Part 4 (1/2)
In the reign of Queen Anne those pests of the London streets, the ”Mohocks,” seem to have infested Fleet Street. These drunken desperadoes--the predecessors of the roysterers who, in the times of the Regency, ”boxed the Charlies,” broke windows, and stole knockers--used to find a cruel pleasure in surrounding a quiet homeward-bound citizen and p.r.i.c.king him with their swords. Addison makes worthy Sir Roger de Coverley as much afraid of these night-birds as Swift himself; and the old baronet congratulates himself on escaping from the clutches of ”the emperor and his black men,” who had followed him half-way down Fleet Street. He, however, boasts that he threw them out at the end of Norfolk Street, where he doubled the corner, and scuttled safely into his quiet lodgings.
From Elizabethan times downwards, Fleet Street was a favourite haunt of showmen. Concerning these popular exhibitions Mr. n.o.ble has, with great industry, collected the following curious enumeration:--
”Ben Jonson,” says our trusty authority, ”in _Every Man in his Humour_, speaks of 'a new motion of the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale, at Fleet Bridge.' In 1611 'the Fleet Street mandrakes' were to be seen for a penny; and years later the giants of St. Dunstan's clock caused the street to be blocked up, and people to lose their time, their temper, and their money. During Queen Anne's reign, however, the wonders of Fleet Street were at their height. In 1702 a model of Amsterdam, thirty feet long by twenty feet wide, which had taken twelve years in making, was exhibited in Bell Yard; a child, fourteen years old, without thighs or legs, and eighteen inches high, was to be seen 'at the ”Eagle and Child,” a grocer's shop, near Shoe Lane;' a great Lincolns.h.i.+re ox, nineteen hands high, four yards long, as lately shown at Cambridge, was on view 'at the ”White Horse,” where the great elephant was seen;' and 'between the ”Queen's Head” and ”Crooked Billet,” near Fleet Bridge,'
were exhibited daily 'two strange, wonderful, and remarkable monstrous creatures--an old she-dromedary, seven feet high and ten feet long, lately arrived from Tartary, and her young one; being the greatest rarity and novelty that ever was seen in the three kingdomes before.' In 1710, at the 'Duke of Marlborough's Head,' in Fleet Street (by Shoe Lane), was exhibited the 'moving picture' mentioned in the _Tatler_; and here, in 1711, 'the great posture-master of Europe,' eclipsing the deceased Clarke and Higgins, greatly startled sight-seeing London. 'He extends his body into all deformed shapes; makes his hip and shoulder-bones meet together; lays his head upon the ground, and turns his body round twice or thrice, without stirring his face from the spot; stands upon one leg, and extends the other in a perpendicular line half a yard above his head; and extends his body from a table with his head a foot below his heels, having nothing to balance his body but his feet; with several other postures too tedious to mention.'
”And here, in 1718, De Hightrehight, the fire-eater, ate burning coals, swallowed flaming brimstone, and sucked a red-hot poker, five times a day!
”What will my billiard-loving friends say to the St. Dunstan's Inquest of the year 1720? 'Item, we present Thomas Bruce, for suffering a gaming-table (called a billiard-table, where people commonly frequent and game) to be kept in his house.' A score of years later, at the end of Wine Office Court, was exhibited an automaton clock, with three figures or statues, which at the word of command poured out red or white wine, represented a grocer shutting up his shop and a blackamoor who struck upon a bell the number of times asked. Giants and dwarfs were special features in Fleet Street. At the 'Rummer,' in Three Kings'
Court, was to be seen an Ess.e.x woman, named Gordon, not nineteen years old, though seven feet high, who died in 1737. At the 'Blew Boar and Green Tree' was on view an Italian giantess, above seven feet, weighing 425 lbs., who had been seen by ten reigning sovereigns. In 1768 died, in s.h.i.+re Lane, Edward Bamford, another giant, seven feet four inches in height, who was buried in St. Dunstan's, though 200 was offered for his body for dissection. At the 'Globe,' in 1717, was shown Matthew Buckinger, a German dwarf, born in 1674, without hands, legs, feet, or thighs, twenty-nine inches high; yet can write, thread a needle, shuffle a pack of cards, play skittles, &c. A facsimile of his writing is among the Harleian MSS. And in 1712 appeared the Black Prince and his wife, each three feet high; and a Turkey horse, two feet odd high and twelve years old, in a box. Modern times have seen giants and dwarfs, but have they really equalled these? In 1822 the exhibition of a mermaid here was put a stop to by the Lord Chamberlain.”
