Old and New London, A Narrative of its History, its People and its Places. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings from the Most Authentic Sources. vol 2
Thornbury, Walter
1872-78
Chapter LIX: Holborn, to Chancery Lane.Holborn Tallis's Baker's Holborn Holborn Restaurant
Chapter LIX: Holborn, to Chancery Lane.Holborn Tallis's Baker's Holborn Holborn Restaurant
Leaving the gates of Ely Place we turn westwards, and pursue our way along the main thoroughfare of . And, to begin, let us speak of the divisions of this street. From to used to be known as ; from to as , and from to as . Since the recent alterations and improvements, extends from to Bars, and from the Bars to . | |
of the great improvements effected in was its being paved, in , at the expense of Henry V., when the highway, we learn | |
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[extra_illustrations.2.527.3] from Rymer's
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In [extra_illustrations.2.527.4] , at what is now , there was of old a stone bridge over the Fleet, called Stow thus describes this locality:--
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Agas's map of London, in the time of Elizabeth, represents as a very different sort of a place from what it is now. All the ground from to was then gardens with trees and shrubs; and long before Agas's day part of that space was a rural region belonging to the see of Bangor. | |
in the beginning of this century is described by Malcolm, the careful compiler of he says, writing in , In the additional Act for rebuilding London, , it was enacted
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was anciently of much consequence, not only on account of the many eminent people who resided here, but because of the Inns of Court, which graced both its north and south sides. Besides, it contained an hospital for the poor, and a cell to the house of Clugny in France, suppressed with the Priories Alien. | |
used to stand a little west of . They marked the termination of the city Liberties in that direction. The now shown by granite obelisks bearing the city arms. The Corporation of London formerly received a penny and -penny toll from the carts and carriages of non-freemen entering the city. These tolls were levied at the bars, including Bars. The richest inlets were and Whitechapel Bar. | |
The , , has disappeared, like the Bars. This was a block of houses which stood half blocking up the street at the south end of . For at least a couple of centuries it was considered an obstruction. Howel, in his (p. ), says :--a The obstructive buildings were at last made an end of in . There is a view of the old row in Faithorne's ichnographical delineation of London in the reign of Charles I. | |
was the old road from Newgate and the Tower to the gallows at Tyburn. At regular and frequent intervals both sides of the way were lined and all the windows were covered with curious and often sympathising spectators to see light-fingered gentlemen, murderers, forgers, and such like, riding to their doom. | |
says Polly, in the , alarmed on account of Captain Macheath; --which he had received at St. Sepulchre's-
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Swift gives us a picture of an execution procession in his --
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, we mentioned in a previous page, was sometimes known as To speak of any having the privilege of riding in a cart up the Heavy Hill, was equivalent, in the free and easy talk of our forefathers, to saying that he was sure to be hung. | |
There are many allusions to Heavy Hill, and the | |
procession ascending it, bound for Tyburn, in our old authors:-- | |
says Sir Sampson, in Congreve's (),
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says Aldo, in Dryden's (),
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And in Ben Jonson's we have the following:-- | |
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It is told in Tom Brown's works that an old counsellor who lived in used every execution-day to give his clerks a half-holiday, sending them to see the show, and giving them this piece of advice:
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The line of road was selected for the cruel whippings which Titus Oates and Dangerfield had to suffer, in the reign of James II. Titus Oates, as every knows, was the chief informer in what was called the Popish plot; a plot, as he pretended to prove, that was promoted for the destruction of the Protestant religion in England. Several persons of quality were tried and executed chiefly on his evidence, and Oates, in return for his kind and timely information, received a pension of a year, and was lodged in . Scarcely, however, had King James II. ascended the throne, than he was cast into prison, and tried for perjury with respect to what he had asserted regarding the alleged plot. Being convicted, he was sentenced to stand in the pillory times a year during his life, to whipped from to Newgate, and from thence to Tyburn; which sentence, says Neal, was exercised with a severity unknown to the English nation. says the historian Hume, He died in . Hume describes him as the most infamous of mankind, and tells us that in early life he had been chaplain to Colonel Pride, and that he was afterwards chaplain on board, the fleet, whence he had been ignominiously dismissed. He then became a convert to the Roman Catholics, but used to boast in after years that his conversion was a mere pretence, which he made in order to get into their secrets and betray them. | |
