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London Souvenirs

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Title: London Souvenirs

Creator: Charles William Heckethorn


        
Release date: October 26, 2013 [eBook #44044]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44044

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LONDON SOUVENIRS ***




Produced by Al Haines.




                            LONDON SOUVENIRS


                                   BY

                       CHARLES WILLIAM HECKETHORN

                               AUTHOR OF
                  'THE SECRET SOCIETIES OP ALL AGES,'
                      'LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS,' ETC.



                                 LONDON
                            CHATTO & WINDUS
                                  1899




                               *CONTENTS*

I.  GAMBLING-CLUBS AND HIGH PLAY
II.  WITTY WOMEN AND PRETTY WOMEN
III.  OLD LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES
IV.  OLD M.P.S AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS
V.  FAMOUS OLD ACTORS
VI.  OLD JUDGES AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS
VII.  SOME FAMOUS LONDON ACTRESSES
VIII.  QUEER CLUBS OF FORMER DAYS
IX.  CURIOUS STORIES OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE
X.  WITS AND BEAUX OF OLD LONDON SOCIETY
XI.  LONDON SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES
XII.  OLD LONDON TAVERNS AND TEA-GARDENS
       I.  THE GALLERIED TAVERNS OF OLD LONDON
      II.  OLD LONDON TEA-GARDENS
XIII.  WILLIAM PATERSON AND THE BANK OF ENGLAND
XIV.  THE OLD DOCTORS
XV.  THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON
XVI.  ROGUES ASSORTED
XVII.  BARS AND BARRISTERS
XVIII.  THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKERS AND THE KIT-KAT AND ROTA CLUBS
XIX.  HAMPTON COURT PALACE AND ITS MASTERS




                           *LONDON SOUVENIRS*



                                  *I.*

                    *GAMBLING-CLUBS AND HIGH PLAY.*


Philosophers may argue, and moralists preach, the former against the
folly, and the latter against the wickedness of gambling, but, as may be
expected, their remonstrances pass but as a gentle breeze over the
outwardly placid ocean of play, causing the fishes--the familiars of the
gambling world--languidly to raise their heads, and mildly to inquire:
'What's all that row about?'  Gambling is one of the strongest passions
in the human breast, and no warning, no exhibition of fatal examples,
will ever stop the indulgence in the excitement it procures.  It assumes
many phases; in all men have undergone disastrous experiences, and yet
they repeat the dangerous and usually calamitous experiments.  In no
undertaking has so much money been lost as in mining; prizes have
occasionally been drawn, but at such rare intervals as to be cautions
rather than encouragements; and yet, even at the present day, with all
the experience of past failures, sanguine speculators fill empty shafts
with their gold, which is quickly fished up by the greedy promoters.

Some of the now most respectable West End clubs originally were only
gambling-hells.  They are not so now; but the improvement this would
seem to imply is apparent only.  Our manners have improved, but not our
morals; the table-legs wear frilled trousers now, but the legs are there
all the same, even the blacklegs. But it is the past more than the
present we wish to speak of.

Early in the last century gaming was so prevalent that in one night's
search the Leet's Jury of Westminster discovered, and afterwards
presented to the justices, no fewer than thirty-five gambling-houses.
The Society for the Reformation of Manners published a statement of
their proceedings, by which it appeared that in the year beginning with
December 1, 1724, to the same date in 1725, they had prosecuted 2,506
persons for keeping disorderly and gaming houses; and for thirty-four
years the total number of their prosecutions amounted to the astounding
figure of 91,899.  In 1728 the following note was issued by the King's
order: 'It having been represented to his Majesty that such felons and
their accomplices are greatly encouraged and harboured by persons
keeping night-houses ... and that the gaming-houses ... much contribute
to the corruption of the morals of those of an inferior rank ... his
Majesty has commanded me to recommend it, in his name, in the strongest
manner to the Justices of the Peace to employ their utmost care and
vigilance in the preventing and suppressing of these disorders, etc.'

This warning was then necessary, though as early as 1719 an order for
putting in execution an old statute of Henry VIII. had been issued to
all victuallers, and others whom it might concern.  The order ran: 'That
none shall keep or maintain any house or place of unlawful games, on
pain of 40s. for every day, of forfeiting their recognisance, and of
being suppressed; that none shall use or haunt such places, on pain of
6s. 8d. for every offence; and that no artificer, or his journeyman,
husbandman, apprentice, labourer, mariner, fisherman, waterman, or
serving-man shall play at tables, tennis, dice, cards, bowls, clash,
coiting, loggating, or any other unlawful game, out of Christmas, or
then out of their master's house or presence, on pain of 20s.'

There were thus many attempts at controlling the conduct of the lower
orders, but the gentry set them a bad example.  The Cocoa-Tree Club, the
Tory chocolate-house of Queen Anne's reign, at No. 64, St. James's
Street, was a regular gambling-hell.  In the evening of a Court
Drawing-room in 1719, a number of gentlemen had a dispute over hazard at
that house; the quarrel became general, and, as they fought with their
swords, three gentlemen were mortally wounded, and the affray was only
ended by the interposition of the Royal Guards, who were compelled to
knock the parties down with the butt-ends of their muskets
indiscriminately, as entreaties and commands were disregarded. Walpole,
in his correspondence, relates: 'Within this week there has been a cast
at hazard at the Cocoa-Tree, the difference of which amounted to
L180,000. Mr. O'Birne, an Irish gamester, had won L100,000 of a young
Mr. Harvey, of Chigwell, just started from a midshipman into an estate
by his elder brother's death. O'Birne said: "You can never pay me."  "I
can," said the youth; "my estate will sell for the debt."  "No," said
O'Birne, "I will win L10,000; you shall throw for the odd L90,000."
They did, and Harvey won.'  It is not on record whether he took the
lesson to heart. The house was, in 1746, turned into a club, but its
reputation was not improved; bribery, high play, and foul play continued
to be common in it.

