Part 5 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: MULL SACK AND LADY FAIRFAX (_see page 40_).]
The ”c.o.c.k Tavern” (201), opposite the Temple, has been immortalised by Tennyson as thoroughly as the ”Devil” was by Ben Jonson. The playful verses inspired by a pint of generous port have made
”The violet of a legend blow Among the chops and steaks”
for ever, though old Will Waterproof has long since descended for the last time the well-known cellar-stairs. The poem which has embalmed his name was, we believe, written when Mr. Tennyson had chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields. At that time the room was lined with wainscoting, and the silver tankards of special customers hung in glittering rows in the bar. This tavern was shut up at the time of the Plague, and the advertis.e.m.e.nt announcing such closing is still extant. Pepys, in his ”Diary,” mentions bringing pretty Mrs. Knipp, an actress, of whom his wife was very jealous, here; and the gay couple ”drank, eat a lobster, and sang, and mighty merry till almost midnight.” On his way home to Seething Lane, the amorous Navy Office clerk with difficulty avoided two thieves with clubs, who met him at the entrance into the ruins of the Great Fire near St. Dunstan's. These dangerous meetings with Mrs. Knipp went on till one night Mrs. Pepys came to his bedside and threatened to pinch him with the red-hot tongs. The waiters at the ”c.o.c.k” are fond of showing visitors one of the old tokens of the house in the time of Charles II. The old carved chimney-piece is of the age of James I.; and there is a doubtful tradition that the gilt bird that struts with such self-serene importance over the portal was the work of that great carver, Grinling Gibbons.
”d.i.c.k's Coffee House” (No. 8, south) was kept in George II.'s time by a Mrs. Yarrow and her daughter, who were much admired by the young Templars who patronised the place. The Rev. James Miller, reviving an old French comedietta by Rousseau, called ”The Coffee House,” and introducing malicious allusions to the landlady and her fair daughter, so exasperated the young barristers that frequented ”d.i.c.k's,” that they went in a body and hissed the piece from the boards. The author then wrote an apology, and published the play; but unluckily the artist who ill.u.s.trated it took the bar at ”d.i.c.k's” as the background of his sketch.
The Templars went madder than ever at this, and the Rev. Miller, who translated Voltaire's ”Mahomet” for Garrick, never came up to the surface again. It was at ”d.i.c.k's” that Cowper the poet showed the first symptoms of derangement. When his mind was off its balance he read a letter in a newspaper at ”d.i.c.k's,” which he believed had been written to drive him to suicide. He went away and tried to hang himself; the garter breaking, he then resolved to drown himself; but, being hindered by some occurrence, repented for the moment. He was soon after sent to a madhouse in Huntingdon.
In 1681 a quarrel arose between two hot-headed gallants in ”d.i.c.k's”
about the size of two dishes they had both seen at the ”St. John's Head”
in Chancery Lane. The matter eventually was roughly ended at the ”Three Cranes” in the Vintry--a tavern mentioned by Ben Jonson--by one of them, Rowland St. John, running his companion, John Stiles, of Lincoln's Inn, through the body. The St. Dunstan's Club, founded in 1796, holds its dinner at ”d.i.c.k's.”
The ”Rainbow Tavern” (No. 15, south) was the second coffee-house started in London. Four years before the Restoration, Mr. Farr, a barber, began the trade here, trusting probably to the young Temple barristers for support. The vintners grew jealous, and the neighbours, disliking the smell of the roasting coffee, indicted Farr as a nuisance. But he persevered, and the Arabian drink became popular. A satirist had soon to write regretfully,--
”And now, alas! the drink has credit got, And he's no gentleman that drinks it not.”
About 1780, according to Mr. Timbs, the ”Rainbow” was kept by Alexander Moncrieff, grandfather of the dramatist who wrote _Tom and Jerry_.