The gentle Evelyn saw the part of Oates' punishment inflicted. He has this entry in his on the :
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Dangerfield, who had been the inventor of the was condemned, in the same year, to about as severe a punishment as Oates. He was ordered to stand twice in the pillory; to be whipped from to Newgate on day, and from Newgate to Tyburn on another; and to pay a fine of . He was not made of such tough material as his brother scoundrel, Oates. He This furious barrister, Mr. Frances, was consequently tried for the murder, and as it was found that the popular feeling, was very violent against him, it was judged a politic proceeding to permit his conviction and execution. | |
So much for general observations upon . The object which catches the eye as we look about for particulars on which to comment, is the statue erected to the memory of the late Prince Consort in Circus. This statue was unveiled on Friday, the . It is a gift from a patriotic gentleman, who desires to remain unknown, to the Corporation of London. The prince is represented as responding to a salute. The pedestal, which is composed of stones weighing to tons each, includes sitting figures illustrating History and Peace, and bas-reliefs illustrating important events in Prince Albert's life. The statue is the work of Mr. Bacon. The pedestal is the joint design of the sculptor and Mr. William Haywood. | |
We must not forget to speak of an inn called the which stood formerly on , and only disappeared within the recollection of the present generation. From it Taylor the | |
p.531 | water-poet started in the Southampton coach for the Isle of Wight on the , while Charles I. was there.
So says Taylor in the beginning of his |
, situated over against St. Andrew's Church, was originally called Scroop's Court. It derived this name from the noble family of Scrope of Bolton, who had a town house here, which was afterwards let to the serjeants-at-law. It ceased, it is said, to be a serjeants' inn about the year . | |
, on the south side of , is described by Strype as and he adds, that it is a region Were Strype to come alive again, he would not recognise the locality. is mentioned in the burial register of St. Andrew's (the parish in which it lies) as far back as , and it is there called Bartlett's Court. | |
We read in Thoresby's Diary,
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In Dyers' Buildings, the site of some almshouses of the Dyers' Company, lived [extra_illustrations.2.531.1] when he published his edition of Pope's Works, with notes and a life of the poet, vols. vo, . of the principal objects of this new edition was to give a fuller and more accurate life of the poet than had yet appeared. Of the various biographical notices of him, it is not unjust to say that there was not worthy of the subject. The (), in summing up the merits of Mr. Roscoe's work, says,
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At the corner of , on the opposite side of the street from Dyers' Buildings, Edward Kidder, the famous pastry-cook, had a school. He had another establishment in . and in these places is said to have taught, from. to last, nearly ladies the delightful art of making pastry. Kidder published his receipts, engraved on copper, in a thin vo volume, with his portrait as a frontispiece. He died in , in his year. His book is somewhat dull reading, being unenlivened by any of those touches of fancy and eccentricity which make a work like Dr. Kitchener's so delightful to spend half an hour over. | |
And now crossing the street again we come to , which runs from into . Its proper name is , perhaps from the name of Castle Inn, on the site of which it is built; Lord Arundel, the great collector of art and antiquities, was living in - in And here died Lady Davenant, the wife of Sir William Davenant, the poet. | |
And having by reached , we. may as well say a little about it, having omitted to do so in the beginning of our pilgrimage when speaking of , of which it is a tributary. It is named after the Cursitor's Office or Inn, founded by [extra_illustrations.2.531.2] , Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, and father of the famous Lord Bacon. Stow, speaking of , says, Cursitor is said to be a corruption of chorister, and this seemeth the more probable, because The business of the Cursitors is to make out and issue writs in the name of the Court of Chancery. | |
When passing once through with his secretary, Lord Chancellor Eldon said:
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It was here he lived with that pretty young wife whom he married so imprudently, though he used in after life to reflect upon the step as of the most fortunate of hid early career. says Mr. Jeaffreson, After a short residence at Oxford, the future Lord Eldon naturally came (as mostly all talent does come) to London, and established himself in a humble little house in . The pretty, wife made it cheerful for him. He had in after life to regret her peculiarities, her stinginess, and her nervous repugnance to society; but he remained devoted in his attachment. he said, in his old age, after she was dead;