Another chocolate-house was White's, now White's Club, St. James's
Street.  As a chocolate-house it was established about 1698, near the
bottom of the west side of St. James's Street; it was burnt down in
1773. Plate VI. of Hogarth's 'Rake's Progress' shows a room full of
players at White's, so intent upon play as neither to see the flames nor
hear the watchmen bursting into the room.  It was indeed a famous
gambling and betting club, a book for entering wagers always lying on
the table; the play was frightful.  Once a man dropped down dead at the
door, and was carried in; the club immediately made bets whether he was
dead or only in a fit; and when they were going to bleed him the
wagerers for his death interposed, saying it would affect the fairness
of the bet.  Walpole, who tells the story, hints that it is invented.
Many a highwayman--one is shown in Hogarth's picture above referred
to--there took his chocolate or threw his main before starting for
business.  There Lord Chesterfield gamed; Steele dated all his love news
in the _Tatler_ from White's, which was known as the rendezvous of
infamous sharpers and noble cullies, and bets were laid to the effect
that Sir William Burdett, one of its members, would be the first baronet
who would be hanged.  The gambling went on till dawn of day; and Pelham,
when Prime Minister, was not ashamed to divide his time between his
official table and the piquet table at White's.  General Scott was a
very cautious player, avoiding all indulgence in excesses at table, and
thus managed to win at White's no less than L200,000, so that when his
daughter, Joanna, married George Canning he was able to give her a
fortune of L100,000.

Another club founded specially for gambling was Almack's, the original
Brooks's, which was opened in Pall Mall in 1764.  Some of its members
were Macaronis, the fops of the day, famous for their long curls and
eye-glasses.  'At Almack's,' says Walpole, 'which has taken the _pas_ of
White's ... the young men of the age lose L10,000, L15,000, L20,000 in
an evening.'  The play at this club was only for rouleaux of L50 each,
and generally there was L10,000 in gold on the table.  The gamesters
began by pulling off their embroidered clothes, and put on frieze
garments, or turned their coats inside out for luck.  They put on pieces
of leather to save their lace ruffles; and to guard their eyes from the
light, and to prevent tumbling their hair, wore high-crowned straw hats
with broad brims, and sometimes masks to conceal their emotions.
Almack's afterwards was known as the 'Goose-Tree' Club--a rather
significant name--and Pitt was one of its most constant frequenters, and
there met his adherents.  Gibbon also was a member, when the club was
still Almack's--which, indeed, was the name of the founder and original
proprietor of the club.

Another gaming-club was Brooks's, which at first was formed by Almack
and afterwards by Brooks, a wine-merchant and money-lender.  The club
was opened in 1778, and some of the original rules are curious: '21. No
gaming in the eating-room, except tossing up for reckonings, on penalty
of paying the whole bill of the members present.  30. Any member of this
society that shall become a candidate for any other club (old White's
excepted) shall be _ipso facto_ excluded. 40. Every person playing at
the new quinze-table shall keep fifty guineas before him.  41. Every
person playing at the twenty-guinea table shall keep no less than twenty
guineas before him.'  According to Captain Gronow, play at Brooks's was
even higher than at White's.  Faro and macao were indulged in to an
extent which enabled a man to win or to lose a considerable fortune in
one night.  George Harley Drummond, a partner in the bank of that name,
played only once in his life at White's, and lost L20,000 to Brummell.
This event caused him to retire from the banking-house.  Lord Carlisle
and Charles Fox lost enormous sums at Brooks's.

At Tom's Coffee House, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, there was
playing at piquet, and the club consisting of seven hundred noblemen and
gentlemen, many of whom belonged to the gay society of that day (the
middle of the last century), we may be sure the play was high.

Arthur's Club, in St. James's Street, so named after its founder (who
died in 1761), was a famous gambling centre in its day.  A nobleman of
the highest position and influence in society was detected in cheating
at cards, and after a trial, which did not terminate in his favour, he
died of a broken heart.  This happened in 1836.

The Union, which was founded in this century, was a regular
gambling-club.  It was first held at what is now the Ordnance Office,
Pall Mall, and subsequently in the house afterwards occupied by the
Bishop of Winchester.

In the early days of this century the most notorious gambling-club was
Crockford's, in St. James's Street. Crockford originally was a
fishmonger, and occupied the old bulk-shop west of Temple Bar.  But,
having made money by betting, 'he gave up,' as a recent writer on 'The
Gambling World' says, 'selling soles and salmon, and went in for
catching fish, confining his operations to gudgeons and flat-fish'; or,
in other words, he established a gambling-house, first by taking over
Watier's old club-house, where he set up a hazard bank, and won a great
deal of money; he then separated from his partner, who had a bad year
and failed.  Crockford removed to St. James's Street, where he built the
magnificent club-house which bore his name.  It was erected at a cost of
upwards of L100,000, and, in its vast proportions and palatial
decorations, surpassed anything of the kind ever seen in London.  To
support such an establishment required a large income; yet Crockford
made it, for the highest play was encouraged at his card-tables, but
especially at the hazard-tables, where Crockford nightly took his stand,
prepared for all comers.  And he was successful, and became a
millionaire.  When he died he left L700,000, and he had lost as much in
mining and other speculations.  His death was hastened, it is said, by
excessive anxiety over his bets on the turf.  He retired from the
management of the club in 1840, and died in 1844.  The club was soon
after closed, and after a few years' interval was reopened as the Naval,
Military, and Civil Service Club. It was then converted into
dining-rooms, called the Wellington.  Later on it was taken by a
joint-stock company as an auction-room, and now it is again a
club-house, known as the Devonshire Club.

We referred above to Watier's Club.  It was established in 1807, at the
instigation of the Prince of Wales, and high play was the chief pursuit
of its members. 'Princes and nobles,' says Timbs in his 'Curiosities of
London,' 'lost or gained fortunes amongst themselves.'  But the pace was
too fast.  The club did not last under its original patronage, and it
was then, when it was moribund, taken over by Crockford.  At this club,
also, macao was the favourite game, as at Brooks's.

One of the most objectionable results of promiscuous gambling is the
disreputable company into which it often throws a gentleman.