Bernard Lintot, the bookseller, who published Pope's ”Homer,” lived in a shop between the two Temple gates (No. 16). In an inimitable letter to the Earl of Burlington, Pope has described how Lintot (Tonson's rival) overtook him once in Windsor Forest, as he was riding down to Oxford.
When they were resting under a tree in the forest, Lintot, with a keen eye to business, pulled out ”a mighty pretty 'Horace,'” and said to Pope, ”What if you amused yourself in turning an ode till we mount again?” The poet smiled, but said nothing. Presently they remounted, and as they rode on Lintot stopped short, and broke out, after a long silence: ”Well, sir, how far have we got?” ”Seven miles,” replied Pope, navely. He told Pope that by giving the hungry critics a dinner of a piece of beef and a pudding, he could make them see beauties in any author he chose. After all, Pope did well with Lintot, for he gained 5,320 by his ”Homer.” Dr. Young, the poet, once unfortunately sent to Lintot a letter meant for Tonson, and the first words that Lintot read were: ”That Bernard Lintot is so great a scoundrel.” In the same shop, which was then occupied by Jacob Robinson, the publisher, Pope first met Warburton. An interesting account of this meeting is given by Sir John Hawkins, which it may not be out of place to quote here. ”The friends.h.i.+p of Pope and Warburton,” he says, ”had its commencement in that bookseller's shop which is situate on the west side of the gateway leading down the Inner Temple Lane. Warburton had some dealings with Jacob Robinson, the publisher, to whom the shop belonged, and may be supposed to have been drawn there on business; Pope might have made a call of the like kind. However that may be, there they met, and entering into conversation, which was not soon ended, conceived a mutual liking, and, as we may suppose, plighted their faith to each other. The fruit of this interview, and the subsequent communications of the parties, was the publication, in November, 1739, of a pamphlet with this t.i.tle, 'A Vindication of Mr. Pope's ”Essay on Man,” by the Author of ”The Divine Legation of Moses.” Printed for J. Robinson.'” At the Middle Temple Gate, Benjamin Motte, successor to Ben Tooke, published Swift's ”Gulliver's Travels,” for which he had grudgingly given only 200.
The third door from Chancery Lane (No. 197, north side), Mr. Timbs points out, was in Charles II.'s time a tombstone-cutter's; and here, in 1684, Howel, whose ”Letters” give us many curious pictures of his time, saw a huge monument to four of the Oxenham family, at the death of each of whom a white bird appeared fluttering about their bed. These miraculous occurrences had taken place at a town near Exeter, and the witnesses names duly appeared below the epitaph. No. 197 was afterwards Rackstrow's museum of natural curiosities and anatomical figures; and the proprietor put Sir Isaac Newton's head over the door for a sign.
Among other prodigies was the skeleton of a whale more than seventy feet long. Donovan, a naturalist, succeeded Rackstrow (who died in 1772) with his London museum. Then, by a harlequin change, No. 197 became the office of the _Albion_ newspaper. Charles Lamb was turned over to this journal from the _Morning Post_. The editor, John Fenwick, the ”Bigot”
of Lamb's ”Essay,” was a needy, sanguine man, who had purchased the paper of a person named Lovell, who had stood in the pillory for a libel against the Prince of Wales. For a long time Fenwick contrived to pay the Stamp Office dues by money borrowed from compliant friends. ”We,”
says Lamb, in his delightful way, ”attached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation was now to write treason.” Lamb hinted at possible abdications. Blocks, axes, and Whitehall tribunals were covered with flowers of so cunning a periphrasis--as, Mr. Bayes says, never naming the _thing_ directly--that the keen eye of an Attorney-General was insufficient to detect the lurking snake among them.
At the south-west corner of Chancery Lane (No. 193) once stood an old house said to have been the residence of that unfortunate reformer, Sir John Oldcastle, Baron Cobham, who was burnt in St. Giles's Fields in 1417 (Henry V.). In Charles II.'s reign the celebrated Whig Green Ribbon Club used to meet here, and from the balcony flourish their periwigs, discharge squibs, and wave torches, when a great Protestant procession pa.s.sed by, to burn the effigy of the Pope at the Temple Gate. The house, five stories high and covered with carvings, was pulled down for City improvements in 1799.
