Old and New London, A Narrative of its History, its People and its Places. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings from the Most Authentic Sources. vol 3
Thornbury, Walter
1872-78
Chapter XXXIV: Covent Garden and its Neighbourhood (continued).
Chapter XXXIV: Covent Garden and its Neighbourhood (continued).
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Having completed our desultory survey of the purlieus of Covent Garden lying westward as far as , we once more turn our face towards the east, and wend our way through . This fine thoroughfare, as already stated, was originally called and the then and in after times it got its present name from a long and narrow slip of ground belonging to the Abbot of , used as a pathway, which bordered the garden on the north. The pleasure-grounds behind the convent are said to have covered acres, and an avenue of tall elms is reported to have stood al;ong the presebt line of road. Among the entries in the Council Books of the time of King Edward VI. mention is made of a grant from the king to the Earl of Bedford and his heirs male of and of It began to be built upon at the close of the or early in the century. | |
Probably from the time of Charles I., when coaches were introduced into use in London, became the head-quarters of carriagebuilders, whose manufactories still exist there in considerable numbers, side by side with varnishmakers, coach-trimming makers, &c. Many of the other houses not so occupied were tenanted by persons of note; and others, again, by physicians and medical quacks. Stothard, the painter and Royal Academician, we are told, was the son of a carriage-maker in this street John Dryden lived in it, on the north side, opposite to ; and Oliver Cromwell on the southern side, from l to . | |
has had many other distinguished residents. Here lived the beautiful with whom Prior has made us so familiar in his poems. Instead, however, of being young, elegant, and beautifl, we learn that she was the commonplace wife of a cobbler, or according to other accounts, of a soldier or an alehouse-keeper. But whoever and whatever she may have been, Pope tells us that Let us hope that she had merits of her own and qualities unknown to the world outside. | |
At a corner on the north side of , where it meets , with entrances in , , and , stands the Queen's Theatre. This building passed through the stages of its existence under the name of The edifice bearing that name was built, in the year , by William Cubitt, from a design by the younger Westmacott, on a site which was presented to Mr. John Hullah by of the civic companies. It was of the Elizabethan style of architecture, with a domed iron roof of immense space. The music-hall, which was capable of easily accommodating persons, was opened in by Mr. Hullah, the founder of a new school of choral harmony. Here Mr. Hullah held his singingclasses; and oratorios and concerts, both instrumental and vocal, of a high order of excellence, | |
p.270 | were given under his direction. Here, too, Mr. Charles Dickens appeared as a public lecturer, in , on behalf of the Hospital for Sick Children, in , and a week or later on his own account. |
Hall was not only used for musical purposes, but also sometimes echoed to far less harmonious sounds when occupied by noisy and crowded meetings where political and social questions were agitated. On , a fire broke out early in the morning in the coach-factory of Messrs. Kesterton, at the corner of and , closely adjoining Hall, and from the inflammable nature of the contents of the workshops the flames spread with a rapidity which defied the efforts of the engines. The fire was not long in reaching the roof of Hall, and this noble concert-room shared the fate of the adjacent building; not a vestige of it remained, and with it perished the fine organ by which it was adorned. | |
Hall was rebuilt, and reopened as a concert-hall in , and musical and other entertainments were here held until . Early in that year it was again engaged for a series of | |
promenade concerts by Mr. Strange, lessee of the Alhambra; but its career as a concert-hall was drawing to a close. On the , after undergoing considerable alterations, it was opened as a theatre by Mr. Alfred Wigan, under the title of a name years before discarded by the little theatre near now known as the Since that period it has changed hands several times, having been under the management successively of Messrs. Wigan, Liston, Young, and Clifton, and of Mrs. Seymour. Many well-known artists have played at this theatre-Mr. J. L. Toole, Mr. Phelps, Miss Henrietta Hodson, and Mr. and Mrs. Rousby; the last-mentioned lady having made her here in , as in . Several excellent dramas also have been brought out at the in which Mrs. Rousby has sustained the principal among which may be named more especially , and | |
Opposite the Queen's Theatre, and at the corner of and , is the shop of Messrs. Merryweather, the celebrated fire-engine manufacturers. Their business dates from the | |
p.271 | latter part of the century; the firm being formerly known under the names of Hadley, Simpkin, and Lott. The house now occupied by Messrs. Merryweather is supposed to be the only at present in or standing on exactly the same site and in the same condition as when erected. The firm has in its possession several firemen's leather helmets, dating from , if not earlier, and other curious relics of former times. |
A little further westwards in is Hanover Court, formerly Phoenix Alley, celebrated as having been once the home of Taylor the who died in it in . He kept an alehouse here, and it is on record that, as of the privileged watermen on the Thames, he sig- | |