    'That Marquis, who is now familiar grown
    With every reprobate about the town....
    Now, sad transition! all his lordship's nights
    Are passed with blacklegs and with parasites..
    The rage of gaming and the circling glass
    Eradicate distinction in each class;
    For he who scarce a dinner can afford
    Is equal in importance with my lord.'


This is just what happened when gambling-hells were openly flourishing
in London, and what happens now when gambling-clubs abound, and are
almost daily raided by the police, when some actually respectable people
are found mixed up with the rascaldom which supports these clubs.  A
perfect mania seems to have seized the lower orders of our day to
gamble; but formerly, for instance, in Walpole's time, in the latter
half of the last century, the upper classes were the worst offenders, of
which the just-mentioned statesman and epistolary chronicler of
small-beer, which, however, by long keeping has acquired a strong and
lasting flavour, gives us many proofs.  'Lord Sandwich,' he reports,
'goes once or twice a week to hunt with the Duke [of Cumberland], and,
as the latter has taken a turn of gaming, Sandwich, to make his
court--and fortune--carries a box and dice in his pocket; and so they
throw a main whenever the hounds are at fault, upon every green hill and
under every green tree.'  Five years later, at a magnificent ball and
supper at Bedford House, 'the Duke was playing at hazard with a great
heap of gold before him.  Somebody said he looked like the prodigal son
and the fatted calf both.'  Under such circumstances it could not fail
that swindlers _par excellence_ sometimes found their way among the
royal and noble gamblers.  There was a Sir William Burdett, whose name
had the honour of being inscribed in the betting-room at White's as the
subject of a wager that he would be the first baronet who would be
hanged. He and a lady, 'dressed foreign, as a Princess of the House of
Brandenburg,' cheated Lord Castledurrow (Baron Ashbrook) and Captain
Rodney out of a handsome sum at faro.  The noble victim met the Baronet
at Ranelagh, and addressed him thus: 'Sir William, here is the sum I
think I lost last night.  Since then I have heard that you are a
professed pickpocket, and therefore I desire to have no further
acquaintance with you.'  The Baronet took the money with a respectful
bow, and then asked his Lordship the further favour to set him down at
Buckingham Gate, and without further ceremony jumped into the coach.
Walpole writes to Mann, in 1750, that 'Jemmy Lumley last week had a
party of whist at his own house: the combatants, Lucy Southwell, that
curtseys like a bear, Mrs. Bijean, and Mrs. Mackenzy.  They played from
six in the evening till twelve next day, Jemmy never winning one rubber,
and rising a loser of L2,000....  He fancied himself cheated and would
not pay.  However, the bear had no share in his evil surmises ... and he
promised a dinner at Hampstead to Lucy and her sister.  As he went to
the rendezvous his chaise was stopped, and he was advised by someone not
to proceed.  But proceed he did, and in the garden he found Mrs.
Mackenzy.  She asked him whether he was going to pay, and, on his
declining to do so, the fair virago took a horsewhip from beneath her
hoop, and fell upon him with the utmost vehemence.'

Members of clubs were fully aware of the nefariousness of their devotion
to gambling.  When a waiter at Arthur's Club was taken up for robbery,
George Selwyn said: 'What a horrid idea he will give of us to the people
in Newgate?'  Certes, some of the highwaymen in that prison were not
such robbers and scoundrels as some of the aristocratic members of those
clubs.  When, in 1750, the people got frightened about an earthquake in
London, predicted to happen in that year, 'Lady Catherine Pelham,'
Walpole tells us, 'Lady James Arundell, and Lord and Lady Galway ... go
this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are going to
play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back, I suppose, to
look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish.'
When the rulers of the nation on such an occasion, or any other occasion
of public terror, possibly caused by their own mismanagement of public
affairs, hypocritically and most impertinently ordered a day of fasting
and humiliation, the gambling-houses used to be filled with officials
and members of Parliament, who thus had a day off.

There was one famous gambling-house we find we have not yet mentioned,
viz., Shaver's Hall, which occupied the whole of the southern side of
Coventry Street, from the Haymarket to Hedge Lane (now Oxenden Street),
and derived its name from the barber of Lord Pembroke, who built it out
of his earnings. Attached to it was a bowling-green, which sloped down
to the south.  The place was built about the year 1650, and the
tennis-court belonging to it till recently might still be seen in St.
James's Street.




