Jc; Ccf^lric^ ^CvL^t -^ ^vTA^j AiTM. /a^- ^><^^?^^ f Pr^fM. / ^»/^/'7 , LONDON SOUVENIRS Sir Walter Besant's Books on London. Demy 8vo., cloth, with 125 Illustrations, 7s. 6d. LONDON. ' ^Vhat the late J. R. Creeii has done for England Sir Walter Besant has here attempted, with conspicuous success, for Cockaigne. The author of " A Short History of the EnEli<;h People " and the historian of the London citizen share together the true secret of popularity. Both have placed before the people of to-day a series of vivid and indelible pictures of the |>eople of the past. . . . No one who loves his London but will love it the better for reading this book. He who loves it not has before him a clear duty and a manifest pleasure.' — Graphic. ' " London " is as good as a novel— better than many. It is a romance in which the WTiter h.-is found inspiration. His style marches with his narrative, his narrative is worthy of the events it records.' — Yoi-kshirt Post. ' Mr. Besant w-ritcs historj- as Thackeray WTOte the chronicles of the Four Georges.' — Standard. Demy 8vo., cloth, with 131 Illustrations, 7s. 6(1. WESTMINSTER. ' There Is nothing but admiration to be expressed as well for the plan as for the execution of the book.' — Daily Chronicle. 'An altogether fascinating book. Pajjer, print, and pictures are worthy of a text in which erudition, colour, and literarj- charm are alike conspicuous.' — Queen. 'A fit companion for the earlier volume on " London." . . . The author writes on hii favourite theme with an enthusiasm and knowledge which would make a far poorer theme attractive.' — Daily Telegraph. 'The volume is a delightful one; and, having read it, one walks through West- minster with new eyes.' — Speaker. • Demy 8vo., cloth, gilt top, with 119 Illustrations, l8s. SOUTH LONDON. ' To all Ixindoners who rcilize the absorbing fascination of the great world they live in, we cordially recommend it as a worthy sequel to the author's previous volumes. It is written by an enthusiast who is also an accomplished writer, by a student who is n close obscr\'er of life ; and it passes before the reader's imagination a series of indelible pictures which clothe our prosaic and monotonous South London with the romance which is due.' — Literature. ' No writer since the days of old Stow has done more to render the history and topography of London interesting to readers than .Sir Walter Besant, whose remark- able trio of books on this subject has just been completed by this solid volume devoted to South Ix)ndon.' — Daily Ne^us. 'Sir Walter Besant's "South London" has filled more than one evening for me quite delightfully. Read it, and re.id also the preceding volumes," " London " and " Westminster," and then you will Ic.irn the way to become a good Londoner. . . . It is on the whole a cheerful and pleasant work, filled out with gossip and anecdote, and many a romantic story from hisiory. '—lyestminster Gazette. London: CHATTO & WINDUS, mi St. Martin's Lane, W.C. LONDON SOUVENIRS BY CHARLES WILLIAM HECKETHORN author of ' the secret societies ok all ages,' ' Lincoln's inn fields,' etc. LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS 1899 LIBRARY UIS'IYE^^S? • OF CALIFORNIA SANTA iiAUi5A5IA CONTENTS PAGE I, GAMBLING-CLUBS AND HIGH PLAY - - 1 II. WITTY WOMEN AND PRETTY WOMEN - - 12 III. OLD LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES - - - 24 IV. OLD M.P.S AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS - 35 V. FAMOUS OLD ACTORS - - - - 47 VI. OLD JUDGES AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS - 59 VII. SOME FAMOUS LONDON ACTRESSES - - 71 VIII. QUEER CLUBS OF FORMER DAYS - - 82 IX. CURIOUS STORIES OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE - 94 X. WITS AND BEAUX OF OLD LONDON SOCIETY - 105 XI. LONDON SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES - 117 XH. OLD LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS I. THE GALLERIED TAVERNS OF OLD LONDON - 135 II. OLD LONDON TEA-GARDENS - - - 158 XIII. WILLIAM PATERSON AND THE BANK OF ENGLAND- 173 XIV. THE OLD DOCTORS - - - -184 XV. THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON - - - 2l6 XVI. ROGUES ASSORTED _ - _ _ 253 XVII. BARS AND BARRISTERS - _ - _ 265 XVIII. THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKEKS AND THE KIT-KAT AND ROTA CLUBS - _ _ _ 285 XIX. HAMPTON COURT PALACE AND ITS MASTERS - 300 LONDON SOUVENIRS 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 : ' ^Miafs all that row about Y 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 (juickly 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 im])ly is apparent only. Our manners have im])roved, 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 nighfs 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 ajipeared that in the year beginning with December 1, ITS-i, to the same date in 1725, they had prosecuted 2,506 jiersons 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 acconj])lices 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 su])pressing 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 SOs.' 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 d£'180,000. Mr. O'Birne, an Irish gamester, had won ofl 00,000 of a young Mr. Harvey, of Chigwell, just started from a 1—2 4 LONDON SOUVENIRS niidshipinan into an estate by his elder brother's death. OHirne said : " You can never pay me/"' " I can,"" said the youth ; " my estate will sell for the debt." "No," said O'Birne, "I will win 1^10,000 ; you shall throw for the odd 190,000." They did, and Harvey won.' It is not on record whether he took the lesson to lieart. The house was, in 1746, tumcd 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 })lay 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 dropjied down dead at the door, and was earned 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 fixirness of the bet. Walpole, who tells the story, hints that it is invented. Many a hi'diwayman — 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 AN^ lute's, which was known as the rendezvous of infamous sharpers and noble cullies, and bets were laid to the ellcct that Sir AVilliam Hurdctt, 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 Scott was a very cautious player, avoiding all indulgence in excesses at table, and thus managed to win at White''s no less than «P200,000, 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 Almack"'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, 0^15,000, 0^20,000 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 LONT)ON SOL'^TNIRS 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 oricrinal 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 AMiite's excepted) shall be ip90 Jacio 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.' According to Captain Gronow. play at Brooks's was even higher than at ^^'hite*s. Faro and macao were indulged in to an extent which enabled a man to win or to lose a con- siderable fortime in one night. George Harlev Drum- mond, a partner in the bank of that name, played only once in his life at ^^'hite*s, and lost i^SO.OOO to Brummell. This event caused him to retire from the banking-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, mfiny of whom belonged to the gay society of that day (the middle of the last centun.), we may be sure the play wa« 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 18:36. The L'nion- which was founded in this centnrv, was a r^:uiar gambling-club. It was first held at what is now the Ordnance Office, Pall ^lall, and subsequently in the house afterwards occupied by the Bishop of Winchester. In the early days of this centtny the most nottnioos gambling-club was Crockford's, in St. James's Street. Crockford originally was a fishmonser, and occupied the old bulk-shop west of Temple Bar. But, haTing made money by betting, "' he gave up," as a recent writer on • The Gambling World * savs, * selling soles and salmon, and went in for catching fish, confining his operations to o^udgeons and flat-fish": or. in other words, he estab- Hshed a gambling- house, first bv 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 it^lOO.OOO, 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 ; vet Crockford made it, for the highest play was esacoaraged 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 LONM)ON SOUVENIRS death was hastened, it is said, by excessive anxiety over his bets on the turf. He retired from the majiagenient of the club in 1840, and died in 1S44. The tlub was soon after closed, and after a few years' interval was re- opened as the Naval, Military, and Civil Service Club. It was then converted into dinine of her life never let the wretched ask in vain.' 