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Returning to and proceeding westward, we come to , built on the site of Southampton House. They lie on the south side of , a little above Bars. Speaking of the old mansion-house, Peter Cunningham, in , remarked that fragments still remained in his day. He was shown, in , what was still called of the house, a building with rubble walls and a flat timbered roof. The occupant also told him that his father remembered a pulpit in the chapel, and that he himself, when forming the foundation of a workshop adjoining, had seen portions of a circular building which he supposed to be part of the old temple mentioned in a passage from Stow, which we shall make the subject of the following paragraphs: | |
says Stow, had ye in old time a temple built by the Templars, whose order began in , in the of Henry I. This temple was left and fell to ruin since the year , when the Templars had builded them a new Temple in , near to the river of Thames. A great part of this old temple was pulled down but of late, in the year . | |
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We must not forget that in Southampton House, Thomas, the last Earl of Southampton, the faithful and virtuous servant of Charles I., and Lord Treasurer in the beginning of the reign of Charles II., ended his days. Pennant, the historian, when he comes to this point in his writes with all the pathos of an honest and feeling heart. he says,
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Southampton House was taken down and private tenements erected on the site in the middle of the century. Howel, writing in , mentioning this fact, breaks out in his quaint way:
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In , in the house of a relative, Ludlow, the Parliamentary general, lay | |
p.533 | concealed from the Restoration till the period of his escape. And a very narrow escape it was. When the proclamation was issued by Charles II., requiring all the late king's judges to surrender themselves in days, on pain of being left out of the act of indemnity, he determined to fly the country. He bade farewell to his friends, and went over in a coach to in the borough of , where he took horse, and travelling all night, arrived at Lewes, in Sussex, by break of day next morning. Soon after, he went on board a small open vessel prepared for him; but the weather being very bad, he quitted that, and took shelter in a larger which had been got ready, but it stuck in the sands going down the river. He had hardly got on board this, when some persons came to search that which he had just left. After waiting a night and a day for the storm to abate (during which time the master of the vessel asked him whether he had heard that Lieutenant-General Ludlow was confined among the rest of the king's judges), he put to sea, and landed at Dieppe in the evening, before the gates were shut. Having thus got him out of the reach of danger, we shall leave him, only waiting to tell the reader that he died at Vevay, in Switzerland, in , his last wishes being for the prosperity, peace, and glory of his country. |
of the early coffee-houses of London was established in . In the autobiography of Anthony Wood (ii. ) we come upon the following passage in connection with the year :--
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When coffee was introduced into England, about the middle of the century, the new beverage, as was to be expected, had its opponents as well as its advocates. There were broadsides against coffee, just as there had been counterblasts against tobacco; but in spite of opposition it became a favourite drink, and the shops where it was sold grew to be places of general resort. They were frequented by , and were the great marts for news of all kinds, true and false. | |
In , a paternal Government issued a proclamation for shutting up and suppressing all coffeehouses. They found, however, that in making this proclamation they had gone a step too far. So early as this period the coffee-house had become a power in the land--as Macaulay tells us--a most important political institution, when public meetings, harangues, resolutions, and the rest of the machinery of agitation, had not come into fashion, and nothing like a newspaper existed. In such circumstances the coffee-houses were the chief organs through which the public opinion of the metropolis vented itself. Consequently, on a petition of the merchants and retailers of coffee, permission was granted to keep the coffee-houses open for months, under an admonition that the masters of them should prevent all scandalous papers, books, and libels from being read in them, and hinder every person from declaring, uttering, or divulging all manner of false and scandalous reports against Government or the ministers thereof. The absurdity of constituting every maker of a cup of coffee a censor of the press was too great even for those days: the proclamation was laughed at, and no more was heard of the suppression of coffee-houses. | |
Dr. Birkbeck, in , founded a Mechanics' Institution in , for the dissemination of useful knowledge among the industrious classes of the community, by means of lectures, classes, and a library. | |
says a writer from whom we have already quoted, | |
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When the enthusiasm wore off, Mechanics' Institutions hardly realised, perhaps, the expectations of their founders. The reasons for this have been thus set down by a careful observer:-- he says,