                                 *II.*

                    *WITTY WOMEN AND PRETTY WOMEN.*


Certain waves of sentiment or action, or both combined, have at various
times passed over the face of European society.  A thousand years ago
the Old Continent went madly crusading to snatch the Holy Sepulchre from
the grasp of the pagan Sultan, who, sick man as he is, still holds it.
The movement had certain advantages: it cleared Europe of a good deal of
ruffianism, which never came back, as it perished on the journey to
Jerusalem, or very properly was killed off by the justly incensed Turks,
who could not understand by what right these hordes of robbers invaded
their country.  Then another phase of society madness arose.  Some
maniac, clad in armour, on a horse similarly accoutred, would appear,
and challenge everyone to admit that the Lady Gwendolyne Mousetrap, whom
he kept company with, and took to the tea-gardens on Sundays, was the
most peerless damosel, and that whoso doubted it, would not get off by
paying a dollar, but would have to fight it out with him.  Then another
mailed and belted chap would jump up, and maintain that the Countess of
Rabbit-Warren--who was the girl he was just then booming--was the finest
woman going, and that that slut Gwendolyne Mousetrap was no better than
she should be.  Of course, as soon as the King and Court heard of the
shindy between the two knights a day was appointed when they should
fight it out, the combatants being enclosed in a kind of rat-pit,
officially called lists, whilst the King, his courtiers and their gentle
ladies looked at the sport; and if one of the knights was killed, or
perhaps both were killed, or at least maimed for life, the Lady
Gwendolyne and the Countess of Rabbit-Warren, who, of course, both
assisted at the spectacle, received the congratulations of the Court.
Sometimes one of the knights would funk, and not come up to the scratch;
then he was declared a lame duck, and the lady whom he had left in the
lurch and made a laughing-stock of would erase his name from her
tablets, and shy the trumpery proofs of devotion he had given her, a
worn-out scarf or Brummagem aigrette, out of an upper window.  This was
called the age of chivalry.  Then a totally different eruption of the
fighting mania--which is, after all, the universal principle in human
action--took place.  A vagrant scholasticus would appear in a University
town, and announce that he was ready to hold a disputation with any
professor, Doctor of Divinity, or Master of Arts, on any mortal subject,
the more subtle, and the more incomprehensible, and the more mystical,
the better. Thus, one such scholasticus got into the rostrum at
Tuebingen, and addressed his audience thus: 'I am about to propound
three theses: the answer to the first is known to myself only, and not
to you; to the second, the answer is known neither to you nor to me; to
the third, the answer is known to you only.'  This was a promising
programme, and, indeed, proved highly edifying. 'Now, the first
question,' resumed the scholasticus, 'is this: Have I got any breeches
on?  You don't know, but I do; I have not.  The second question, the
answer to which is known neither to you nor to me, is: Shall I find in
this town any draper willing to advance on credit stuff enough to make
me a pair?  And the third question, the answer to which is known to you
only, is: Will any of you pay a tailor's wages to make me a pair?  And
now that the argument is clearly before you, we may proceed to the
consideration of the parabolic triangulation of the binocular theorem;'
and then he would bewilder them with a lot of jaw-breaking words, which
then, as now, passed for learning.  This was called the age of
scholasticism.  It was succeeded by the Renaissance, which, after a good
boil-up of its intellectual ingredients, settled down into a literary
mud, an Acqui-la-Bollente, a Nile mud, pleasant to the soul, and
fertilizing to the mind, the protoplasm of diarists and letter-writers,
of whom--to mention but three--Evelyn, Pepys, and Horace Walpole were
prominent patterns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

It is with the latter, Horace Walpole, of Strawberry Hill, we are
chiefly concerned.  Horace Walpole, after enlarging a cottage into a
Gothic castle, with lath and plaster, and rough-cast walls, and wooden
pinnacles, filled it with literary and artistic treasures.  But he also
gathered around him a select social circle, which included Garrick, Paul
Whitehead, General Conway, George Selwyn, Richard Bentley, the poet
Gray, Sir Horace Mann, and Lords Edgcumbe and Strafford. And of ladies
there was no lack; there were Mrs. Pritchard, Kitty Clive, Lady Suffolk,
the Misses Berry, and--would you believe it?--Hannah More!  It was the
age for chronicling small-beer and home-made wine, gossip, scandal, and
frivolity; and Horace Walpole enjoyed existence as a cynical Seladon or
platonic Bluebeard amidst this bevy of lively, gay-minded, frolicsome
beauties, young and old.  Happily, or unhappily, for him, he did not
become acquainted with the Misses Berry before 1788, when he was
seventy-one years of age.  He took the most extraordinary liking to
them, and was never content except when they were with him, or
corresponding with him.  When they went to Italy, he wrote to them
regularly once a week, and on their return he installed them at Little
Strawberry Hill, a house close to his own, so that he might daily enjoy
their society.  He appointed them his literary executors, with the
charge of collecting and publishing his writings, which was done under
the superintendence of Mr. Berry, their father, who was a Yorkshire
gentleman.  When Walpole had succeeded to the Earldom of Orford he made
Mary, the elder of the two sisters, an offer of his hand.  Both sisters
survived him upwards of sixty years. Little Strawberry Hill, which we
just mentioned as the residence of the Misses Berry, had, before their
coming to live in it, been occupied by Kitty Clive, the famous actress.
Born in 1711, she made her first appearance on the stage of Drury Lane,
and in 1732 she married a brother of Lord Clive, but the union proved
unhappy, and was soon dissolved.  She quitted the stage in 1769, leaving
a splendid reputation as an actress and as a woman behind her, and
retired to Little Strawberry Hill, where she lived in ease, surrounded
by friends and respected by the world.  Horace Walpole was a constant
visitor at her house, as were many other persons of rank and eminence.
It was said of her that no man could be grave when Kitty chose to be
merry. But she must have been a woman of some spirit, too, for when it
was proposed to stop up a footpath in her neighbourhood she placed
herself at the head of the opponents, and defeated the project.  She
died suddenly in 1785, and Walpole placed an urn in the grounds to her
memory, with the inscription:

    'Here lived the laughter-loving dame;
    A matchless actress, Clive her name.
    The comic Muse with her retired,
    And shed a tear when she expired.'

The Mrs. Pritchard mentioned above was also an actress, of great and
well-deserved fame.  She lived at an originally small house, called
"Ragman's Castle," which she much improved and enlarged.  It had, after
her, various occupants, and was finally taken down by Lord Kilmorey
during his occupancy of Orleans House, near which it stood.

Another of the constant visitors at Strawberry Hill was Lady Suffolk,
Pope's 'Chloe.'  She was married to the Hon. Charles Howard, from whom
she separated when she became the mistress of the Prince, afterwards
George II., who, as Prince, allowed her L2,000 a year, and as King
L3,200 a year, besides several sums at various times.  He gave her
L12,000 towards Marble Hill, the mansion still facing the Thames, which
became her residence.  Her husband lived long enough to become Earl of
Suffolk, and dying, left her free to marry, when she was forty-five, the
Hon. George Berkeley, who died eleven years after.  She survived him
twenty-one years, and supplied her neighbour, Horace Walpole, with Court
anecdotes and scandal during all that period.  Walpole calls her
remarkably 'genteel'--a favourite expression of his, though now so
vulgar!--and, in spite of her antecedents, she was courted by the
highest in the land.  Such were the morals of those days.  According to
Horace Walpole, her mental qualifications were not of a high order, but
she was gentle and engaging in her manners, and she was a gossip with a
good memory--and that answered her host's purpose admirably.  Pope also
made great use of her reminiscences.