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 |KK)r Nelly starve.' Was it not in his power to make provision for her, instead of leanng her to the charitv of the world .' .\nother both fortunate and unfortunate actress was Mrs. Moutford, whose husband was murdered as he had SOAfE 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. ^Nlontford, 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 gieat that at his decease he left her i^300 a year, on condition that she did not mam' ; he also purchased Cowley, near L'xbridge, 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 marry him, though she gave him the preference over many others of her suitors. Mrs. IMontford 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 sti-uck 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, pushino- 80 LONDON SOUV^ENIRS the ladv who \vj\s to act tlic 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 I' As she was being conveyed home, ' she,' in Gray's words, ' like a lily drooping, bowed her head and died.' Lovely Nancy Oldfield, who (piittcd the bar of the Mitre, in St. James's Market, then kept by her aunt, Mrs. \'oss, became, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the o;reat attraction at Drury Lane. Her intimacv with General Churchill, cousin of the great Duke of ^Marlborough, obtained for her a grave in AVest- 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' Mi-s. 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 a.ssist him. A coach was stationed near the Horseshoe Taveni 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. Moiitford, wlio 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. 6 VIII. QUEER CLUBS OF FORMER DAYS. *" I ""HE 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 u.seful 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, ]n-oducing 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 anti(juaries, 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- wark. 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' 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 wjis 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 lixst turning on the north-east side of Dniry 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 Cripplcgate. 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 rej)roduced in any modern publication without risk of prosecution, which, indeed, would be well (leser\ed. 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 IT. 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 j)oi"ters, 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 deviFs 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 swiiullinfj, acjainst arrest for debt. The sjnrn of Tumble-Down Dick was set up in derision of Richard Cromwell, the allusion to his fall from power, or ' tund)Ie-down,' being very common in the satires published after the Restoration. There was a house with the same sign at Rrentford. 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 ^Ian-Hunting Club was composed chicHy 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 woulil spring up with their swords drawn, run towards him, and cry : ' That's he ; bloody wounds, that's he !' L^sually the person so attacked would run away, when they would pui*sue him till he took refuge in an alehouse in some neifjhbouring: street. But if the man-hunters encountered a j)erson 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' 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.' ' My respects to you, brave Caesar,' cries one opposite, ' re- membering the battle of Pharsalia.' 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 houi-s, 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 cliairman could not beat with a greater, the latter had to surrender his oflice for that evening. Ned Ward gives some ex(juisite 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 ado})ted 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,"' and con- sef]uently is not freciucntly mentioned in the literature of that day. lioh Warden was the younger brother of Mr. Warden, a gentleman who, ' after liaving given a new turn to Jackanajies Lane, and j^romoted many useful objects for the good of the public, was undeservedly hanged."' AVe may explain here that Jackanaj)es Lane wa.s 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 \Varden, after his brother's death, was apj)renticed to a j)ainter, but, thinking more of his jialate than his palette, he dropped the latter, and with some moncv loft 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."* Their conduct in the end became so alarm- ing that a reward of ^100 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 00 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 ruflians/ 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 jmss for an effect of chance, if it were preceded by encouraging some j)roper people to connnit small riots in the night. And in several parts of the town a crew of ruffians were accordingly employed about that time, who ])robably exceeded their connnission . . . 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 Ijcyond all contra- diction by several intercepted letters and papers." It is just possible that po])ular panic exaggerated the doings of the Mohawks. Perhaps they did not exceed in savagery the tlrunken 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 nuist have been revived in the countrv, for John Wilkes, aljout 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.' 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' 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' 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 ^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. Out 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 SOUVF.NIRS afje W!is their j)rcsi(lent. A har|) |)l;iye(l 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 tabic 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 coui-se an illusion, since, whilst abroad, they associated chieHy 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 Vivre 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 vei-ses 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 masterlv 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 Macanmi, 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 Clul) did not outlive the reign of the Macaronis, which histed about five years, and the club ended its days — the chairmen and linkmen never having understood its foreign apj)ellation — 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'' 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.' 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 modern patrons of low-class clubs establish them for the worse pursuits of gambling and betting. IX. CURIOUS STORIES OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE. TN the WirJdi/ Journal of January 2, 1719-20, can be ■*- read : ' It was the observation of a witty knight many years ago, that the English people weie soniethiny; like a flioht of birds at a barn-door. Shoot anion<; them and kill ever so nianv, the rest shall return to the same place in a very little time, without any remembrance of the evil that had befallen their fellows.'' The pigeons at ^lonte Carlo, whom the cruel-minded idiots who fire at them have missed, instead of flying at once and for ever from the nmrderous sj)ot, ])erch on the cage in which their fellows are kept, and are easily caught again, to be eventually killed. 'Thus the English,' the Weekly Jourmil 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.' And thus the Stock Exchange flourishes. That desolation-sj)reading upas- tree was planted in the me[)hitic 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 the 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.' There, at Jonathan's, ' you will see a fellow in shabby clothes,' 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 Connnons piissing a vote ' that nothing can tend more to the estabhshment of pubHc credit than prevent- ing the infamous practice of stock -j obbi ng ""; 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 connnodious room in Threadneedle Street, to which admission was obtained on payment of sixpence. The Bank llotunda was at one period the place where bargains in stocks were made ; but there the brokers were as gieat 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 £V3,\50 in 1,263 shares of JOoO 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 1 73i 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 ])er8on 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' 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,' 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 1)8 LONDON SOUVKNIRS Uk' I'icikIi rc'voliitioiiary wui-. In Maivh, 17!)