 the following year she married Philip, son of the 
 Emperor Charles and heir to the Spanish crown. This 
 alliance with the leading Catholic Power highly dis- 
 pleased the English people, and, in fact, they soon 
 began to feel the effects of Mary's bigoted adherence 
 to her own, the Roman Catholic, faith. She and her 
 husband passed their honeymoon in gloomy retirement 
 at Hampton Court in 1554, but in 1555 they kept 
 their Christmas there with great solemnity, and the 
 Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, was 
 invited as a guest, though there was little love between 
 the two sisters. At this Christmas festivity the great 
 hall was illuminated with 1,000 lamps. The Princess 
 Elizabeth supped at the same table with their Majesties, 
 next the cloth of state, and after supper was served 
 with a perfumed napkin and plate of comfits by Lord 
 Pa^et ; but she retired with her ladies before the revels, 
 maskings, and disguisings began. On St. Stephen's 
 Day she was permitted to hear matins, or more likely 
 mass, in the Queen's closet, where, we are told, she was 
 attired in a robe of white satin, strung all over with 
 large pearls. On December 29 she sat with their 
 Majesties and the nobility at a grand spectacle of 
 jousting, when 200 lances were broken, half the com- 
 batants being accoutred as Germans and half as 
 Spaniards. 
 
 At her accession to the throne Elizabeth made
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 341 
 
 Hampton Court one of her favourite residences ; it 
 was the most richly furnished, and here she caused her 
 naval victories over the Spaniards to be worked in fine 
 tapestries. Here was the scene of her grand festivities, 
 equalling in splendour those of Henry VIII. Her 
 ordinary dinner was a solemn affair. Hentzner thus 
 describes it : ' While she was at prayers, we saw her 
 table set in the following solemn manner : a gentleman 
 entered the room, bearing a rod, and along with him 
 another, who had a tablecloth, which, after they had 
 both knelt down three times with the utmost venera- 
 tion, he spread upon the table, and, after kneeling 
 again, they both retired. [Oh, the contemptible flunkey 
 souls of those days !] Then came two others, one with 
 the rod again, the other with a saltcellar, a plate, and 
 bread ; when they had kneeled, as the others had done, 
 and placed what was brought upon the table, they then 
 retired with the same ceremonies performed by the first. 
 At last came an unmarried lady (we were told she was 
 a Countess), and along with her a married one, bearing 
 a tasting knife, who, when she had prostrated herself 
 three times in the most graceful manner, approached 
 the table and rubbed the plates with bread and salt, 
 with as much awe as if the Queen had been present. 
 When they had waited there a little while, the yeomen 
 of the guard entered, bareheaded, clothed in scarlet, 
 with a golden rose upon their backs, bringing in at 
 each turn a course of twenty-four dishes, served in 
 plate most of it gilt ; these dishes were received by a 
 gentleman in the same order they were brought and 
 placed upon the table, while the lady taster gave to 
 each of the guard a mouthful to eat of the particular
 
 342 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 dish he had brought, for fear of any poison. During 
 the time that this guard, which consists of the tallest 
 and stoutest men that can be found in all England, 
 were bringing dinner, twelve trumpets and two kettle- 
 drums made the hall ring for half an hour together. 1 
 No wonder that the Maids of Honour of Queen Elizabeth 
 would, disguised as orange-girls, escape from the purlieus 
 of the palace, and frequent those of the theatres ! The 
 tidings of the defeat of the Armada arrived on Michael- 
 mas Day, and were communicated to the Queen whilst she 
 was at dinner at Hampton Court, partaking of a goose ; 
 hence the origin of partaking of that savoury dish on 
 Michaelmas Day. Such is the tradition ; but geese 
 were eaten on that day and about that time of the 
 year before the Armada was dreamt of; they are then 
 eaten because then in the finest condition. 
 