Like Dr. Johnson, Horace Walpole liked to fill his house with a lot of
female devotees; but whilst Johnson seemed to prefer a parcel of
disagreeable, ugly, and cantankerous women, always quarrelling among
themselves and with everybody else, Walpole liked his women to be young
and fair, full of life and mirth.  By what strange circumstance was the
cynical and sarcastic Walpole led into a sort of friendship with the
mild and pietistic Mrs. Hannah More?  It was in 1784 that this queer
friendship began.  It appears that about that date Hannah More had
discovered at Bristol a milk woman who wrote verses, just such verses as
Hannah More and Walpole--neither of whom had an idea of poetry--would
consider wonderful.  A subscription must be started for the benefit of
the milkwoman, and Hannah More applied to Horace Walpole, who set up for
a Maecenas, though he always expressed the utmost contempt for authors,
for a contribution.  Of course, Hannah More did not make this
application without a dose of fulsome compliment to Horace Walpole's
genius, and he went into the trap, subscribed, and expressed his
admiration of the milkwoman's poetry.  The woman's name was Yearsley;
she was quite ready to receive the money, but, having evidently a very
high opinion of her own doggerel, she refused to listen to the literary
advice given to her by Horace Walpole and her patroness, with whom she
very soon quarrelled.  Walpole condoled with Hannah thus: 'You are not
only benevolence itself, but, with fifty times the genius of Dame
Yearsley, you are void of vanity.  How strange that vanity should expel
gratitude!  Does not the wretched woman owe her fame to you? ... Dame
Yearsley reminds me of the troubadours, those vagrants whom I used to
admire till I knew their history, and who used to pour out trumpery
verses, and flatter or abuse, accordingly as they were housed and
clothed, or dismissed to the next parish. Yet you did not set this
person in the stocks, after procuring an annuity for her.'  By this
letter we see what were Horace Walpole's ideas of patronage: flattery
and a pittance, independence and the stocks.  Walpole was open to
flattery.  Dr. Johnson was not--at least, not from a woman; he despised
the sex too much to care for their praise.  When Hannah More laid it on
very thick in his case, he fiercely turned round on her and said:
'Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should
consider whether or not your flattery is worth his having.'  And, with
all his admiration for her character, Walpole could not help sneering at
what he called her saintliness, and venting his sarcasm on her silly
'Coelebs in Search of a Wife,' the absurdity of which has, indeed, been
surpassed by a few modern novels of the same tendency.  The last we hear
of their friendship is that he made her a present of a Bible--fancy the
satyr's leer with which he must have presented it to her! She paid him
out for the implied irony by wishing that he would read it.

Among the ladies who were neighbours of Horace Walpole, we must not omit
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who lived for some years in a house on the
south side of the road leading to Twickenham Common. She may justly be
considered as one of the witty, if not of the pretty, women of Walpole's
time.  He detested her.  Probably he was somewhat jealous of her, for
her letters from Constantinople on Turkish life and society earned her
the sobriquet of the 'Female Horace Walpole.'  He writes of her thus
whilst she was living at Florence: 'She is laughed at by the whole town.
Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze anyone.... She
wears a foul mob, that does not cover her greasy black locks, that hang
loose, never combed or curled; an old mazarine blue wrapper, that gapes
open and discovers a canvas petticoat.  Her face swelled violently on
one side, and partly covered with white paint, which for cheapness she
has bought so coarse that you would not use it to wash a chimney.'  In
another letter he describes her dress as consisting of 'a groundwork of
dirt, with an embroidery of filthiness.'  When he wrote of her then, she
was about fifty years of age, and seems to have retained none of the
beauty which distinguished her in her earlier years.  She was not only
coarse in looks, but in her speech and writings, which shock modern
fastidiousness.  She was not the woman to please Horace Walpole, who,
even when in the seventies, liked nothing better than acting as squire
or cicerone to fine ladies.  Lady Mary was not one of them.  She was, in
fact, what we now should call a regular Bohemian; and was it to be
wondered at?  She had been introduced into that sort of life when she
was a girl only eight years old by her own father, Evelyn, Earl of
Kingston.  He was a member of the Kitcat Club, whose chief occupation
was the proposing and toasting the beauties of the day.  One evening the
Earl took it into his head to nominate his daughter.  She was sent for
in a chaise, and introduced to the company in dirty Shire Lane in a
grimy chamber, reeking with foul culinary smells and stale
tobacco-smoke, and elected by acclamation.  The gentlemen drank the
little lady's health upstanding; and feasting her with sweets, and
passing her round with kisses, at once inscribed her name with a diamond
on a drinking-glass.  'Pleasure,' she says, 'was too poor a word to
express my sensations.  They amounted to ecstasy.  Never again
throughout my whole life did I pass so happy an evening.'  Of course,
the child could not perceive the hideousness of the whole proceeding and
its surroundings: if the kisses were seasoned with droppings of snuff
from the noses above, which otherwise were not always very clean--even
at the beginning of this century Lord Kenyon, Chief Justice of the
King's Bench, was an utter stranger to the luxury of a
pocket-handkerchief, and had no delicacy about avowing it--it did not
detract from the sweetness of the bon-bons with which she was regaled.

The founder of the Blue-Stocking Club, Mrs. Montagu, _nee_ Elizabeth
Robinson, was another of Walpole's witty and handsome lady friends.  As
a girl she was lively, full of fun, yet fond of study.  In 1742 she was
married to Edward Montagu, M.P., a coal-owner of great wealth. As a girl
the Duchess of Portland had called her 'La Petite Fidget'; but after her
marriage she became more sedate, and a great power in the literary
world.  She established the Blue-Stocking Club, of which herself, Mrs.
Vesey, Miss Boscawen, Mrs. Carter, Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Pulteney, Mr.
Stillingfleet, and Horace Walpole were the first members.  The name
originally came from Venice, where, in 1400, the Academical Society
_delle calze_ had been established, whence the name was transferred to
similar associations in France, there called _Bas Bleus_, and from the
latter country it was introduced into England.  Mrs. Montagu, having
been left a widow with L7,000 a year, built herself a mansion, standing
in a large garden at the north-west corner of Portman Square, and there
the Blue-Stocking Club continued to hold its meetings for a number of
years, including all the persons of her time who were celebrated in art,
science, or literature, among whom may be mentioned Boswell and Johnson,
the latter of whom, in the presence of ladies, somewhat modified his
bearish habits. Mrs. Montagu died in 1800, and the house she had built
eventually became the town residence of Viscount Portman.