^, the 'I'luee per Cents, were at 9G, 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 acijuainted with the failure of Lord Macartney's negotiation with the French Directory, made .i'l 6,000 while breakfasting at liatson's Coflce-house, C'ornhill, 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 diil not rely on casual intellio;ence. Thev 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 l()9o. King- William ijave him a diamond rino- tvs a rewaid ior early information ; vet 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 sj)iead, they concluded their bargains. Marl- borough had an annuity of i'G,00() 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 ca.sh, and pledging liis name for more. 'I'his stroke of business nirtile Iiini 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 advantao-e of the opportunities this offered him, that at the end of five years he came from Manchester to London with a fortune of =f 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 AVellington to a considerable amount came over here, and there was no money in the Ex- che(]uer 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 })ar. It was a splendid speculation, which resulted in his entering into closer intercourse with the Ministry, 7—2 100 LONDON SOT^VENIRS niul he wfts thieHy enijjloyccl in tiansiiiittiiii^ the sub- sidies which Kii<2;laiul furnished — most t'ooHslily indeed — to the ("ontinentul Powers. The circumstance that Nathan was suppHed by his brothers at Frankfurt and elsewhere witli the earhest and most reHable intelligence, and liis trustworthy connections and arrangements in London, enabled him to turn such knowledge to imme- diate and ])rofitable account. IJut 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 mardi of the armies, and daily and hourly to send rejiorts 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 innnediately rode back to Brussels, whence a caniage took him to Ostend. The sea was stormy ; in vain Nathan offered 500 francs, * To an article I wrote twenty-five years ago on tliis topic I find appended the following note : ' We give the following on the authority of Martin, but must add that a private friend, who fuimerly filled an (iflice of trust in the firm of Rothschild Brotlifi -, dflareH the whole to be u fiction.' But who this friend was wc 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 AVaterloo 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 ai'chbishops, 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 SOTTENIRS The conspirators managed to cause the omnium stock to tall to IS discount. The result was (Toldsmid's failure and eventually liis suicide, whilst the con- spirators made a jiroHt of about X'!2,000,000. Among other notable stockbrokers we must not omit I*>ancis IJailey, I'.S.A., President of the Royal Astro- nomical Society, who retired from the Stock J'.xchange in l.S!2.5. In 1851 he repeated at his house in Tavistock Place, llussell Square, the Cavendish experiment of weiorhing the earth, and calculating its bulk and flijure, and at the same time verifvinjr the standard measure of the British nation, and rectifying pendulum experiments. In the garden of the house a small observatory was erected for those j)urposes, 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 Bercnger and C'ochrane-.Iohnstone in 1814. Napoleon's military ojierations against the allies had greatly depressed the funds. On February 21, 1814, about one o'clock a.m., a violent knocking was lieard at the door of the Ship Inn, then the chief hotel at Dover. ^^'hen the door was opened, a person in a nchly-embroidered .scarlet uniform announced himself as an aide-de-camp of Lord Cathcart (who wivs aide-de- canij) 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 l)een caj)ture(l and killed by Cossacks, who had cut his l)ody into a thousand pieces. Innnediate peace was now certain. The stranger ordereoiuloii would say the saiue." At the \\'atier Club, established at the iiistinjation of the Prince of ^^'a]es, Bruminell suffered heavy losses, so that ever af"ter he was in constant jxcnniarv difficulties, tlu)U<;h Fortune smiled on him at times. Induli^inh lo leave the work! in this manner prefer doing so hefore the eyes of the puhlif. The parapets, however, of the new bridge [Blackfriars] which is being built will be but of an ordinary height."' Suicidal tendencies nuist indeed have greatly declined, since the most recently erected bridges, the new ^Vestminster and Blackfriars, have particularly low paraj)cts. Of the streets our author says : ' They are pa\ ed in such a manner that it is barely possible to ride or walk on tliem 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 j)urpose. . . . In the finest })art of the Strand, near St. ('Iement"'s Church, I noticed, during the whole of mv stay in London, that the middle of the sti'eet was constantly covered with liquid stinking mud, three or four inches deep. . . . The walkers are bespattered from l\ead to foot. . . . The natives, however, brave all these dis- agreeables, wraj)j)e(l up in long blue coats, like dressing- gowns, wearing biowu stockings and j)erukes, rough, red and fri/zleil.' Well, we caunol liiid iiiucli fault with this ilescrip- tion, unflattering as it is, for in the last century London certainly was one of the most hideous towns to live in, ami its iidiai)itants the most uncouth, ie|)ulsive 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.' 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- T>0 LONDON SOUVENIRS pectcd from such a system of rlioosing watchmen ? I know tluit most of the men wlio are thus burdens on the parish are the vilest of wretdies, anti such men are appointed to guard the Hves 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 <;ood- naturedly credulous. Says he : ' The peoj)]e 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 dilKculty, instead of raising a quarrel, which might end in murder, as is often the case in raris," 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 stopjmges 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,' he says, ' may have but little trouble in collecting them [the pewter pots in which publicans send out the beer], they are j)laced in the open passages, and sometimes on the doorsteps of the houses. I saw them thus exj)osed . . . and felt (juite assured against all the cuiming of thieves." Hut more astounding is the statement that there are no })oor in London ! ' ^V consecjuence,'' says our visitor, ' of its lich and innnerous charitable establishments and the innnense sums raised by the poor-rates, which im|)ost is one which the little householders pay most cheerfully, as they consider it a fund from uhich, in the SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES 121 event of their death, their wives and children will be supported.' 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,' he says, ' is no doubt owing to the fogs ' 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.' 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,' in which, i?iter alia, he says: 'The highroads thirty or forty miles round London are filled with armed high- waymen and footpads.' This was then pretty true, though the expression ' filled ' 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,' 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 1'22 I.ONDcn" SOi;VKNIUS the tax is sometimes treble, and jilways arbitrary, though in a free country. Hut raj)acity and injustice are tlie deities of the Kn<;lish; M. I -a Combe does not give us a flattering character. ' An Enghshman/ lie says, ' considers a foreigner as an enemy, whom he ilares 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 j)eople. M. La Combe, in another part of his book, exclaims: ' How are you changed, l^ondoners ! . . . Vour women are become boltl, imperious, and expensive. liankru{)ts and beggars, coiners, spies and informers, robbers and pickpockets abound. . . . The baker mixes alum in his bread . . . the brewer puts o})ium and coj)j)er filings in his beer . . . the milkwoman spoils her milk with snails."" Do more recent writers judge of us more correctly .'' We shall see. I liave lying before me a French book, the title of which, translated into English, runs, ' Geograjjhy for Young lVoj)le.' It is in its eighth edition, and written by M. Levi, Professor of Ik'lles-Lettres, of History and Geograi)hy 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 ca})ital, they nuist have been unable to recognise it from tlieir teacher's descrii)tion of it. Among the many blunder^ he commits, there are some which are excusable in a foreigner, because they refer to matters which are often misa})(jrehended even by natives ; but to describe London as possessing a certain arcliitectural 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 geoo-raphy. Rut 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/ M. Levi evidently, if ever he was in London, visited the Quadrant only, before the arcade Avas 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 iloor anil asked his business. He expressed his w ish to see the master of the house. 