 James I. took up his residence at Hampton Court 
 soon after his arrival in England, and here in 1604 
 took place, not revels and masques, but a conference of 
 Presbyterians and the members of the Established 
 Church ; it lasted three days, and its result was the 
 translation of the Bible, ' appointed to be read in 
 churches. 1 But even his ' Sowship , James I., who 
 prided himself on his learning and theological know- 
 ledge, was satisfied with a three days 1 conference on so 
 important a question as was involved in his favourite 
 axiom, ' No Bishop, no King, 1 but when it came to 
 feasting; he wanted more time. When in 1606 he 
 entertained Francis, Prince of Vaudemont, son of the 
 Duke of Lorraine, and the noblemen and gentlemen 
 who accompanied him, the feasting and pastimes occupied 
 fourteen days. Queen Anne, the wife of James I., died
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 343 
 
 at the palace of Hampton Court in 1618, and was 
 interred in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 Charles L, on his marriage with Henrietta Maria, 
 daughter of Henry IV. of France, here spent the honey- 
 moon, and the plague then raging in London (1625) 
 kept the royal pair and the Court, which had followed 
 them, some time longer at Hampton Court. Here the 
 King gave audience to the ambassadors of France and 
 Denmark, as also to an envoy from Gabor, Prince of 
 Transylvania.* In 1641, when the strife between the 
 two great political parties — the Cavaliers, siding with 
 the King, and the Roundheads, or the great mass of 
 farmers, merchants, and shopkeepers, the Tories and 
 Whigs of the future — was at its height, the London 
 apprentices, then formidable engines of radical faction, 
 became so threatening in their conduct towards the 
 Court that Charles retired to Hampton Court for a 
 time. But the King's fate could not be averted, and in 
 1647 he was again brought to Hampton Court by the 
 army, and kept there, not in actual imprisonment, but 
 under restraint, to November 11, when he made his 
 escape. John Evelyn, in his ' Diary,' records a visit he 
 paid Charles on October 10 in these words : ' I came to 
 Hampton Court, where I had the honour to kiss His 
 Majesty's hand, he being now in the power of those 
 execrable villains, who not long after murdered him.' 
 
 After the King's execution, the fine collections of art 
 which once decorated the walls of Hampton Court were 
 scattered abroad, and now form the choicest treasures 
 
 * In 1621 he had been elected King of Hungary, but after- 
 wards had to resign that dignity for the inferior one mentioned 
 above.
 
 344 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 of foreign and private galleries, and the honour* of 
 Hampton Court and the palace were sold in 1651 to 
 a Mr. John Phelps, a member of the House of 
 Commons, for the sum of ,P1 0,765 19s. 9d. ; but in 
 1656 Oliver Cromwell, enriched by the wreck of the 
 State, again acquired possession of the palace, for which 
 he had a great predilection, and consequently made it 
 his chief residence. The marriage ceremonies of Eliza- 
 beth, daughter of Cromwell, with Lord Falconberg 
 were performed here on November 18, 1657, and in the 
 following year the Protector's favourite daughter, Mrs. 
 Claypole, who disapproved of her father's doings, here 
 breathed her last. Hither Cromwell would repair, 
 when Lord Protector of the realm, to dine with his 
 officers. Thurloe thus records the fact : ' Sometimes, 
 as the fit takes him, he dines with the officers of his 
 army at Hampton Court, and shows a hundred antic 
 tricks, as throwing cushions at them, and putting hot 
 coals into their pockets and boots. At others, before 
 he has half dined, he gives orders for a drum to beat, 
 and calls in his foot-guards to snatch off the meat from 
 the table and tear it in pieces, with many other un- 
 accountable whimsies. . . . Now he calls for his 
 guards, with whom he rides out, encompassed behind 
 and before . . . and at his return at night shifts from 
 bed to bed for fear of surprise. 1 He was constantly 
 attended by a dog, who guarded his bedroom door. 
 