Of course, Horace Walpole was acquainted with the Misses Gunning--'those
goddesses,' as Mary Montagu styled them.  They were nieces of the first
Earl of Mayo, and so got a ready introduction into London society, which
literally went raving mad about them.  Horace Walpole tells us that even
the 'great unwashed' followed them in crowds whenever they appeared in
public: there must have been an extraordinary appreciation of beauty in
the rabble--and what a rabble of ruffians it was!--of those days.  But
London then was no bigger than a provincial town, compared with what it
is now.  The two ladies speedily found husbands: the Duke of Hamilton
married Elizabeth, the younger, after an evening spent in the society of
the sisters and their mother at Bedford House, and was in such a hurry
about it that he would wait for neither licence nor ring, and, after
with some difficulty satisfying the scruples of the parson called upon
to celebrate the extempore ceremony, they were married with the ring of
a bed-curtain, at half an hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel.
Three weeks afterwards Lord Coventry married her sister, Maria.  The
Duke of Hamilton dying in 1758, six years after the strange nuptials in
Mayfair Chapel, the widow in the following year married Jack Campbell,
afterwards Duke of Argyll.  Lady Coventry did not wear her coronet long;
in 1760 she died, it is said, in consequence of her excessive use of
white paint.  Her sister, 'twice duchessed,' survived her many years.

We have far from exhausted the list of the ladies distinguished for wit
and beauty who figure in Horace Walpole's 'Letters,' but our space is
exhausted.  We cannot, however, conclude without a few words on the
'Letters' in question.  Their chief value consists in the lively
descriptions of public events; not as dry and cold history records them,
but by letting us have peeps behind the scenes, so as to see the
wire-pullers, the secret machinery, which set in motion the actors on
the political and social stage.  They show us lords and ladies in their
negliges, and how the conceit of a hairdresser, or the caprice of a
lady's-maid, may make or mar the destinies of a nation.  This copious
letter-writing forms indeed an era in our literary history which will
never return or be renewed; the prying reporter and the irrepressible
interviewer now supply all the world with what the letter-writer
communicated to a few friends only. This present age may be called the
Age of Reminiscences: everybody is writing his; of making books there is
no end!




                                 *III.*

                      *OLD LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES.*


A comparatively small room, considering it was one for public use, with
dingy walls, a grimy ceiling, a sanded floor, boxes with upright backs
and narrow seats, wooden chairs, liquor-stained tables, lighted up in
the evening with smoky lamps or guttering candles, the whole room
reeking with tobacco like a guard-room--such was the coffee-house of the
later Stuart and the whole Georgian periods.  Its distinctive article of
furniture was spittoons.  In such dens did the noblemen, in flowing wigs
and embroidered coats, parsons in cassocks and bands, physicians in
sable suits and tremendous perukes, together with broken-down gamesters,
swindlers, country yokels, and out-at-elbows literary and theatrical
adventurers, meet, not only for pleasure, but for business too.  Dr.
Radcliffe, who in 1685 had the largest practice in London, was daily to
be seen at Garraway's, now demolished, its site being included in
Martin's bank; and another favourite resort of doctors hereby was
Batson's, where, as the 'Connoisseur' says, 'the dispensers of life and
death flock together, like birds of prey watching for carcases.  I never
enter this place but it serves as a _memento mori_ to me....  Batson's
has been reckoned the seat of solemn stupidity.'

Coffee-houses, indeed, had their distinct sets of customers.  St.
Paul's, for instance, was patronized by the clergy, both by those with
fat livings and by 'battered crapes,' who plied there for an occasional
burial or sermon.  Dick's was frequented by members of the Temple, with
whom, in 1737, Mrs. Yarrow and her daughter, who kept the house, were
great favourites; wherefore, when the Rev. James Miller brought out a
comedy, called 'The Coffee-House,' in which the ladies were thought to
be indicated--the engraver having unfortunately fixed upon Dick's
Coffee-House as the frontispiece scene--the Templars attended the first
representation, and hissed the piece off the boards. Button's, in Covent
Garden, was the resort of Addison and Steele, of Pope and Swift, of
Savage and Davenant--in fact, of the wits of the time.  At this house
was the lion's head through whose mouth letters were dropped for the
_Tatlers_ and _Spectators_.  The head was afterwards transferred to the
Bedford Coffee-House, under the Piazza, and eventually, in 1827, was
purchased by the Duke of Bedford, and is now at Woburn Abbey; Bedford's
was the successor of Button's, and is described in the 'Memoirs' of it
as having been signalized for many years as 'the emporium of wit, the
seat of criticism, and the standard of taste.'  In 1659 was founded the
Rota Club by James Charrington, a political writer, and its members met
at Miles's, in Old Palace Yard.  Pepys attended one of its meetings on
January 10, 1659-60.  It was a kind of debating-society for the
dissemination of Republican opinions. Coffee-houses, indeed, at that
period became important political institutions.  Nothing resembling the
modern newspaper then existed; in consequence, these houses were the
chief organs through which the public opinion vented itself, and so
threatening to the Court did, in course of time, their influence appear,
that on December 29, 1675, the King and his Cabal Ministry issued a
proclamation for shutting up and suppressing all coffee-houses, 'because
in such houses, and by occasion of the meeting of disaffected persons in
them, diverse false, malicious, and scandalous reports were devised and
spread abroad, to the defamation of his Majesty's Government, and to the
disturbance of the quiet and peace of the realm.'  The opinions of the
judges were taken on this ridiculous edict, and they sapiently reported
'that retailing coffee might be an innocent trade, but as it was used to
nourish sedition, spread lies, and scandalize great men, it might also
be a common nuisance.'  On a petition of the merchants and retailers of
coffee and tea, permission was granted to keep open the coffee-houses
until June 24 next, under an admonition that 'the masters of them should
prevent all scandalous papers, books, and libels from being read in
them.'  This, of course, was a huge joke on the part of the Cabal, who
thus constituted the concoctors and dispensers of 'dishes'--to use the
hideous word then employed--of coffee and tea censors and licensers of
books, and judges of the truth or falsehood of political opinions and
intelligence.  After that no more was heard of the matter, and the
coffee-houses remained political debating clubs, as is proved by the
remarks on them in the _Spectator_ and similar publications. See, for
instance, Nos. 403, 476, 481, 521, etc.