nalised himself by his strenuous opposition to the introduction of coaches into London. The sign of the alehouse, it is said, was the for which, on the establishment of the Commonwealth, he substituted his own head, with the following witty motto:
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, which runs parallel with , between that thoroughfare and Covent Garden, was built about the year -, and derived its name from the Inn, which was still standing as late as the reign of George I. In it died Haines, the comic actor, in . It was also at time the abode of the celebrated Charles Macklin, who retired from the stage in | |
p.272 | middle life, under the idea of making his fortune here by establishing a tavern and coffee-house, in . In the March of that year he opened a public ordinary, to be continued every day at o'clock, price , An account of this dinner, given in Smith's presents us with an amusing picture of the manners of the day in coffee-houses and taverns. When the clock struck, a large bell suspended on the top of the house was rung for minutes, and the dinner was ordered to be served. In minutes more it was put upon the table; the door was then closed, and no other guest was admitted. Macklin himself always brought in the dish, in and with a napkin on his left arm; and when he had set it down he made a low bow and a retired to a sideboard, surrounded by a bevy of waiters. For several months previous to opening he had trained his servants to communicate with him by signs, not a word being spoken by any of them while they remained in the room, for fear of interrupting the When the dinner was ended, and the wine set upon the table, Macklin quitted his situation, and, walking gravely up to his visitors, expressed a modest and then retired, making a low bow at the door. To this establishment Macklin afterwards added another, which he called which, as stated in his advertisement, was to be on the plan of the ancient Greek, Roman, and modem French and Italian societies of liberal investigation. he says in his announcement, it is added, These discussions and discourses were to be held on the evenings of Monday and Friday, at o'clock; but the idea did not take. The whole establishment was a failure from the beginning; and in , Charles Macklin became a bankrupt. After this failure he returned to the stage, doubtless a wiser man for his experience in business. |
, which forms the connecting link between and , and to gether with and forms a direct communication between and the Strand, was built in , being so called Strype, who tells us this, also says that This was in . It ceased to be well inhabited about years afterwards. The theatre () on the west side we have described in a previous chapter. Police Office, celebrated in the annals of crime, was established in . It was formerly occupied by the novelist Fielding, who is said to have written within its walls. The office itself, as it now appears, is a mean and common house, and requires and, indeed, admits of no detailed description. Not so its officials, who belong to history. The old officers were called by fast men on account of their wearing red vests; and though they were a set of brave and resolute men, they were too limited in numbers to be generally effective. Amongst the most vigilant and energetic we may mention Leadbitter, Ruthven, Goddard, and Keys. At night the only protection afforded to Londoners was a tribe of guardians who, though infinitely more in numbers, were far less useful in effect. These night guardians were generally aged and ineffective men, whose duty was to parade the streets; and the inhabitants, by rotation, had to sit up every night at the watch-house in , to take the charges--a pleasant task, after a man had been attending to his business al day! | |
In is a house celebrated all over the United Kingdom, and it may be said the whole world, as the head office of the police, particularly since the time of Sir John Fielding, in the last century. It is not included in the Police Act, but is wholly under the management and direction of the Secretary of State for the Home Department. Its establishment consists of magistrates, each attending days in a week. The chief magistrate has a large addition to his salary, in lieu of the fees taken at the office, which were formerly appropriated to his emolument, but are now carried to the public account. He also has a year for the superintendence of the horse patrol. All the magistrates belonging to this office are in.the Commission of the Peace for the Counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, and Essex. | |
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can boast of a series of illustrious names among its former inhabitants; for on the site of the present Police Office resided Edmund Waller the poet, from to . Here, then, he was living when he wrote, in , his famous panegyric upon Cromwell. William Longueville, the friend of Butler, too, lived close by. The witty Earl of Dorset resided in a house on the west side, in the years and . Major Mohun, the famous actor, occupied a house on the east side, from to inclusive; Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, the great Prime Minister of his day, was born in this street in ; and Grinling Gibbons, too, lived in a house on the east side (about the middle of the street), from to , the period of his death. The house was distinguished by the name of In the of the , it is recorded that