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The Mechanics' Institution in has now departed considerably from the design of the founder, and flourishes under the title of the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution. | |
A well by which wonderful cures were effected, both on the blind and the lame, was discovered in near Southampton House. It was known as the Soldier's Well, the finder having been of the military profession, and is mentioned in
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, commonly called Fuller's Rents, in , is a narrow-paved court nearly opposite the end of . It leads into Walks, Gray's' Inn Gardens. Strype, in , describes it thus :--
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Here stood of the earliest coffeehouses. says Aubrey, in his
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Adjoining Gate, on the west side, was Squire's Coffee-house, from whence several of the are dated. | |
Ned Ward, the author of the kept a punch-house within door of , and here he died, in the year . This writer, whom, in the course of our rambles through Old London, we have already several times quoted, was of low extraction, and born in Oxfordshire, about . His residence was not always in , for we find him living a while in , then, for some years after, keeping a public-house in , and after that in Clerkenwell. In his last establishment, off , he would entertain any company who invited him with stories and adventures of the poets and authors he was acquiainted with Pope honoured him with a place in the but Ward took his revenge, and retorted with some spirit. He died on the , and, on the of the same month, was interred in Churchyard, with mourning coach for his wife and daughter to attend the hearse, as he had himself directed in a poetical will, written by him on the . Ward is best known by his a coarse production, but, in some respects, a true representation of the metropolitan manners of his day. | |
The of which Strype makes mention, was kept for many years by Thomas Winter, better known as the pugilist, who died here on the . | |
A curious gabled and projecting house, of the time of James' I., stands about the centre of the east side of . A ground-floor room of this house is engraved by Mr. Archer, in his and is given by us on page . The apartment was entirely panelled with oak, the mantelpiece being carved in the same wood, with caryatides and arched niches; the ceiling-beams were carved in panels, and the entire room was original, with the exception of the window. On the floor, a larger room contained another carved mantelpiece, of very florid construction. The. front of the house is said to be covered with ornament, now concealed by plaster. | |
Sun : A pleasant fellow, willing to put off a lame horse, rode him from the within Cripplegate, to the in , neere the Fuller's Rents; and the next day offering to sell him in , the buyer asking him why he looked so leane, answered he, | |
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Dr. Johnson, in , lived at the at Bars. | |
At the east corner of the [extra_illustrations.2.537.1] , Sir James Branscombe kept a lottery office for years, He had been footman to the Earl of Gainsborough, and was knighted when Sheriff of London and Middlesex, in . | |
The history of lotteries in England is an entertaining . The earliest English lottery was drawn in . The drawing began on the , at the west door of , and continued day and night till the . The scheme, which had been announced years before, shows that the lottery consisted of lots, or shares, at. each, and that it comprehended Any profit that might be derived from the scheme was to be devoted to the reparation of harbours and other useful public works. The lottery, in , was projected to benefit the new colony in Virginia, and there is a tradition that the principal prize- crowns --was gained by a poor tailor. Down to (except for a short time following upon an Act of Queen Anne) lotteries continued to be sanctioned by the English Government as a source of revenue. It seems strange, says a popular writer, that so glaringly immoral a project should have been kept up under such auspices so long. The younger people at the present day may be at a loss to believe that, in the days of their fathers, there were large and imposing offices in London, such as this in , and pretentious agencies in the provinces, for the sale of lottery-tickets; while flaming advertisements on walls, in new books, and in the public journals, proclaimed the preferableness of such and such offices--this having sold -sixteenths of the last prize, another having sold an entire ticket the year before, and so on. It was found possible to persuade the public, or a portion of it, that where a blessing had once lighted, it was the more likely to light again. The competition amongst the lottery-offices was intense. firm, finding an old woman in the country of the name of Goodluck, gave her a year, on condition she should join them as a nominal partner, for the sake of the attractive effect of her name. In their advertisements each was sedulous to tell how many of the grand prizes had in former years fallen to the lot of persons who had bought at shop. | |
Dr. Chambers remarks,