 * Hampton Court had been erected into an honour when it 
 became the property of Henry VIII. An honour in law is a 
 lordship, on which inferior lordships and manors depend by 
 performance of customs and services. But no lordships were 
 honours but such as belonged to the King.
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 345 
 
 One morning he found the dog- dead. He then remem- 
 bered the prediction a gipsy had made to Charles I., 
 that on the death of a dog in a room the King was 
 then in, the kingdom he was about to lose would be 
 restored to his family. * The kingdom is departed 
 from me P cried Cromwell, and he died soon after. 
 
 After the Restoration the palace, which of course 
 reverted to the Crown, was occasionally occupied by 
 Charles II. Here he spent his honeymoon on his 
 marriage with Catherine of Braganza. He had married 
 her for money ; he received with her a dowry of half a 
 million, besides two fortresses — Tangier in Morocco 
 and Bombay in Hindostan. He soon neglected her for 
 Lady Castlemaine and hussies of her character. Pepys, 
 indeed, under May 31, 1662, records: 'The Queen is 
 brought a few days since to Hampton Court, and all 
 people say of her to be a very fine and handsome lady, 
 and very discreet, and that the King is pleased enough 
 with her, which I fear will put Madame Castlemaine's 
 nose out of joint.'' But Pepys was a bad prognosticati- 
 on this matter. The unhappy Queen, neglected and 
 forgotten, spent most of her time in a small building 
 which overlooked the river Thames, and was considered 
 a sort of summer residence. It was known by the 
 name of the Water Gallery, and occupied the site in 
 front of what is now the southern facade of King 
 William's quadrangle, on whose erection the Water 
 Gallery was entirely removed. 
 
 When the great plague of 1665 spread westward in 
 the Metropolis, the ' merry monarch ' and his suite 
 again retired to Hampton Court, where, like Boccaccio's 
 Florentines under a similar calamity, they sought
 
 346 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 oblivion of fear in a continual succession of festivities. - 
 Persons who are curious on such matters will find an 
 amusing account of those doings in the autobiography 
 of Sir Ralph Esher, edited by Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Pepys, it appears, paid frequent visits to Hampton 
 Court, but was, it seems, not always well treated. 
 Thus, on July 23, 1665, he writes : ' To Hampton 
 Court, where I followed the King to chapel and heard 
 a good sermon. ... I was not invited any whither to 
 dinner, though a stranger, which did also trouble me ; 
 but' (he adds philosophically) 'I must remember it is 
 a Court. . . . However, Cutler carried me to Mr. 
 Marriott's, the housekeeper, and there we had a very 
 good dinner and good company, among others Lilly, the 
 painter. 1 Pepys was easily consoled for the snub the 
 ' quality ' treated him to. 
 
 James II. also occasionally visited Hampton Court, 
 but the palace was neglected, and did not actually 
 again become a royal residence till the accession of 
 William III. and Queen Mary. He, as we have already 
 mentioned on a former occasion, made the palace what 
 it now is by pulling down the buildings erected by 
 Henry VIII., and covering the site with the present 
 Fountain Court and the State apartments surrounding 
 it. According to a drawing by Hollar, showing Hamp- 
 ton Court as furnished by Henry VIII., the eastern 
 front was really picturesque, and agreed perfectly with 
 the architectural features of Wolsey's building. Still, 
 according to the notions of the seventeenth century, 
 the apartments were not suitable for a royal residence, 
 especially as William intended to make it a permanent 
 and not a merely temporary one. Moreover, the King
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 347 
 