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Among the illustrious inhabitants of this street must not be forgotten Sir Godfrey Kneller, and Dr. Radcliffe, the munificent founder of the museum at Oxford which bears his name. They lived next door to each other, and were great friends, though every now and then it would appear that they had their little quarrels, as we have shown in the anecdote narrated in a previous chapter. On reading the anecdote we feel almost irresistibly compelled to ask, with Virgil, Tantoene It seems that on taking his degree at Oxford Dr. Radcliffe settled in , at that time a fashionable suburb, and soon made in fees guineas a day, (says Chambers, in his ), Even at this time his books were so few in number that day, on being asked where was his library, he pointed to a few phials, a skeleton, and a herbal, in corner of his apartment, exclaiming with emphasis, The answer has all the more point because late in life he became the author of a very fine library, which he left to the University of Oxford. We shall have more to say about Dr. Radcliffe when we come to Kensington Palace. His fortune as a West-End physician was made in , when he managed to restore to health King William just before he went to Ireland to fight the battle of the Boyne, and years later, when he cured the young Duke of Gloucester of some fainting-fits which threatened to carry him off. | |
In this street, in lodgings lived the dramatic poet Wycherley and his wife, the widow of the Earl of Drogheda, whom he gained by a chance introduction in the street at Tunbridge Wells. Whilst residing here he had the honour of a visit from Charles II., who came to see him when ill, and presented him with money enough to pay the expenses of a visit to the south of France. It may perhaps be remembered that Wycherley had held a captain's commission in a regiment of which the Duke of Buckingham was colonel. | |
It was from the Tavern that Sir John Coventry was on his way to his house in the neighbourhood of when he was severely wounded in the nose, as we shall relate when we come to speak of the neighbourhood of the . | |
Mr. T. Raikes in his under date , writes :
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In Bonnell Thornton's chambers in this street, was held in , an exhibition of sign-boards, by the -- of whom, by the way, Hogarth was . It was intended as a skit upon the exhibitions then newly introduced by the Society of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, and its catalogue included upwards of paintings, some of them curious on account of the covered satire which they were intended to convey on political events and public characters. There was, for instance, much humour in placing as a companion to and next to The exhibition caused much smart and tart writing in the newspapers at the time, and the admission was fixed at a shilling. A full account of the exhibition will be found in the appendix to Mr. Larwood's
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Towards the close of the last century, when Rich was in the zenith of his managerial prosperity, and the new theatre in Covent Garden had | |
p.274 | just commenced with the reproduction of a series of what would now be called blazes of triumph, there was established in the immediate vicinity a rustic-looking hostel, to accommodate a refreshment-seeking crowd finding no unoccupied nook in the taverns adjacent. This hostel was in , on the east side of . The original landlord was Powell, a native of Shropshire, and he chose for his sign the name of the high hill overshadowing the place of his birth. Hither came the actors of that date, and those who sought and valued their society of course followed in their train. The next proprietor was a gentleman named Harrold, of a good Herefordshire family, and who considerably raised the fortunes and the reputation of the house. For about half a century, under his management, was the chosen resort of the most prominent celebrities of the day; and as wine was the only refreshment supplied to those who entered the coffee-room, the visitors were exceedingly select. The Kembles-John and Charles-and the principal members of that powerful company then collected at the neighbouring theatre, would constantly avail themselves of this handy histrionic hostel to snatch a pleasant hour from the night, after the cessation of their professional duties. The tavern shared the vicissitudes of the theatre, on which it was in some degree dependent, and nearly every change of management at the house was followed by a change in the direction of the other. Mr. Warner, the husband of the celebrated tragic actress Mrs. Warner, was at time the landlord, and Mr. Hemming, an esteemed actor at the and Theatres, was another. famous clubs were here instituted, called and the other When Hemming left to become lessee of the in the , he took the best of the visitors away with him. From began gradually to decline, and within the last few years its declension was so rapid that by the end of the ancient hostel was levelled with the ground, and its position occupied by a block of new houses manifestly let to respectable tenants. |
Wycherley died in his house in , in the year , at the age of . Of his death-bed we find an amusing anecdote in the of Pope. It seems strange at the present day to think of as of the most fashionable streets in London; but there can be no doubt that such must have been the character of this thoroughfare in the early part of the last century, for Dryden asserts as much in a casual manner when he writes:
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Footnotes: [] See ante, page 143. |
