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 XXXV: Covent Garden and its Neighbourhood (continued).
Chapter XXXV: Covent Garden and its Neighbourhood (continued).
Quitting , we now enter , the thoroughfare connecting with . This street was built in , and so called after the Russells, Earls and Dukes of Bedford, the ground-landlords. In and much the same character may be accorded to it in the present day, excepting that that portion of it which skirts the northern side of is considerably narrowed. is which will always have a memory of a character sacred to all lovers of literature, because in it Boswell was introduced to Dr. Samuel Johnson. The old bookshop of Tom Davies on the south side of the street, where Johnson met the Scotchman who was destined to be his biographer, is now, or was lately, the Coffee-house; and its interest is not diminished by the fact that as he himself informs us, never passed by it The meeting, to use Boswell's own words, was brought about in this manner:-- he writes,
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In the of Mr. Cradock, who often met Johnson, Boswell, and Foote here, we find an anecdote of Foote in connection with the shop of Tom Davies which perhaps may not be unacceptable :-- This being immediately conveyed as it was meant to be, Foote, it is stated, was really intimidated, and the scheme, as to , was given up. | |
Coffee-house was situated on the north side, at the corner of ; was and on the north side. These coffee-houses have become such classic haunts, on | |
p.276 | account of their connection with the great names of the period of English literature, that we may be excused if we dwell on them somewhat in detail. |
Of all the coffee-houses which in the and eighteenth centuries supplied the place in society now occupied by the modern club, none holds a higher place in the literary history of London than It stood at the junction of and , and Sir Walter Scott was of opinion that the original sign of the house was a but this is doubted by Mr. Peter Cunningham. The room in which the wits of the day used to assemble, often under the presidency of no less a person than John Dryden, was on the floor, the ground-rooms being then occupied as a haberdasher's shop. It took its familiar appellation from Will Urwin, by whom it was kept, and whose name is preserved to us in an advertisement offering a reward for the apprehension of a runaway servant in . writes Pope,
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Defoe, too, in his bears the following testimony to the high repute in which Coffee-house then stood with the aristocracy of birth as well as with that of letters:-- And it is clear that not only literature but politics formed a subject of constant discussion in that upper room, for doubtless it will be remarked that in his number of the Addison says:
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The to , it seems, was not more readily granted than admission to the now-a-days would be to mere pretenders to literature, or to writers of every poem of the hour: thus, the speaks, with something of a sneer, of some luckless wight who The coffee-house, however, appears to have been used also-just like a club of our own dayas a place where friends could meet quietly and discuss a subject-literary, religious, or political. Thus in Mr. B. is represented as saying,
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says Dr. Johnson in Boswell's
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The position held by the wits of Coffeehouse in the republic of letters may be pretty well inferred from the number of the , in which Steele and Addison write- The same writer complains that Hence probably the truth of such a couplet as this:--
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It was to that [extra_illustrations.3.276.1] . writes Dr. Johnson, In later years Pope became a constant frequenter of though not till after the illustrious Dryden's death. again writes Dr. Johnson,
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Malone tells us that There were other personages, too, who used to repair to to meet their friends. Thus, for instance, in Pepys' under date , we find the following entry:--
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On the opposite side of to was Coffee-house, so called after the man who established it, in - Daniel Button, who had been a servant to Joseph Addison, or rather to his wife, the Countess of Warwick. If , it was only to in its literary reputation, which dated from the appearance of Addison's , and maintained it till his death, in . Itwas herethat Addison used to retreat and doubtless on other occasions also, for we know, from several independent sources of information, that he seldom let an evening pass by without looking in here along with his friends, Steele, Budgell, Philips, Carey, and Davenant. Here Pope, as he states, at time used to meet Addison nearly every day; and here Ambrose Philips, as Dr. Johnson tells us, showed himself of the by At was the conventional office of the , whose editor erected at the entrance a lion's head with a large mouth (of which we give an engraving), to receive contributions from young and inexperienced authors. | |
Under the was inscribed the following couplet from Martial:-- | |
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Mr. P. Cunningham traces the movements of this formidable head from to the Tavern, under Covent Garden Piazza, and thence to in the same place, from which it was removed to Woburn Abbey, being bought by the Duke of Bedford. | |
The origin and purpose of the lion's head above named is thus related in the of :