In old times Fleet Street was rendered picturesque, not only by its many gable-ended houses adorned with quaint carvings and plaster stamped in patterns, but also by the countless signs, gay with gilding and painted with strange devices, which hung above the shop-fronts. Heraldry exhausted all its stores to furnish emblems for different trades. Lions blue and red, falcons, and dragons of all colours, alternated with heads of John the Baptist, flying pigs, and hogs in armour. On a windy day these huge ma.s.ses of painted timber creaked and waved overhead, to the terror of nervous pedestrians, nor were accidents by any means rare. On the 2nd of December, 1718 (George I.), a signboard opposite Bride Lane, Fleet Street, having loosened the brickwork by its weight and movement, suddenly gave way, fell, and brought the house down with it, killing four persons, one of whom was the queen's jeweller. It was not, however, till 1761 (George III.) that these dangerous signboards were ordered to be placed flat against the walls of the houses.
When Dr. Johnson said, ”Come and let us take a walk down Fleet Street,”
he proposed a no very easy task. The streets in his early days, in London, had no side-pavements, and were roughly paved, with detestable gutters running down the centre. From these gutters the jumbling coaches of those days liberally scattered the mud on the unoffending pedestrians who happened to be crossing at the time. The sedan-chairs, too, were awkward impediments, and choleric people were disposed to fight for the wall. In 1766, when Lord Eldon came to London as a schoolboy, and put up at that humble hostelry the ”White Horse,” in Fetter Lane, he describes coming home from Drury Lane with his brother in a sedan.
Turning out of Fleet Street into Fetter Lane, some rough fellows pushed against the chair at the corner and upset it, in their eagerness to pa.s.s first. Dr. Johnson's curious nervous habit of touching every street-post he pa.s.sed was cured in 1766, by the laying down of side-pavements. On that occasion it is said two English paviours in Fleet Street bet that they would pave more in a day than four Scotchmen could. By three o'clock the Englishmen had got so much ahead that they went into a public-house for refreshment, and, afterwards returning to their work, won the wager.
In the Wilkes' riot of 1763, the mob burnt a large jack-boot in the centre of Fleet Street, in ridicule of Lord Bute; but a more serious affray took place in this street in 1769, when the noisy Wilkites closed the Bar, to stop a procession of 600 loyal citizens _en route_ to St.
James's to present an address denouncing all attempts to spread sedition and uproot the const.i.tution. The carriages were pelted with stones, and the City marshal, who tried to open the gates, was bedaubed with mud.
Mr. Boehm and other loyalists took shelter in ”Nando's Coffee House.”
About 150 of the frightened citizens, pa.s.sing up Chancery Lane, got to the palace by a devious way, a hea.r.s.e with two white horses and two black following them to St. James's Palace. Even there the Riot Act had to be read and the Guards sent for. When Mr. Boehm fled into ”Nando's,”
in his alarm, he sent home his carriage containing the address. The mob searched the vehicle, but could not find the paper, upon which Mr.
Boehm hastened to the Court, and arrived just in time with the important doc.u.ment.
The treason trials of 1794 brought more noise and trouble to Fleet Street. Hardy, the secretary to the London Corresponding Society, was a shoemaker at No. 161; and during the trial of this approver of the French Revolution, Mr. John Scott (afterwards Lord Eldon) was in great danger from a Fleet Street crowd. ”The mob,” he says, ”kept thickening round me till I came to Fleet Street, one of the worst parts that I had to pa.s.s through, and the cries began to be rather threatening. 'Down with him!' 'Now is the time, lads; do for him!' and various others, horrible enough; but I stood up, and spoke as loud as I could: 'You may do for me, if you like; but, remember, there will be another Attorney-General before eight o'clock to-morrow morning, and the king will not allow the trials to be stopped.' Upon this one man shouted out, 'Say you so? you are right to tell us. Let us give him three cheers, my lads!' So they actually cheered me, and I got safe to my own door.”
There was great consternation in Fleet Street in November, 1820, when Queen Caroline, attended by 700 persons on horseback, pa.s.sed publicly through it to return thanks at St. Paul's. Many alarmed people barricaded their doors and windows. Still greater was the alarm in August, 1821, when the queen's funeral procession went by, after the deplorable fight with the Horse Guards at c.u.mberland Gate, when two of the rioters were killed.
With this rapid sketch of a few of the events in the history of Fleet Street, we begin our patient peregrination from house to house.
CHAPTER IV.
FLEET STREET (_continued_).
Dr. Johnson in Ambuscade at Temple Bar--The First Child--Dryden and Black Will--Rupert's Jewels--Telson's Bank--The Apollo Club at the ”Devil”--”Old Sir Simon the King”--”Mull Sack”--Dr. Johnson's Supper to Mrs. Lennox--Will Waterproof at the ”c.o.c.k”--The Duel at ”d.i.c.k's Coffee House”--Lintot's Shop--Pope and Warburton--Lamb and the _Albion_--The Palace of Cardinal Wolsey--Mrs. Salmon's Waxwork--Isaak Walton--Praed's Bank--Murray and Byron--St.