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The culminating point in the history of lottery gambling appears to have been the year . The whole town then went crazed on the chance of making large gains by small ventures. There were lottery magazines, lottery tailors and dressmakers; lottery glovers, hat-makers, and tea-dealers; lottery snuff and pig-tail merchants; lottery barbers, who promised, on payment of , to shave you and give you a chance of being paid ; lottery shoe-blacks ; lottery ordinaries, where might obtain, for , a plate of beef and the chance of winning guineas; lottery oyster-stalls, where yielded a dozen of oysters and a very distant prospect of guineas; and, lastly, a sausagestall, in a blind alley, where you might, by purchasing a farthing's worth of sausages, should--the fates prove propitious, gain a bonus of | |
The demoralising effect of this state of affairs may be readily imagined. By creating illusive hopes lotteries supplanted steady industry. Shopmen robbed their masters, servant-girls their mistresses, friends borrowed from each other under false pretences, and husbands stinted their wives and children of necessaries--all to raise the | |
p.538 | means for buying a portion or the whole of a lottery-ticket. There was no exaggeration in the report of a committee of the , a considerable time prior to the abolition of lotteries in , which remarked that
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Amidst all this immoral and unhealthy excitement, however, many incidents occurred which, to read about at least, afford amusement. In , for example, a lady in had a lottery-ticket presented to her by her husband, and on the Sunday preceding the drawing, her success was prayed for in the parish church-St. Andrew's, most probably--in this form: Possibly she was of those who followed the lottery-loving clergy who used to defend the appeal to chance by reference to Scripture, urging that But
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In the same year () the prize (or a prize) of fell to the lot of a tavern-keeper at Abingdon. We are told, in the journals of the time--
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The theory of attracted great attention in the days of lotteries. When the drawing took place, papers inscribed with as many different numbers as there were shares, or tickets, were placed in a hollow wheel; of these was drawn out, usually by a Bluecoat boy, and the number was audibly announced. Another Bluecoat boy then drew out of another wheel a paper, representing either a or a prize for a certain sum of money, and the purchaser of that particular number got nothing or gained a prize accordingly. With a view to getting lucky numbers, man would select his own age, or the age of his wife; another would select the date of the year, a a row of odd or of even numbers. Some, in their excitement, dreamt of numbers, and purchased tickets in harmony with their dreams. There is an amusing paper in the (No. , ) in which the subject of lucky numbers is dealt with in a strain of pleasant banter. It tells of man who selected , because it was the year of our Lord; of another who sought for , because it constituted the minority on a celebrated bill in the ; and of a who selected the number of the beast, , on the ground that wicked beings were often lucky. In a lady bought No. , because it was the nearest to , which had been already sold to some other applicant. A story is told of a tradesman who, on occasion, bought tickets consecutive in number. He thought it foolish to have them so close together, and took back to the office to be exchanged. The thus taken back turned up a prize! | |
The last was drawn in England on the , at Cooper's Hall, . Public suspicion had, however, by this time been aroused, and though such numbers turned out to see the last of a long series of legalised swindles, as to inconveniently crowd the hall, the lottery-office keepers could not dispose of all the tickets. The abolition of lotteries deprived the Government of a revenue equal to or per annum. | |
In was born the once popular lecturer and poet, George Alexander Stevens, says the late Mr. J. H. Jesse,
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At the commencement of his career Stevens attempted the stage, a line of life which he soon abandoned. As an actor his merit was below mediocrity... As a humorous writer he acquired considerable fame, but his life being neither regulated by the rules of virtue nor of prudence, his health was soon impaired, his finances were often at a low ebb, and his person was not unfrequently in durance. His pecuniary position, however, was much improved by his happily conceived lecture, by means of which he soon amassed a large sum of money. After delivering it in England and Scotland, with extraordinary approbation, he visited America, and was well received in all the principal towns. In fact, in the course of a few years he became worth about ; but the greater part of this sum had melted from his hands before his death. He died on the , his mind having for some time previous been in a state of hopeless idiotic ruin. | |
Stevens is the instance that can be produced of man, single-handed, keeping an audience amused for the space of hours. As he was the inventor of this species of entertainment, it may naturally be inquired by what means it was suggested to him. The idea of his lecture, it is said, was got at a village, where he was manager of a theatrical company. He met there with a country mechanic, who described the members of the corporation with great force and humour. Upon this idea Stevens improved and was assisted in making the heads by his friend, who little imagined what a source of profit he had established. | |