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(, No. , Wednesday, .) | |
, No. , .) | |
Charles Johnson, famous for writing a play every year, was an attendant at every day. He had, probably, thriven better in his vocation had he been somewhat leaner; he may be justly called a martyr to obesity, and may be said to have fallen a victim to the rotundity of his body. He kept a tavern in , Covent Garden, and died about . Though he was a man of inoffensive behaviour, yet he could not escape the satire of Pope, who, too ready to resent even any supposed offence, has, on some trivial pique, immortalised him in the
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In , at No. , on the north side, was Coffee-house; but the house was pulled down in , after having stood upwards of a century and a half. It was established about the year , by a Mr. West, after whose Christian name it was called. It is mentioned in the in , as a place where and where --in other words, the bearers of the highest orders at Court-might be seen night after night Its balcony in the day-time was often crowded with members of the Upper House of Parliament, who came thither to drink tea and coffee and to be amused. In the early part of the reign of George III. there was established at a club, consisting of upwards of members, including not only Garrick, Foote, Murphy, Dr. Dodd, George Colman, Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson, and William Bowyer, but the Duke of Montague, Sir George (afterwards Lord) Rodney, the great Lord Clive, the Earl of Anglesey, Lord Edward Bentinck, Earl Percy, and the Duke of Northumberland. Quoting Whitehead's we might add that-
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continued to be used as a coffee-house down to , when it passed into other uses; but many of the relics of the club still remain in private hands, including the books and lists of members and the snuff-box which was handed round among the company. This snuff-box, of which we give an engraving in page , is described by Mr. Timbs, in the of , as of large size and of tortoise-shell, and having on the lid in high relief, chased in silver, portraits of Charles I., Queen Anne, and the Royal Oak at Boscobel, with Charles II. hid in its branches. | |
At a tavern with the sign of the in , the Beefsteak Society, which we have already mentioned in our account of the Lyceum, used to meet before removing to that theatre. The sign is said by Mr. Larwood to have been and it was the work of George Lambert, scene-painter at . | |
In was also another Tavern, a noted place of debauchery in the Stuart times. Constant allusions to it occur in the comic writers of the age; , for instance, in , makes of the characters observe, Mr. Larwood tells us that here, in , was arranged the fatal duel between Lord Mohun and the Duke of Hamilton, of which we shall have to say more when we come to its actual scene, . How the character of for morality stood in the reign of Queen Anne, may be gathered from the following lines of the --
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Hogarth has given a picture of of the rooms in this house in his
adds Mr. Larwood, An engraving of it is shown in Pennant's
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At the Tavern in this street--the legitimate successor of the and of the last century- Mr. E. L. Blanchard tells us,
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Among the temporary residents in in olden time was John Evelyn. In his under date , is the entry: Here, too, as he tells us, he was visited in the December following by
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, during last century, and indeed during the earlier part of the present century, was largely inhabited by theatrical and other celebrities, of whom it would be impossible to give a full or complete list. Major Mohun; Betterton; Mrs. Barton Booth; Charles Lamb; Carr, Earl of Somer set, whose name is mixed up with the story of the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury; Armstrong, the poet; John Evelyn; Joseph Taylor, of the original performers of Shakespeare's plays-each and all of these are enumerated by Mr. P. Cunning ham amongst those who have contributed to the memories of . | |
In , was the music-shop of Mr. Peppard, which bore the appropriate sign o and [extra_illustrations.3.279.1] tells us, in hi that, while a student at Magdalen College, Oxford, and when in doubt as to the claims of the rival Churches of England and Rome, he consulted the advice of a Mr. Lewis, a Roman Catholic bookseller in , who recommended him to consult the priest, who received his formal abjuration of Protestantism, and admitted him into the bosom of in . | |
In formerly hung a beautifully-executed sign of Shakespeare's head: it was painted by Clarkson, who received for it . Another sign--a whole-length portrait of the immortal bard, in the same street--was the work of a Royal Academician, Samuel Wale. But this had to be taken down, with many other signs, in obedience to the Act of Parliament, and was sold to a broker in Lower , at whose shop-door it stood for some years, neglected and despised, and at last was destroyed by exposure to the weather. | |