The first London coffee-house was set up by one Bowman, coachman to Mr.
Hodges, a Turkey merchant.  Others say that Mr. Edwards brought over
with him a Ragusa servant, Pasqua Rosee, who was associated with Bowman
in establishing the first coffee-house in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill.
But the partners soon quarrelled.  They parted, and Bowman opened a
coffee-house in St. Michael's Churchyard, from which we may infer that
the public took to the new drink.  Rosee issued handbills headed: 'The
vertue of the coffee-drink.  First made and publicly sold in England by
Pasqua Rosee, at the sign of his own head.'  The original of one of them
is preserved in the British Museum.  It is generally said that the
second coffee-house in London was that established as the Rainbow (now a
tavern) in Fleet Street, by one Fair, a barber, in the year 1657.  In
the _Mercurius Politicus_ of September 30, 1658, an advertisement
appeared, setting forth the virtues of the then equally new beverage,
namely, _tcha_, or _tay_, or _tee_, which was sold at the Sultaness Head
_Cophee-house_, in Sweeting's Rents, by the Royal Exchange.  We thus see
that as early as 1658 there were already three coffee-houses in London.
But coffee met with opponents.  The vintners called it 'sooty drink';
lampooners said it undermined virile power, and that to drink it was to
ape the Turks and insult one's canary-drinking ancestors.  Fair, the
founder of the Rainbow, already mentioned, was indicted for 'making and
selling a sort of liquor, called coffee, whereby in making it he annoyed
his neighbours by evil smells, and for keeping of fire for the most part
night and day, to the great danger and affrightment of his neighbours.'
But Farr stood his ground, and in time became a person of importance in
the parish, and coffee-houses multiplied. Cornhill and its purlieus were
full of them.  There were the Great Turk, Sword Blade, Rainbow,
Garraway, Jerusalem, Tom's, and Weston's Coffee-Houses in Exchange Alley
alone; in St. Michael's Alley, close by, there were, besides Rosee's,
Williams's, and other coffee-houses.  They also, as we have seen, had
been established further west than the City, and they were also, as
already mentioned, places of rendezvous, where appointments were made,
where lawyers met clients, and doctors patients, merchants their
customers, clerks their masters, where farce-writers, journalists,
politicians, and literary hacks went to pick up ideas, and, as it was
then called, watch, and if they could, catch the humours of the town.
The _Spectator_, in his very first number, acknowledges his indebtedness
to coffee-houses. 'There is no place of general resort,' he says,
'wherein I do not often make my appearance.  Sometimes I am seen
thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's (on the north
side of Russell Street, at the corner of Bow Street), and listening with
great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular
audiences.  Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's (St. Paul's Churchyard),
and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the _Postman_, overhear the
conversation of every table in the room.  I appear on Sunday nights at
St. James's (the famous Whig coffee-house from the time of Queen Anne to
late in the reign of George III.), and sometimes join the little
committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes there to hear
and improve.'

There was another Will's in Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, which
was also a haunt of the _Spectator_, as were the other coffee-houses in
that neighbourhood.  He says in his ninety-ninth number: 'I do not know
that I meet in any of my walks objects which move both my spleen and
laughter so effectually as these young fellows at the Grecian, Squire's,
Searle's, and all other coffee-houses adjacent to the law, who rise
early for no other purpose but to publish their laziness.'  It appears
that it was usual to resort to the coffee-house as early as six o'clock
in the morning.  In 'Moser's Vestiges,' Will's is thus referred to: 'All
the beaux that used to breakfast in the coffee-houses and taverns
appendant to the Inns of Court struck their morning strokes in an
elegant _deshabille_, which was carelessly confined by a sash of yellow,
red, blue, green, etc., according to the taste of the wearer.  The idle
fashion was not quite worn out in 1765.  We can remember having seen
some of these early loungers in their nightgowns, caps, etc., at Will's,
Lincoln's Inn Gate, about that period.'