Dunstan's--Fleet Street Printers--h.o.a.re's Bank and the ”Golden Bottle”--The Real and Spurious ”Mitre”--Hone's Trial--Cobbett's Shop--”Peele's Coffee House.”
There is a delightful pa.s.sage in an almost unknown essay by Dr. Johnson that connects him indissolubly with the neighbourhood of Temple Bar. The essay, written in 1756 for the _Universal Visitor_, is ent.i.tled ”A Project for the Employment of Authors,” and is full of humour, which, indeed, those who knew him best considered the chief feature of Johnson's genius. We rather pride ourselves on the discovery of this pleasant bit of autobiography:--”It is my practice,” says Johnson, ”when I am in want of amus.e.m.e.nt, to place myself for an hour at Temple Bar, or any other narrow pa.s.s much frequented, and examine one by one the looks of the pa.s.sengers, and I have commonly found that between the hours of eleven and four every sixth man is an author. They are seldom to be seen very early in the morning or late in the evening, but about dinner-time they are all in motion, and have one uniform eagerness in their faces, which gives little opportunity of discerning their hopes or fears, their pleasures or their pains. But in the afternoon, when they have all dined, or composed themselves to pa.s.s the day without a dinner, their pa.s.sions have full play, and I can perceive one man wondering at the stupidity of the public, by which his new book has been totally neglected; another cursing the French, who fright away literary curiosity by their threat of an invasion; another swearing at his bookseller, who will advance no money without copy; another perusing as he walks his publisher's bill; another murmuring at an unanswerable criticism; another determining to write no more to a generation of barbarians; and another wis.h.i.+ng to try once again whether he cannot awaken the drowsy world to a sense of his merit.” This extract seems to us to form an admirable companion picture to that in which we have already shown Goldsmith bantering his brother Jacobite, Johnson, as they looked up together at the grim heads on Temple Bar.
[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. t.i.tUS OATES.]
That quiet grave house (No. 1), that seems to demurely huddle close to Temple Bar, as if for protection, is the oldest banking-house in London except one. For two centuries gold has been shovelled about in those dark rooms, and reams of bank-notes have been shuffled over by practised thumbs. Private banks originated in the stormy days before the Civil War, when wealthy citizens, afraid of what might happen, entrusted their money to their goldsmiths to take care of till the troubles had blown over. In the reign of Charles I., Francis Child, an industrious apprentice of the old school, married the daughter of his master, William Wheeler, a goldsmith, who lived one door west of Temple Bar, and in due time succeeded to his estate and business. In the first London Directory (1677), among the fifty-eight goldsmiths, thirty-eight of whom lived in Lombard Street, ”Blanchard & Child,” at the ”Marygold,” Fleet Street, figure conspicuously as ”keeping running cashes.” The original Marygold (sometimes mistaken for a rising sun), with the motto, ”Ainsi mon ame,” gilt upon a green ground, elegantly designed in the French manner, is still to be seen in the front office, and a marigold in full bloom still blossoms on the bank cheques. In the year 1678 it was at Mr.
Blanchard's, the goldsmith's, next door to Temple Bar, that Dryden the poet, bruised and angry, deposited 50 as a reward for any one who would discover the bullies of Lord Rochester who had beaten him in Rose Alley for some scurrilous verses really written by the Earl of Dorset. The advertis.e.m.e.nt promises, if the discoverer be himself one of the actors, he shall still have the 50, without letting his name be known or receiving the least trouble by any prosecution. Black Will's cudgel was, after all, a clumsy way of making a repartee. Late in Charles II.'s reign Alderman Backwell entered the wealthy firm; but he was ruined by the iniquitous and arbitrary closing of the Exchequer in 1672, when the needy and unprincipled king pocketed at one swoop more than a million and a half of money, which he soon squandered on his shameless mistresses and unworthy favourites. In that quaint room over Temple Bar the firm still preserve the dusty books of the unfortunate alderman, who fled to Holland. There, on the sallow leaves over which the poor alderman once groaned, you can read the items of our sale of Dunkirk to the French, the dishonourable surrender of which drove the nation almost to madness, and hastened the downfall of Lord Clarendon, who was supposed to have built a magnificent house (on the site of Albemarle Street, Piccadilly) with some of the very money. Charles II. himself banked here, and drew his thousands with all the careless nonchalance of his nature. Nell Gwynne, Pepys, of the ”Diary,” and Prince Rupert also had accounts at Child's, and some of these ledgers are still h.o.a.rded over Temple Bar in that Venetian-looking room, approached by strange prison-like pa.s.sages, for which chamber Messrs. Child pay something less than 50 a year.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TEMPLE BAR AND THE ”DEVIL TAVERN” (_see page 38_).]