Gerarde, the herbalist, had a large physic-garden in . The site is uncertain, but we may as well notice it here. He dates his He mentions in his famous work many rare plants which grew well in the garden behind his house. | |
Of his botanic garden in , says Chalmers,
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This last statement of Chalmers' is a little of an exaggeration. The fact is, there was a botanic garden in England, at Syon House, the seat of the Duke of Somerset, as early as the beginning of the century. It was under the superintendence of Dr. Turner, whom Dr. Pulteney considers as the father of English botany. A great deal of interest seems to have been taken in botany during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and many new plants were brought into the country. Gerarde mentions Nicholas Lete, a merchant in London, The same author also gives due honour to Sir Walter Raleigh; to Lord Edward Zouch, who, assisted by the celebrated Lobel, brought plants, and seeds from Constantinople; and to Lord Hunsdon, Lord High Chamberlain of England, who, he says,
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Gerarde was born at Nantwich, in Cheshire, in . He practised surgery in London, and rose to eminence in that profession. After the publication of his he lived for about years, his death taking place in . Many errors have been pointed out in Gerrde's work, but he had the great merit of practical knowledge of plants, with unbounded zeal and indefatigable perseverance. He contributed greatly to forward the knowledge of plants in England, and his name will be remembered by botanists with esteem, when the utility of his is superseded. says Pennant,
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Many districts of London have in past times had the good fortune to be haunted by characters of an original type, and a most interesting volume | |
p.540 | might be compiled of these metropolitan oddities. At present we shall notice who used to frequent the region of , and who has been taken notice of by in his This was Peter Stokes, known as He is thus described, dressed in all the finery of an oldfashioned costume, by Mr. Harvey, writing in :--
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And about this man, engaged in such a humble trade, shone the light of a somewhat romantic history. He was by profession a painter, and, it was believed, possessed considerable talent. When he was a very young man he married, His practice as an artist did not keep pace with the growing wants of a small family, and at last, with an eccentricity which, in the circumstances, may be pardoned, he determined to begin a street-trade on , and conducted this business for many a day. From to o'clock he was to be seen shouting, as he moved to and fro, from to Ely Place, thence to or to , or Fleet Market, rapidly | |
p.541 | getting rid of his tempting wares. After o'clock he betook himself to genteel lodgings in , where Stokes was himself again, resumed his palette and easel, and found sitters increase as his means made them less necessary, for the street business proved a money-making . |
Peter Stokes' history recalls that of a remarkable hawker of savoury patties, who might be constantly seen in the streets of Paris, during the earlier years of Louis XVI. He was of higher origin than our London however, but reckless extravagance had reduced him to poverty while he was yet in the prime of life. His dress was fastidiously elegant, and while standing, basket in hand, on the steps of the Palais Royal, he wore round his neck the decoration of St. Croix. Sterne had seen him, and declares that his manners and address were those of a man of high rank. | |
Let us now speak about another character of this neighbourhood, namely, an old bellman of , and take the opportunity of saying a few words about bellmen in general.
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says Dr. Robert Chambers,
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of our bellman's professional brethren, Thomas Law, issued a similar but unadorned broadside in , which has had the good fortune to be preserved for our enlightenment. In it he greets his masters of in no less than dull stanzas, of which the last may be given here:--
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At a fixed season of the year--most often, no doubt, Christmas--it seems to have been customary for the bellman to distribute copies of his broadside through the district of which he had the charge, expecting his masters to favour him in return with some small gratuity. The execrable character which usually belonged to these rhymed productions is shown by the contempt with which the wits used to speak of
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Robert Herrick has a little poem in which he wishes good luck to his friends in the form of the nightly addresses of the bellman. Like all Herrick's productions, it is daintily musical. With its good wishes applied to the reader, we shall leave him for the present, and conclude this chapter:--
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Footnotes: [extra_illustrations.2.527.1] Holborn Bars [extra_illustrations.2.527.2] Elizabethan House-Holborn [extra_illustrations.2.527.3] Old Houses Near Middle row [extra_illustrations.2.527.4] Holborn [extra_illustrations.2.531.1] William Roscoe [extra_illustrations.2.531.2] Sir Nicholas Bacon [extra_illustrations.2.537.1] Middle row |