 took a personal pleasure in building and planting and 
 decorating his residence. He determined to create 
 another Loo on the banks of the Thames. A wide 
 extent of ground was laid out in formal walks and 
 parterres ; limes, thirty years old, were transplanted 
 from neighbouring woods to make shady alleys. The 
 new court rose under the direction of Wren, and with 
 it the grand eastern and southern fronts. It is said 
 that the King once entertained the idea of erecting an 
 entirely new palace at the west end of the town of 
 Hampton on an elevation distant about half a mile 
 from the river Thames, but the design was abandoned 
 from a consideration of the length of time necessary for 
 such an undertaking. Horace Walpole informs us that 
 Sir Christopher Wren submitted another design for the 
 alterations of the ancient palace in a better taste, which 
 Queen Mary wished to have executed ; but she was over- 
 ruled. The same authority says : ' This palace of King 
 William seems erected in emulation of what is intended 
 to imitate the pompous edifices of the French monarch.' 
 Unfortunately for William, he found after a time 
 that Hampton Court was too far from the Houses of 
 Lords and Commons and the public offices, but being 
 unable to stand the impure air of London, he took up 
 his residence at Kensington House, which was then 
 quite in the country. But he frequently visited 
 Hampton Court, and it was there he met with the 
 accident which caused his death. On February 20, 
 1702, he was ambling on a favourite horse named 
 Sorrel through the park. He urged the horse to strike 
 into a gallop just at a spot where a mole had been at 
 work. The horse stumbled and went down on his
 
 348 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 knees ; the King fell off and broke his collar-bone. 
 The bone was set, and the King returned to Kensing- 
 ton in his coach; but the jolting of the rough roads 
 made it necessary to reduce the fracture again. He 
 never recovered the double shock to the system, and 
 fever supervening, he died a few days subsequently. 
 
 The Princess of Denmark, afterwards Queen Anne, 
 in this palace gave birth on July 24, 1689, to the Duke 
 of Gloucester, who died at eleven years of age, and thus 
 made room for the House of Brunswick. Anne occasion- 
 ally resided here after her accession to the throne. 
 
 The Great Hall had in Queen Elizabeth's time been 
 used as a theatre ; it was fitted up for a similar purpose 
 by George I. in 1718. It was intended that plays 
 should have been acted there twice a week during the 
 summer season by the King's company of comedians, 
 but the theatre was not ready till nearly the end of 
 September, and only seven plays were performed in it 
 in that season. The first play, acted on September 23, 
 was 'Hamlet." 1 On October 1, curiously enough, 
 ' Henry VIII., or the Fall of Wolsey, 1 was represented 
 on the very spot which had been the scene of his 
 greatest splendour, recalling the events of the life of 
 the founder of the princely pile. The King paid the 
 charges of the representation and the travelling 
 expenses of the actors, amounting to i?50 a night, 
 besides which he made a present of i?200 to the 
 managers for their trouble. It was never afterwards 
 used but once for a play, performed on October 16, 
 1731, for the entertainment of the Duke of Lorraine, 
 afterwards Emperor of Germany ; but the fittings were 
 not removed till the year 1798.
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 349 
 
 In 1829 the parish of Hampton obtained permission 
 of George IV. to fit up the hall for divine service 
 during the rebuilding of Hampton Church, and it was 
 so used for about two years. 
 
 George II. but seldom visited Hampton Court, and 
 George III. preferred Kew Palace. From his time no 
 Sovereign has occupied Hampton Court as a royal 
 residence. 
 
 On November 4, 1793, Richard Tick ell, a political 
 writer, who had apartments in Hampton Court Palace, 
 had been accustomed to sit and read on a parapet wall 
 or kind of platform in one of the upper rooms. The 
 spot was filled with flower-pots. On the day in ques- 
 tion, while his carriage was waiting to take him and his 
 family to town, his wife having left him for a moment, 
 on her return missed him, and going to the open window, 
 saw her husband lving in the garden below on the ground. 
 Before she could reach him, he had expired. How the 
 accident happened can never be known. He was said 
 to have committed suicide, but there was no assignable 
 reason for such an act. 
 