'Master never sees anybody to-day, but he will perhaps to-morrow,' re})lied the servant, and shut the door in his fiice. 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 incjuired for Drury Lane, and was directed to it. The doors being shut, he lounged about the neighbourhood till they should ojx-n. As it grew later and later, and there was no sign of a qmnc, he at last addressed a paijser-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 earners back. Our IVcnch- man hurried back to his hotel, wrote in his note-book, ' In London there are theatres, but they never open to- tlay,' took a cab, caught the night mail, and hastened to leave so barbarous a country. This description of London life is about as coirect as that recently given in Max OUiclTs '.John Bull and his Wonmnkind.' What kind of pcoj)lc did O'itell visit .^ I look at another book before me, written in Italian, and entitled : ' Semi-serious Observations of an Exile on England.' The book was j)ublished at Lugano in 1831, but the author — Giuseppe IV-cchio — dates his preface from York in 18^7. He speaks thusly of the aj)proach to I.uiuloii bv the Dover road : ' If the sky is gloomy, the first aspect of Londoji 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," they read the novels of ^Valter 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 V 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," " indeed," " very fine," " com- fort," " comfortable," " great comfort," 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.' We know how much of this description is true. ' Why are the English,' he asks, ' not expert dancers ? 12() LONDON SOT^VKNTRS Hecausc tlu-v cannot j)racti.se dancing in their sliohtly- l)uilt houses, in which a lively caper would at once send the third-Hoor down into the kitchen. 'I'his is the rejison \\h\ tlu' ICnglish gesticulate so little, and have their aims alwavs "hied to their sides. The rooms are M) small that you cannot move about rapidly without snuushing some object,' or, as we should say, you cannot swine: ^ t'<^t in them. 'Strangers are astounded,' continues our author, 'at the silence prevailing among the inhabitants of London. liut how could a million and a half" of peoj)le live together without silence .'' The noise of men, horses, and carriages between the Strand and the Exchange is so ijreat that it is said that in winter there are two de<;rees of difference in the thermometers of the Citv and of the ^^'^est End. I have not verified it,' our author is candid enough to admit, ' but considering the great number of chinmeys in the Strand, it is ])i()l)able enough. From Chering [y/r] Cross to the Exchange is the cycloj)edia of the world. Anarchy seems to prevail, but it is only apparent. The rules which Gray gives (in his "Trivia ; oi', the Art of Walking tlie Streets of London") seem to me unnecessary." Signor Pecchio ])retty well describes the movements of ' City men ' : 'The great monster of the capital," he says, 'similai' to a huge giant, waking up, begins by giving signs of life at its extremities. 'I'he 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. 'I'he population seems to follow the law of the tides. I'p 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 ebb sets in, and currents of men, horses, and carriages flow from the Exchange to the periphery.'' Like all foreigners, he has somethiiig to say about the dulness of an English Sunday. 'This country, all in motion, all alive on other days of the week," he observes, 'seems struck with an attack of apoplexy on the Lord's day." Foreigners pass the day at Greenwich or Richmond, where ' they pay dearly for a dinner, seasoned with the bows of a waiter in silk stocking's and brown livery, just like the dress of a Turin lawyer.' But if you want to see how John Bull spends the dav, 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 j)ublished. ... 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 12S LONDON SOrVENIRS ))r.iise or blame is awarded to a liiirdett issuing triuniphaiitly from the Tower, or to a Castlereagh descendinir amidst euiscs to the tomb. . . . Tliere are no rows in these taverns . . . more decency of conduct is observed in them than in our [Italian] churches. When full of sjnrit and beer the customers, instead of lighting, fall down on the pavement like dead men." After having so carefully observed the conduct of the Britisli 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,' he says, 'is Cumberland Gardens,* close to \'auxhall . . . tliere he sits smoking long jiipes of the whitest clay, which the landlord supplies, filled with tobacco, at one penny each, l^etween his puffs of smoke he occasionally sends forth a truncated phrase, such as we read in " Tristram Sandi " [.y/V] were uttered by Trion and the captain. It being Sunday, which admits of no anuisement, no nuisic or song is heard."' Pretty much as it is at the present day ! HavinjT 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 shojis, 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 IR-S.i, therefore shortly after our author wrote, the tavern was hurut to the ground, and the site takcu possession of by the South Loudon Waterworks. SEEN THROUGH FOREIGxN 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.' 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 |)rovided with an umbrella hastens to take refusre in a coach.' 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 V 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.' 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 houso is not 130 LONDON SOT'VENTRS coshamcd to take her servant to bed with her, for English ladies ait 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 slij)ping in between the two/ 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 lamiot leave the shop between nine in the morning and twelve at night. The wife generally attends to it, while the husband sits in the ])ar]our 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 emj)loyes insist on having that day to themselves, the mistress has to stay at home to take care of the house. 'Merchants lead lives nearly as dull. 'J'hey have to deny themselves social plea-sures indulged in by the rich merchants of Hambuig or I^eipsic. ]*inglish ladies are more domesticated, and not accustomed to the bustle of j)ublic tunusements. But their husbands, after business hours, occasionally seek for recreation in cafes and taverns."' 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 hy 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' 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-souji and small hot patties. The house supplies nothing else . . . but its former proprietor. Master Horton, by his patties and soup made a foi-tune of one hundred thousand pounds, and his successor seems in a fair way of doing the same.' We hope the assumption was verified. ^Vccording 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, thev are avoided as much as possible.' 