in this part of , was long notorious as the resort of distinguished actors; and here is held, though not in the vigour of its early days, a society or club denominated the members of which are presided over by a and each of whom being annually elected to those distinguished positions. Here Sims the elder flourished for many years. He was succeeded by his son, a tablet to whose memory may still be seen in the parlour of the aforesaid hostelry. In these words is he commemorated: This rattle-brained society of theatrical, commercial, mechanic, and other worthies, was most solemnly established, many years since, by the whimsical contrivance of a merry company of tipplers, that they might meet every night as citizens of each having his own particular seat denoted as his ward, and each member, on admittance, having a particular ward assigned to him. says Mr. E. L. Blanchard, The title of this society, | |
p.280 | might lead our readers to infer that its proceedings are mixed up with a certain amount of levity and drunkenness, but this, we are credibly informed, is not the case, everything being conducted with the strictest propriety and decorum. |
In Crown Court, close by, and opposite the stage entrance to , is the Scottish National Church, a place of worship which has acquired considerable popularity under the ministry of Dr. Cumming, of prophetical notoriety. | |
At --and, indeed, at most of the other coffee-houses--the leading company used to wear long, flowing flaxen wigs, and so did Sir Godfrey Kneller when he frequented it of an evening. John Timbs, in his tells us that
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Richard Steele, the celebrated wit, dramatic and essay writer, and of the most frequent attendants at in its palmy days, was the.son of an English barrister who filled the post of secretary to the Duke of Ormond, and was born in Dublin in . Through the influence of the Duke of Ormond he was sent to the Charterhouse School, in London, from whence he removed to Oxford. It was at the Charterhouse that he found Addison, a youth years older than himself, and an intimacy was formed between them- of the most memorable in literature. Steele commenced life by entering the army as a private soldier. His wit and brilliancy soon made him a favourite in the army, and he plunged into the fashionable vices and follies of the age, which enabled him to acquire that knowledge of life and character which proved so serviceable when he exchanged the sword for the pen. As a check on his irregular mode of life, and being thoroughly convinced of many things of which he had often repented, and which he more often repeated, he wrote for his own admonition a little work entitled but his gay companions did not relish this semi-religious work, and not being very deeply impressed by his own reasoning and pious examples, as a counterpoise he wrote a comedy, , which was very successful. Steele had dedicated to his colonel, Lord Cutts, who appointed him his secretary, and promised him a captain's command in the volunteers. It was not long, however, before Steele found that in exchanging the pen for the sword he had made a mistake; and he lost no time in following his more congenial pursuits. He wrote a number of plays, which were very successful; and through the popularity thus obtained he secured an appointment in the Stamp Office, London, which he resigned on being elected member for Stockbridge. His Parliamentary career, however, was not brilliant, for he was expelled the House for writing alleged libels, called respectively and
says Lord Mahon,
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The accession of George I. was a fortunate circumstance for Steele; for he not only received the honour of knighthood, but was appointed to a post of some importance at ; and, what was far more congenial, was named Governor of the Royal Company of Comedians. And when the Rebellion of placed a number of forfeited estates at the disposal of the Government Steele was appointed a member of the Commission for Scotland. In this capacity, in , he visited Edinburgh, and whilst there he is said on occasion to have given a splendid entertainment to a multitude of decayed tradesmen and beggars collected from the streets! | |
Steele appears to have received fair remuneration for his literary work; and on the publication of his , in , the king, to whom it was dedicated, gave him . But he was always poor, because always lavish, scheming, and unbusiness-like; yet nothing could depress the elasticity of his spirits. Being always engaged in some unsuccessful scheme or other, and with habits both benevolent and lavish, he wasted his regular income in anticipation of a greater, until absolute pecuniary distress was the result. Shortly before his death he retired into Wales, solely for the purpose of retrenching his affairs, so that he might pay his creditors. But it was too late, and before he could carry his honest intentions into effect death overtook him, and, enfeebled by dissipation and excess, he died, on , at the age of . | |
It is as a witty and polished writer that Steele is best known, and especially as the originator of the , a paper in which Addison and some of the best writers of the time remarked on the politics of the age in which they lived. The and also received contributions from Steele's pen; and although the state of things which produced these works has passed away, yet these essays still rank as a worthy part of the standard literature of England. | |
After the death of Addison, the celebrity of | |
p.281 | Coffee-house declined, and a few years later we find its master in receipt of parish relief. His demise was thus announced in the at the time :-- Button lies buried, as already stated, among some of his illustrious guests, in , close by. |
Footnotes: [extra_illustrations.3.276.1] Pope, when a mere child, induced his friends to carry him, in order that he might gaze on the greatest whose mantle he was destined in after life so worthily to wear [extra_illustrations.3.279.1] Gibbon |