Upon the site of No. 192 (east corner of Chancery Lane) the father of Cowley, that fantastic poet of Charles II.'s time, it is said carried on the trade of a grocer. In 1740 a later grocer there sold the finest caper tea for 24s. per lb., his fine green for 18s. per lb., hyson at 16s. per lb., and bohea at 7s. per lb.
No house in Fleet Street has a more curious pedigree than that gilt and painted shop opposite Chancery Lane (No. 17, south side), falsely called ”the palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey.” It was originally the office of the Duchy of Cornwall, in the reign of James I. It is just possible that it was the house originally built by Sir Amyas Paulet, at Wolsey's command, in resentment for Sir Amyas having set Wolsey, when a mere parish priest, in the stocks for a brawl. Wolsey, at the time of the ignominious punishment, was schoolmaster to the children of the Marquis of Dorset. Paulet was confined to this house for five or six years, to appease the proud cardinal, who lived in Chancery Lane. Sir Amyas rebuilt his prison, covering the front with badges of the cardinal. It was afterwards ”Nando's,” a famous coffee-house, where Thurlow picked up his first great brief. One night Thurlow, arguing here keenly about the celebrated Douglas case, was heard by some lawyers with delight, and the next day, to his astonishment, was appointed junior counsel. This cause won him a silk gown, and so his fortune was made by that one lucky night at ”Nando's.” No. 17 was afterwards the place where Mrs. Salmon (the Madame Tussaud of early times) exhibited her waxwork kings and queens. There was a figure on crutches at the door; and Old Mother s.h.i.+pton, the witch, kicked the astonished visitor as he left.
Mrs. Salmon died in 1812. The exhibition was then sold for 500, and removed to Water Lane. When Mrs. Salmon first removed from St.
Martin's-le-Grand to near St. Dunstan's Church, she announced, with true professional dignity, that the new locality ”was more convenient for the quality's coaches to stand unmolested.” Her ”Royal Court of England”
included 150 figures. When the exhibition removed to Water Lane, some thieves one night got in, stripped the effigies of their finery, and broke half of them, throwing them into a heap that almost touched the ceiling.
Tonson, Dryden's publisher, commenced business at the ”Judge's Head,”
near the Inner Temple gate, so that when at the Kit-Kat Club he was not far from his own shop. One day Dryden, in a rage, drew the greedy bookseller with terrible force:--
”With leering looks, bull-faced, and speckled fair, With two left legs and Judas-coloured hair, And frowzy pores that taint the ambient air.”
The poet promised a fuller portrait if the ”dog” tormented him further.
Opposite Mrs. Salmon's, two doors west of old Chancery Lane, till 1799, when the lawyer's lane was widened, stood an old, picturesque, gabled house, which was once the milliner's shop kept, in 1624, by that good old soul, Isaak Walton. He was on the Vestry Board of St. Dunstan's, and was constable and overseer for the precinct next Temple Bar; and on pleasant summer evenings he used to stroll out to the Tottenham fields, rod in hand, to enjoy the gentle sport which he so much loved. He afterwards (1632) lived seven doors up Chancery Lane, west side, and there married the sister of that good Christian, Bishop Ken, who wrote the ”Evening Hymn,” one of the most simply beautiful religious poems ever written. It is pleasant in busy Fleet Street to think of the good old citizen on his guileless way to the river Lea, conning his verses on the delights of angling.
Praed's Bank (No. 189, north side) was founded early in the century by Mr. William Praed, a banker of Truro. The house had been originally the shop of Mrs. Salmon, till she moved to opposite Chancery Lane, and her wax kings and frail queens were replaced by piles of strong boxes and chests of gold. The house was rebuilt in 1802, from the designs of Sir John Soane, whose curious museum still exists in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
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