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 urnichairs, whilst the gentlemen stand about, some warming themselves by the fire, olten in a not very decent maimer. At the dinner-table napkins are found only in houses which have ac(|uired foreign polish, and they are nt)t many. The tablecloth hangs down to the floor, and every guest takes it upon his knee, and uses it as a naj)kin. . . . The lady of the house serves the dishes, and there is no end to her (|uestions put to her guests as to the sejisoning, the part of the joint, the sauce, etc., they like,' (juc-Hons which are exceedingly troublesome to a foreignei who is not up to all the technical terms of Kngli>h cookery. Of course, the hobnobbing and taking wine with every- l>ody — a ffishion now happily abolished — comes in for a gooil deal of censure, which, inilecd, is richly deserved. ' Conversation on any subject of interest is out of the question during dinner; were anyone to attempt it, the master would innnediately interrupt him with, " Sir, you are losing your dinner; by-and-by we will discuss these mattei's."' The ladies from sheer modesty speak l)ut little ; foreigners must beware from saying nmch, lest they be considered monstrous bold,' ^Vhilst, 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 reatly. ' It is said,' con- tinues our author, 'that the slow or (|uick attention given to this message shows who is master in the house, the husband or the wife.' Long after midnight the guests drive home ' through the streets still swarm- ing with j)e()pk'. All tlic shojjs are still open, and lighteil uj» , the street-lamps, of course, ai'e alight, and SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES 133 burn till the rising of the sun."' Has any F.ondoner ever seen all the shops open and lighted up all night ? Did our author have visions ? A London Sunday, of course, is commented on. The complaint raised quite recently by some of our bisho]3S seems but a revival of wailings 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 desecratino- 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,' 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 abnses her neighbours and acquaintances, which is quite lawful on Sundays.' 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 TAngleterre,' says therein that in good society 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. ' Ajid it is,' he adds, ' a constant habit among the ladies to empty bottles of brandy.' And he quotes from a work by General Pillet : ' Towards forty years of age every well-bred English lady goes to bed intoxicated.' M. Jules Lecomte says in his ' Journey of Troubles to London' ('Un Voyage de Desagrements a Londres,' 1854) that he accompanied a blonde English miss to 134 LONDON SOUVENIRS tlie FAliihition in IImIc Park, where at one sitting she ate six Nhilliny-s' worth of cake reseinbliiij' a black britk oniaiiiented with currants. Accor(linHsh at Hoinc'('Les Anglais diez Eux/ 1856), at Creinorne Gardens the popular refreshment, and par- ticularly with an Oxford theolofjian, is <:;inus Danes Inn were erected. In Philip Lane, London Wall, anciently stood the LONDON TAVERNS AM) TF>A-GARDENS Ul 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 Grace collection. We should be trying the reader's patience were we to enter into a discussion as to the origin of the sign of the Belle Sauvage, the inn which once stood at the bottom of Ludgate, and whose site is now occupied by the 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. PauPs, 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, frighteueil at the circa,-, tricks, burnt 142 LONDON SOrVENIUS both Morocco and his master as son^erers, Close hv the inn livovl Grinliug Gibbons, and an old house, bear- ing the crest of the Cutlers* Conipanv, remains. The old Black Bull (now No. 1^^ Gray's Inu Lane, was, in its original state, as shown by a woot^cut in Walford's * Old and New London.' a specimen, though of the meiiner sort, of the old-fashioned galleried vard. The Black Lion, on the west side of \Vhitefriars Street, wji>. a quaint and picturesque edifit-e, and its courtyard showed a galler\- to the tir^t -floor of the b, - -. rather wider than usual, and with massive Kn^.c:^ pillars supporting the roof. The old house was fMjlled down in 18T7, and a large tavern of the OTxlinary uninteresting t>"pe now occupies its site. One of the once famous Southwark inns was the Boar's Head, which formed a part of Sir John Fastoir-^ benefictiaiis 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 proj>ertv was for many years leased to the father of Mr. John Timbs, wiikh Utter, in his 'Curiosities of London,' gives a lengthy account of the premises. Thev were taken down in IS-SO to widen the approach to London Bridge. Ilie court above mentioned was known as Boar's Hesui Court, and under it and some adjoining houses, on their deawlition. was discovered a finely- vaulted cellar. doubtless the wiDe-cellar of the Boar's Head. Most noted among theatrical inns was the Bull, in tie Street, so much so that the mother of LONDON TA\T.RNS AND TEA-GARDENS 143 Anthony Bacon (the brother of the great Francis), when he went to live in the neighbourhood of the inn, wa.s terribly frightened lest he and his servants should be led asti^ay by the actoi-s performing at the inn. Tarleton, the comedian, often actetl there. It was while giving representations at the Bull that Burl)age, Shakespeare's friend, and his fellows obtained a patent from Queen Elizabeth for erecting a permanent build- ing for theatrical perforraanc-es, though the Bull afforded them eveiy convenience, its yard and galleries being on a large scale and in good style. It was at the Bull that the Cambridge carrier Ilobson, of ' Hobson's choice,* used to put up.* A portrait and a parchment certifi- cate of Mr. \'an Hara, a customer of the house, were long preserved at the Bull inn ; this worthy is said to have drunk 3o,6W bottles of wine in this hostelrv. The Bull and Gate, in Hoi bom, probablv took its name from Boulogne Gate, as the Bull and Mouth in Aldersgate Street was a corraption of Boulogne Mouth, and both were, no doubt, intended as compliments to Henr\- VIII., who took that town in 1544. Tom Jones alighted at the Bull and Gate when he first came to Ix)ndon. Hoibom at one time abounded in inns. Savs Stow : *On the high street of Oldboume have ve manv fair hoases builded, and lodgings for gentlemen, inns for travellers and such like up almost (for it lacketh but little) to St. Giles^ in the Fields." We shall have to mention one or two more as we o-o on. The Bull and Mouth inn alluded to above in the * Though I find it stated ia o^her aathorities thai he pat ap at the Four liwans ; poesibij he resorted to both. 144 LONDON SOUVENIRS olden time \va.s a oreat roaching-plHCC. U had a large vaid and galleries, with elegantly designed galleries to the fii-st, second, and third Hoors. There is a view of it in the Crace collection. Its site was afterwards occupied l)v the (Queen's Hotel, which was pulled down in 18ST to make room for the post-office extension. The Catherine \Vheel was a sign frecjuently adopted by inn-keepers in former days. Mr. Larwood, in his ' ilistory of Signboards,' assumes that it was intended to indicate that as the knights of St. Catherine of Mount Sinai protected the j)ilgrims from robbery, he, the innkeeper, would j)rotect the traveller from being Heeced 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 't But in Konian Catholic countries saints were, and are still, seen on numerous signboards, and so the one in cpiestion may have descended in English inns from ante-Ueformation times, or it may have been the fancy of one particular man, who may have read the story of St. Catheiine, and been moved by it to adopt the wheel. St. Catherine was beheaded, after having been placed between wheels with sj)ikes, 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 hist two c-.enturies. It remains, but ha*, 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 18T1 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 other 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 10 140 T.ONDON SOUVENIRS that .si<;ii in Gnuccluiiili Stivct, haviiijv a yard with •galleries all roiiiul, and in which theatrical }X'ifc)iin- ances were frequently given. IJanks, 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,"' with his mouth drew forth Tarleton, who was amongst the spectatoi-s. Tarleton could only say, ' God a mercy, horse!" 