 The famous vine at Hampton Court, the largest in 
 Europe, was planted from a slip in the year 1768. Its 
 fruit, the black Hamburg kind, is reserved exclusively 
 for the Queen's table. The writer of a ' Tour of 
 England, 1 in 1798, says : ' In these gardens is a most 
 remarkably large vine. . . . The gardener told me 1,550 
 bunches of grapes are now hanging upon it, the whole 
 weight of which is estimated at 972 cwt. 1 It bears the 
 same number of bunches, that is, from 1,500 to 2,000, 
 now. 
 
 For the last century or more apartments in Hampton
 
 350 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 Court Palace have generally been bestowed on the poorer 
 female members of noble families, or on the widows of 
 distinguished generals and admirals who have died in 
 the service of their country. And several of these apart- 
 ments contain large suites of rooms, some of which are 
 compact and self-contained, whilst in other cases they 
 are inconveniently disconnected. For the accommoda- 
 tion of tenants of such suites there survives an ancient 
 Sedan chair on wheels, drawn by a chairman, and called 
 the ' Push, 1 which is used by ladies going out in the 
 evening from one part of the building to another. Of 
 the fifty-three apartments into which the palace is now 
 divided, some contain as many as forty rooms, with five 
 or six staircases. 
 
 Among the distinguished personages who have at 
 various times found an asvlum within the walls of 
 Hampton Court Palace is William, Prince of Orange, 
 Hereditary Stadtholder of Holland. Driven from his 
 country in 1795 by the advancing wave of the French 
 Revolution, he sought refuge in England ; the apart- 
 ments occupied by him in the palace were those on the 
 east side of the middle quadrangle. Gustavus IV., after 
 having in 1810 been deposed from the Swedish throne 
 by Napoleon, came to England, and occupied a set of 
 apartments here. He died in February, 1837. 
 
 One of the most curious circumstances in connection 
 with the grant of these apartments is the fact that 
 Dr. Samuel Johnson made application for one ; his 
 letter making it is still extant, and was, I think, first 
 made known by Mr. Law in his ' History of Hampton 
 Court.'' The letter was addressed to Lord Hertford 
 (then Lord Chamberlain), and dated ' Bolt Court, Fleet
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 351 
 
 Street, 11 April, 1776.' He says in it that hearing 
 that some of the apartments are now vacant, the grant 
 of one to him would be considered a great favour, and 
 he bases his claim on his having had the honour of 
 vindicating his Majesty's Government. The reply to it 
 was : ' Lord C. presents his compliments to Mr. Johnson, 
 and is sorry that he cannot obey his commands, having 
 already on his hands many engagements unsatisfied.' 
 The answer sounds somewhat satirical. But what could 
 Dr. Johnson mean by making the application ? If we 
 thought him capable of a huge joke, we might think 
 he meant this for one ; but, as he dealt in small jokes 
 only, we are driven to assume that he wrote seriously. 
 Did he know what he was asking for ? Supposing his 
 request had been granted, he would very soon have wished 
 it had been refused. Fancy Johnson, the boisterous, 
 arrogant tavern dictator, who considered the chair at 
 a punch-drinking bout in an inn the throne of human 
 felicity, what would he have done shut up in an apart- 
 ment in the palace, in the midst of haughty dowagers, 
 serious widows, and prim old maids, who would speedily 
 have complained of the noisy companions who would 
 have looked him up there ! Had he gone to the King's 
 Arms or some other hostelry in the neighbourhood, he 
 would have had to return at early and regular hours. 
 How could he have submitted to that ? Would he have 
 taken all his old women with him, and how long would 
 they have been at peace with the aristocratic ladies 
 inhabiting the palace ? The results of their accidentally 
 meeting on staircases or in passages are too awful to 
 contemplate, and Johnson's application remains an in- 
 explicable enigma.
 
 352 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 In 1838, whilst removing one of the old towers built 
 by Wolsey, the workmen came upon a number of glass 
 bottles, which lay among the foundation ; they were of 
 curious shape, and it has been suggested that they were 
 buried there to denote the date of the building. 
 