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 1G90 by John Day and John Bundy ; but the house was well known as early as 1681 as one of the carriers' inns. The Four Swans (demolished) was a very fine old imi, with courtyard and galleries to two stories on three sides complete. \\^hether St. George ever existed is doubtful ; jjiob- ably the story of this saint and the dratrou is merely a con-uption of the legend of St. Michael coiuiuering Satan, or of Perseus' delivery of Andromeda. The story was always doubted, hence the lines recortled by Aul)rey : ' To save a maid St. George the dragon slew, A pretty tale if all is told be true. Mo=!t say there are no dragons, and it's said There was no George ; pray God tlieio was a maid.' liut the George is, and always has been, a very common inn sign in this as well as in other countries. \\'e 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 Southwark 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, with galleries to two stories on three sides giving access to the bedrooms. The banisters were of massive size, of the 'footman leg' 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 by the great iire of Southwark some six years later. The fire began at one ]VIr. 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. AVhen 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 day. 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 SOl'VKNIHS having strictly retained the distinctive features of former (hiys, the only innovation introduced by him being a real improvement, in the removal of one of tlie oi)jections to the open galleries of the old inns. He has enclosed these with glass, and on a trellis-woik leading up to them creeping plants liave been made to twine, so as to give a cool and refreshing aspect to the old inn vard in smnmer time. Troops of guests now dailv dine in its low-ceilingcd rooms with great beams in all sorts of angles, and shining mahogany tables. The Dragon is great in rich soujis and mighty joints of succulent meat ; in old wines, appreciated by amateurs. The Kin<'''s Head was another of the many inns once to be found in the Borough. Their great nund)er is easily explained by the fact that Lontlon Bridge was I then the only bridge from south to north, and vice versa, ^ and that therefore tlie traffic of horses and men had to pass through Southwark — of course, necessitating nuich hotel acconnnodation. The King"'s Head was a gi'cat resoit of big waggons, for the loading of which a large crane stood in the vard, in consequence of which one side of the yard had a gallery to the second floor only, the crane ()ccuj)ying the space of the lower one, whilst on the other side there were galleries to the first and second floors. The Old Bell in Holboni, recently pulled down, bore the arms of the Fowlers of Islington, the owners of Banisbury Manor and occupiers of lands in ("anonbury. In its galleried yard the boys used to meet to go in coaches to Mill Hill School. The Oxforil Arms stood south of ^^'arwick Scjuarc LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 149 and the College of Physicians, and is nientionetl in a carriers advertisement of 16T2. Edward Bartlet, an Oxford carrier, started his coaches and waggons thence three times a week. He also announced that he kept a hearse to convey 'a corps' to any part of England. The Oxford Arms had a red-brick fa^-adc, of the period of Charles II., sni-mounting 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 great fire, but was rebuilt on the former plan. The house always belonged to the Dean and Chapter of St. PauFs, and the houses of the Canons Residentiary adjoin tlie 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 ]780 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 ap[)roached by a high gateway from the street, and another under the building between the outer and inner yards. At Knightsbridge there stood till about 1865, when ir.O LONDON SorVFAIUS it \va> |)ulk(l clown, the Rose and Crown, anciently called the Oliver Cromwell. It was one of the oldest houses in the High Street, Kni^htsbridi^e, having been licensed above three hundrcil years. The l*rotector's bodyguard is said to have been stationed in it, and an inscri|)ti()n to that effect was, till shortly before its demolition, j)ainted on the front. This is merely legendary, but there are grounds for not entirely reject- ing the tradition. In KliS the Parliament army was encamped in that neighbourhood ; Fairfax's head- (juarters 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 CromwelTs 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 ])ortion 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 Hoox*, 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 suj)porting the roof. Two water- colour drawings, dated lcS57, .showing the exterior of the house and the yard, are in the Crace collection. Cor- bould painted this inn under the title of the 'Old Hostelrie at Knightsbridge,' exhibited in ISH); i)ut lie transferred its date to 141)7, altering the house accoid- ing to his fancy. In 1853 the inn had a narrow escape from destruction by fire. Hefore its final demolition it hiul been much moderni/ed, 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. Botolph's 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 £S0 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 thi'ough 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 1863, when the Holborn Valley improvements were undertaken. A view of the inn as it appeared in 1855 is in the Crace collection. 152 LONDON SOUVENIUS As there were nianv inns on the Southwark side of London Bridge for the reasons given when we spoke of the King's Ile.ul, so for the same reason a number of inns, some of wliieh we liave alremly mentioned, were on tlie northern side of the bridge. Hesides those ah-eadv named, there was the Spiead Kagle, in Gracechurch Street. The original building had perished in the great fire, but the inn whs rebuilt after it. It liad the usual vard and galleries to the two floors. At first only a carriers"' inn, it became famous as a coachinir- housc, the mails and princi})al stage-coaches for Kent and other southern counties arriving and departing from here. It was long the pro])erty of John Chaplin, cousin of William Chajilin, of the firm of ('haplin and Home. The inn was taken down in LS65 ; the plot of ground which it occupied contained 12,600 feet, and was sold for ^D5,0()0. The Swan with Two Necks is a curious sign, variously explained. It is supj)ose(l to mean the swan with two nicks or notches cut into swans' bills, so that each owner might know his, Ihit these nicks being so small as not to be discernible on an inn sifjn huiifr hi'di up, there seems no sense in referring to them. More likelv two swans swimming side by side, ;uid the neck of one of them j)rotruding beyond that of the other, took some artist's fancy, and induced him to produce the illusion in a j)icture. IL)wever, the origin of tlie sign does not concern us, but the inn with tiiat siirn. There was a famous one in what was Lad Lane, and is now (ireshain Street. It was for a century and more the head coach-inn and booking-oflice for the North. Its couitvHnl was of great si/e ; the galleries wcix* of some- LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 153 what irregular arrangement, there being one only at the back, connnunicating 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 Illmirated London Xeics, December 23, 1865. 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 AVilliam 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 durins: the reion 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 Abbofs 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 Salifsbury. The original Tabard was in existence as late as the year 1602. On a beam across the road, whence swung the sign, was inscribed : ' Thi?* lo^ LONDON SOrVKNIllS is the inn wliere Sii- JitiVv Chaucer aiul the niiie-and- twentv jiil^rinis lav in Ihi'ir journey to Canterbury, ANNO l-'JiS)).' On the removal of the beam the inserip- lion \va> transfentcl to the frateway. The house was rej)aired in the reijjjn ot'C^ueen l''h/abeth, and from that |)eriod probably dated the fireplace, carved oak ])anels, and other portions sj)ared by the fire of 1()7(), which were still to be seen at the be<;inninii^ of this century. In this fire some six hundred liouses had to be destroyed to arrest the proi^rcss 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 jis possible on the same sj)ot ; but the landlord changed the sign from the Tabard to the Talbot ; there is, nevertheless, little doubt that the iiui as it remained till bS74, when it was demolished, with its (juaint old timber galleries, with two timber i)ridges connecting their opposite sides, and wliich extended to all the inn buildings, and the no less (|uaint old chambers, wiis the innnediate successor of the inn commemorated by Chaucer. According to an old view publisiied in ITi^l, the yard is shown as apparently opening to the street ; but in a view which appeared in the Gcntlciiuui\s M(tgaz'nu' of Se])tember, 1812, tlie yard seems enclosed. A sign, painted by Blake, and fixed u)) 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 allied tlie rilgrims' Hall, dating of course from 1(J7(), but in course of time it was so cut up to adapt it to the purpose of modern bedrooms, tiiat its original condition was scarcely recog- LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS 155 nisable. There are various views of the old inn in the Crace collection : one without date, one of 1780, another of 1810, another of 1812 (the Gentleman s 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' inn in Aldffate, which oave 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 Bear, 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 Koval Aciuk'iiiv, put u]) on his arrival in Loiuioii from Amorim. Hljc d'wd Luke Sullivan, the engraver of some of Ilomirth's most famous works. The inn vard had galleries to two sides of the bedchambers on the second floor, connected by a Inidge across. We must once more return to Southwark, for besides the inns alreatiy 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 I'leet Street. Much maligned Jack Cade and some of his followers put up at this inn during tlieir brief possession of London in 1450. The original inn which sheltered them remained standing till 1()7(), \vhcn it was l)urnt dowii in the great fire already mentioned. It wa.s rebuilt, and was in existence till a few years ago, when it was ])uilcd down. It consisted of several o})en 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 ISo-'i, 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 uj) 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 ttic 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 mentionehrul)s, 200 drinking tables, ;i.50 forms, 4(K) dozen bottled ale [which shows that tea was not the only drink consumed there], etc. The house itself remained ^tanding till 1.S44, when it was demolished ; the Ph(i.'nix biewerv afterwards occupied the site, which is now (•overe of the hill we referred to as rising from Bag- nigge Wells to Islington there stood, where the Belve- dere Tavern now stands, a liouse of entertainment known as Busby's Folly, so called after its owner, one Christoj)hcr Busby, whose name is spelt Busbee on a token, ' A\'hite Lion at Islington, 1668,"' of which he was the landlord. AMiy 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 Fcathei's' Hall used to commence their march to Islington to claim the toll of all gravel carried up Highgate Hill, to which they asserted a right in a tract published by them and entitled 'Bull Feather Hall; or, the Anticjuity and Dignity of Horns amply shown. London, 1664.' Busby's Folly retained its name till 1710, after which it was called I'enny's Folly, and here men with learned horses, musical glasses, and similar shows entertained the ])ublic. 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 163 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 Gamck 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 SOr\TNIRS nally called, thenceforth became Sadler*s Well. Rut as it was, as its name implied, rather a house for musical entertainment than a tea-o:arden, 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 Sadler''s 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 everv 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 Mar>' 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 Drur}' Lane in 1776. The proprietor, Holland, failing, the Spa was sold to a Mr. Skinner in 177H, 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 AVells.^ 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 P^ame 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 comjmnioiis, millinei-s, man tua - makers, and servant-maids, besitles other and more objectionable characters of the female sex. According to a letter (7* addressed to the St. Jumci.s Chnmkle, 1772, the Pantheon was a place of ' infamous resort,"* 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 nvmphs 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 Ilotunda 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 ])roj)hetic 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 Ilampstead, Highgate, and the adjacent country,' 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 is March 2. 168 LONDON SOUVENIRS gardens might be visited and as much water drunk as you pleased for £\ Is. per year, 9s. (Jd. quarterly, 4s. 6d. monthly, and Is. 6d. weekly. A sinjile visit and a large glassful of water cost Gil. The water was wanned in a large copper, whence it was drawn off into the glass. The charge of Cd. 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 airain 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 \'I., 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-])ond, a number of shady, pleasant arbours, enclosed with a fence seven feet high to prevent being inconunoded by people in the fields ; hot loaves and butter every day, milk directly from the cows, coffee, tea, and all mannere of liquoi-s in the greatest perfection ; also a handsome long-room, from whence is the most copious prosj^ccts and airy situation of any now in vogue.' A long jioem 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 Strcet, 'at his lodgings, two pair of staii-s room,' as the GeJitlemans Magazine^ March, 1809, says. He once owned the freehold of White Conduit House and of the neighbouring Angel inn, and was worth i\50,000 ; but he was seized with the lottery mania, and paid as much as i^l,000 a day for insurances. \\y degrees he sank into poverty, but a friend having sup})lied him with the means of obtaining a thirtv-second share, that number turned up a prize of 1^20,000. He purchased an annuity of £Q0 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 othei-s 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 lesise had then about eighty yeai-s to run, at the rent of £S0 per annum. The property fetched .r8,990. What price would it fetch now .? Public-houses have gone up tremendously since then. Close to White Conduit House was another famous house of entertainnient, 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. Ilazlitt, 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 r 'And the joints trembled on their spits,' 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 Mantell, described as citizen and butcher of London. The property thus leased com- prised the Grange place, with Highbury Barn, a garden, and ' castell Hilles,'' 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. Jolni 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 Prior's house at Iliuh- 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, ('ujier's Gardens, Chalk Farm, Canonbury House, Cumberland Gardens, Cujjid Gardens, Sluice House, Eel-pie House, St. Helen's, Hornsey AVood, Hoxton, Kilburn Wells, jVIermaid, Marylebone, Monti)cllier, Kanelagh, Paris Gardens, Shej)herd and Shepherdess, Union Gardens, Yorkshire Stingo, Jew's Harp, Adam and Eve, Tottenham Court Road ; Adam and Eve, St. Pan eras ; 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 Row. 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 Vei-sailics 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.' 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, AVilliam 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 oblocjuy 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, transfen^ed 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' 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''? 