 On December 14, 1882, the palace had a narrow 
 escape from destruction. A suite of eight or nine 
 rooms, in the occupation of a lady, and overlooking 
 the gardens and the Fountain Court, caught fire at 
 half-past seven in the morning, it is supposed by the 
 upsetting of a benzoline lamp in one of the servants 1 
 rooms. That the authorities should permit the use of 
 such lamps in the building seems strange, especially in 
 rooms situate as those were, over the tapestry-room, 
 which adjoins the Picture Gallery, and contains splendid 
 specimens of Gobelin and other ancient needlework. 
 The flames spread rapidly through the rooms, and three 
 of them were entirely burnt out before the firemen, 
 assisted by men of the 4th Hussars, then stationed at 
 the palace, could check the outbreak. All the other 
 rooms were greatly damaged by fire and water. But 
 the saddest part of the occurrence was that one of the 
 servants, the cook, whilst rushing to the assistance of 
 her fellow-servants, fell senseless on the floor, overcome 
 by the smoke, and her charred and lifeless body was 
 only got out when the fire had been subdued. It is 
 to be hoped that a cause which might involve a great 
 national loss has now been removed by prohibition. 
 
 In 1839 those parts of the palace which are not 
 occupied by private residents, and the gardens, were 
 thrown open to the public, and during the summer 
 months are visited by thousands, who arrive there by
 
 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 353 
 
 rail, river, van, or, latterly, on the wheel-horse — vulgo 
 bike. The permanent residents bitterly complain of 
 these invasions, and not without reason, seeing how 
 many 'Arrys and 'Arriets come down in holiday time ; 
 but as the palace and gardens are maintained at an 
 expense of about PI 1,000 per annum out of the people's 
 money, the right of visiting them can scarcely be denied 
 to the public. Nor can the amount spent on the place 
 be found fault with ; it is a mere triHe in the domestic 
 house-keeping bill of the nation, and a larger sum is 
 annually wasted in useless firing off of cannon. The 
 palace and gardens — 
 
 ' The pleasant place of all festivity, 
 The revel of the earLb, the masque of ' — 
 
 Albion, are to us what Venice is to Italy : 
 
 ' . . . a boast, a marvel, and a show.' 
 ' But unto us ' 
 
 Hampton Court 
 
 ' Hath a spell beyond 
 A name in story, aud a long array 
 Of mighty shadows.' 
 
 To us Hampton Court is a type of the progress of 
 the nation from slavery to freedom, from darkness to 
 light. Founded to gratify the pride and self-indulgence 
 of an arrogant and scheming priest, for more than three 
 centuries Hampton Court was the symbol of oppression 
 on the one side, and of subjection on the other. But 
 Time, which works such strange metamorphoses, has, 
 since the last sixty years, transformed what was once 
 the exclusive appanage of kings into the playground of
 
 354 LONDON SOUVENIRS 
 
 the plebs, and what this change implies may well form 
 a subject of study for inquiring and philosophical minds. 
 But such study must be based on a knowledge of facts, 
 an axiom we have kept in view in the compilation of 
 our topographical and historical notes on the origin, 
 progress, and final realization of the architectural, 
 political, and social idea embodied in the monumental 
 pile we have so concisely attempted to describe, so as 
 to endow the contemplation thereof, in all its phases, 
 with an intelligent appreciation of the physical and 
 ideal beauties, together with their importance as an 
 index of national advancement, which invest with an 
 undying charm the palace and gardens of Hampton 
 Court.* 
 
 * In Herefordshire, not far from Leominster, there is another 
 Hampton Court, a spacious mansion of monastic and castellated 
 architecture, having a fine chapel with open timber roof. It 
 was built by Sir Rowland Lenthall, Yeoman of the Eobes to 
 Henry IV., who distinguished himself at the Battle of Agin- 
 court. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 BILLINO AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
 
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