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 chieHy 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 ojiposition 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,' just as now there is a prejudice against things 'made in Germany.' Moreover, thev doubted the stability of the Govern- ment of William III. At last, however, they consented to the Bank, on the express condition that X"! ,200,000 shoulil 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 j)erhaps would have prevailed had not Queen Mary, acting on the instruction of William (then in Flanders), during a six hours' sitting, carried the point, and the company received their royal charter of incorporation in July, 1094. Almost as soon as it had been established the Bank was called u})on 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. Paterson's 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 (=£'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 Free Trade, and his views on the subject of taxation were far ahead of 12, 178 LONDON SOUVENIRS the ideas of his day. His undoubtedly f]^eat 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.' We cannot attempt to give a history of tlie 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' Hall, and next removed to, and for many years carried on at. Grocers' 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 17G6 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 ])laces occupied by offices of the Bank. The south side buiklings, forming the eastern continua- tion of the establishment, presented a range of fluted colunnis 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 fa^'ade 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 "* 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 triaiifijular block of houses which formerly stood in front of the old lioyal Exchange, but was removed on the buildijig of the new. At the begimiiniT 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 sharj) 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- burv, 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. Ikit great architectural improvements had in the mean- time been introduced. The original or central portion, eighty feet in kiigth, 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 llobcrt Taylor, after whom Sir John Soane was ap])ointed the Bank architect, and he rebuilt many of those parts constructed by Sampson and Taylor ; and on Sir John's death in 18137 Mr. Cockercll 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 ii65 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 SOITVENIRS decorated with statues rcjjrescntinjij the four quarters of the fjlobc. The north-west comer of the liank is modelled on the temple of \'esta at Rome. AVe have yet to mention the Old Lady's Drawin<;-l{oom, or the pay-office, where bank-notes are issued, or exchaiifijed for cash. It is a fine hall, seventy-nine feet Jon^ by forty wide, and we have left the mention of it to the last because it suggests to us some ])articular 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 IMontague and Michael Godfrey are entitled to share in Patci-son's glorv for the assist- ance they lent him in this undertaking ; but the Rank ignores its founder, and had not even a portrait of him till i\Ir. James Hogg, the founder of London Society presented them with one. In the Pay Hall stands the statue of William HI., and in the Latin inscrij)tion underneath he is called 'founder of the Rank."' 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*'; the real fighters must put up with the leavings. Let us end with another philoso])hical reflection. Facts arc more astoundhig than fiction, as we ^\iII show by two facts. Gaboriau's novel ' La Degrin- golade ' (The Downfall), in one of its earliest chajitcrs describes the opening of a grave in the Parisian cemetery of jVIontmartre, to discover whether it con- tains the body of a certain person or not. The colli n is found to be empty. This is a fiction, but are we not likely to .see its realization shortly ? Paul FevaKs 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 Mall, 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 ^act is stranger thanjiction. XIV. THE OLD DOCTORS. '' I "'HE lines of modem 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, ^'esalius, the father of modem anatomy, was condemned to death by the Inquisition for dis- secting a human body, but by the intervention of King Philip II., whose ])hysician he was, the punish- ment was reduced to a j)ilgrimage to the Holy Land ; on his return the shiji was lost on the island of Zante, where he perished of starvation in L564'. Now Government licenses doctors to jiractise 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 pei*sons whose recovery he had undertaken. In a schedule of the offices, fees, and ser>ices which the Lord AVharton had with the AVardenry of the city and castle of Carlisle in 154:7, a trumpeter was rated at 16d. )icr day, and a surgeon only at 12d. PLdward 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, while 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 doctors carriage, whose motto should be ' Live or die,' 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 VHL, with that view, incorporated several members of the profession into a body, community, and perpetual college, since called the College of Physicians. The seventeenth 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,"' 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, lias 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 l)e 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 chiutz, Which scandal renders somewhat foul and smeary ; And yet, without its malice, lies, and bints, 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 — ' 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 Elliotson's practice rose from ot'SOO 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 M^as thrown oiF his horse, or by a successful operation, or by writing a book which ' caught on,' 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 disj)osition, who turned neither to brimstone nor to treacle, but always maintained a dif]^iified demeanom*. He was a wit and a man of letters, and enjoyed tlie esteem of such men as Swift, Pope, and Gay. Before coming to London he had chosen Dorchester as a place to practise as a j)hysician, 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 liis wit and j)leasantry 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 phvsician able to cure himself. Sir Astley Cooper (b. 176S, d. 1841) also did not belong to the brimstone school. His surgical skill was very great, and he liked to disj)lay it. He always retained perfect self-command in the operating theatre, and during the most critical and dangerous j)erformances 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' 8 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.' During the first nine years of his practice Sir Astley's earnings progressed thus : First year, £5 5s. ; second, £^6 ; third, £64} ; fourth, £96 ; fifth, i?100 ; sixth, ^200 ; seventh, ^400 ; eighth, i^600 ; ninth, .C'ljlOO. Eventually his annual income rose to more than dfi*! 5,000 ; the largest sum he ever made in one year was oP21,000. 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,"* said Baillie ; ' shells and all !' Dr. Richard Mead (b. 1673, d. 1754) was physician 190 LONDON SOmTNIRS to George II., and the friend of Drs. lladcliffe, Garth, and xVrbuthnot, and a great patron of literary and artistic genius. In his house in Great Orniond Street he established what may be called the first academy of painting in London. His large collection of paintings and anticjuities, as well as his valuable library, was sold by auction on his death in 1754. In 17K) he had a (juarrel with Dr. AVood ward, like himself a Greshani jirofessor ; 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.' But, nevertheless, at last he wisely submitted. In Ward's ' Lives of the Gresham Pro- fessors ' 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 liis practice, and, on his release by Sir Robert "W^alpole, presented the escaj)ed Jacobite with the result, 1^5,000. Dr. Mead, about 1714, lived at Chelsea; about the same date there lived in the same locality Dr. Alex- ander Blackwell, whom we introduce here chieflv 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 manied, and for some time practised as a j)hysician 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 dunderheaded 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,"' 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 pei-son 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 liis head wrong, he remarked jocosely that this being his first ex- periment, no wonder he should want a little instruction ! The Dr. A\'oodward 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 o])posite end of which he fa.stened a bullet, with which and a strong dose of powder he charged a ]iistol. On the trigger being pulled, the tooth was drawn out. Of course, it was but seldom he could ])revail 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,"" 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,"* 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 they go at it hammer and tongs. Dr. Buchan, the author of ' Domestic Medicine,' 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 to})i('s ; but they never a<]free(i, and with boisterous laughter used to ridicule each other's theories. But they all a