But the coffee-houses were not all for beer and skittles only.  In the
City especially, the business of the City, and of England, in fact, was
transacted in them. Merchants and other business people, professional
men, brokers, agents, had not then their private offices, which could
only be reached through the ante-den of quill-driving _cerberi, milgo_
clerks.  All the transactions of daily life were then largely carried on
in public, as they are in all communities, until they arrive at a high
state of civilization.  Even now among the peasantry of various European
countries a man cannot have his child christened without the ceremony
being rendered a public spectacle.  And so here in England, in the
barbarous days of dingy and musty coffee-houses, they were
consulting-rooms, offices, counting-houses, auction-rooms, and shops.
When the business was done, or in order to further it, refreshments of
all sorts were handy, for the coffee-house did not confine itself to
that innocent beverage, but supplied stronger stuffs; it was, in fact, a
tavern, and many of the houses, now openly so called, were formerly
coffee-houses.  And the business transacted at them was, as may be
imagined, of the most varied character.  Agents for the purchase or sale
of estates, houses and other property, instead of seeing people at their
offices, met them at coffee-houses.  Thus one Thomas Rogers advertised
that he gave attendance daily at the Rainbow by the Temple; on Tuesdays
at Tom's, by the Exchange, and on Thursdays at Will's, near Whitehall,
for transacting agency business.  This was legitimate enough, but what
of the sale of human flesh at a coffee-house?  In 1708 an advertisement
appeared: 'A black boy, twelve years of age, fit to wait on a gentleman,
to be disposed of at Denis's Coffee-house, in Finch-lane.'  And again,
in 1728: 'To be sold, a negro boy, aged eleven years.  Enquire at the
Virginia Coffee-house, Threadneedle-street.'  Sometimes the keeper of
the coffee-house sold goods on account of others; thus from an
advertisement in the _Postman_, January, 1705, we learn that Mr.
Shipton, at John's Coffee-house, in Exchange Alley, sold someone's
famous razor strops.  The landlords of those places, indeed, seem to
have been very accommodating, especially in the taking in of letters,
thus anticipating the practice of modern newspaper shops.  And they were
not squeamish as to the advertisements, answers to which were to be sent
to them.  Thus a gentleman (?) in the _General Advertiser_, October,
1745, expressed a wish to hear from a lady he had seen in one of the
left-hand boxes at Drury Lane, and who seemed to take particular notice
of a gentleman who sat about the middle of the pit (the advertiser, of
course).  Letter to be left for 'P.M.F.', at the Portugal Coffee-house,
near the Exchange.  In 1762 a young man advertised for his mother, 'who,
in 1740, resided at a certain village near Bath, where she was delivered
of a son, whom she left with a sum of money under the care of a person
in the same parish, and promised to fetch him at a certain age, but has
not since been heard of ... if living, she is asked to send a letter to
"J.E.", at the Chapter Coffee-house, St. Paul's Churchyard ... this
advertisement is published by the person himself [_i.e._, the son, born
near Bath] not from motives of necessity, or to court any assistance (he
being by a series of happy circumstances possessed of an easy and
independent fortune).'  It would, I fancy, be difficult at the present
day to find anyone, having a reputation of any note to keep up, willing
to receive answers to such an advertisement, which, if it was not a
fraud, looked terribly like an attempt at one.  It happened in those
days, as it occasionally does now, that the estates of gentlemen who
married late in life passed away to remote branches; the 'young
gentleman' had no doubt reflected on this subject.  The Turk's Head
seems, to judge by advertisements, to have been somewhat heathenish.
Here is another advertisement, also from the _Morning Post_, answers to
which it took in: 'Whereas there are ladies, who have L2,000, L3,000, or
L4,000 at their command, and who, from not knowing how to dispose of the
same to the greatest advantage ... afford them but a scanty maintenance
... the advertiser (who is a gentleman of independent fortune, strict
honour and character, and above reward) acquaints such ladies that if
they will favour him with their name and address ... he will put them
into a method by which they may, without any trouble, and with an
absolute certainty, place out their money, so as to produce them a clear
interest of 10 or 12 per cent.... on good and safe securities.  Direct
to "R.J.," Esq., at the Turk's Head Coffee-house, Strand.'  We pity any
lady who fell into the clutches of this 'gentleman of independent
fortune'!  And how the Turk's Head must have grinned when answers to
'R.J.' arrived! About the same time a gentleman advertised that he knew
a method, which reduced it almost to a certainty to win a considerable
sum by insuring numbers in the lottery.  For ten guineas the gentleman
was prepared to 'discover the plan.'  Answers to be sent to the York
Coffee-house, St. James's Street.  Another gentleman is willing to lend
L3,000 to anyone having sufficient interest to procure him a Government
appointment, worth L200 or L300 per annum.  Answers to this were to be
sent to the Chapter Coffee-house, St. Paul's.  To some of the
coffee-houses it would seem porters were attached, ready to run errands
for customers, or the outside public; some of them seem to have earned a
reputation of a certain character.  Thus Cynthio (_Spectator_, No. 398)
employs Robin, the porter, who waits Will's Coffee-house, to take a
letter to Flavia. 'Robin, you must know,' we are told, 'is the best man
in the town for carrying a billet; the fellow has a thin body, swift
step, demure looks, sufficient sense, and knows the town ... the fellow
covers his knowledge of the nature of his messages with the most
exquisite low humour imaginable; the first he obliged Flavia to take was
by complaining to her that he had a wife and three children, and if she
did not take that letter, which he was sure there was no harm in, but
rather love, his family must go supperless to bed, for the gentleman
would pay him according as he did his business.'  He would seem to have
been a mild Leporello.

We find the cheapness of living at coffee-houses frequently extolled in
the publications and conversations of the day in which they were most
flourishing.  An Irish painter, whom Johnson knew, declared that L30 a
year was enough to enable a man to live in London, without being
contemptible.  He allowed L10 for clothes and linen.  He said a man
might live in a garret at 1s. 6d. a week; few people would inquire where
he lodged, and if they did, it was easy to say: 'Sir, you will find me
at such and such a place'--just as nowadays impecunious swells, who live
in garrets, manage to keep up their club subscription, and give as their
address that of the club.  By spending threepence at a coffee-house,
Johnson's Irish painter further argued, a man might be for some hours
every day in very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on
bread-and-milk for a penny, and do without supper.  On clean-shirt day
the painter went out to pay visits, as Swift also did.

With regard to the persons employed in a coffee-house, we learn from one
advertisement: 'To prevent all mistakes among gentlemen of the other end
of the town, who come but once a week to St. James's Coffee-house,
either by miscalling the servants, or requiring such things from them as
are not properly within their respective provinces, this is to give
notice that Kidney, keeper of the book-debts of the outlying customers,
and observer of those who go off without paying, having resigned that
employment, is succeeded by John Sowton, to whose place of caterer of
messages and first coffee-grinder William Bird is promoted, and Samuel
Bardock comes as shoe-cleaner in the room of the said Bird.'

Well, the coffee-houses are things of the past; a few survive as
taverns.  What may be considered as their successors are called
coffee-shops, patronized by working-men chiefly, but the 'humours' are
of the tamest description; they may supply statistics to temperance
apostles, but no literary entertainment to the public.




                                 *IV.*

                 *OLD M.P.S AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS.*


Somebody has said that, on making inquiry after a man you have not seen
for a number of years, you may find him either in the hulks or in
Parliament. This somebody evidently was a bit of a philosopher, who knew
how to put the possibilities of human life in a nutshell.  He understood
that the same cause may have totally different effects: the same heat
which softens lead hardens clay, the same abilities which may send a man
to penal servitude may elevate him to the dignity of an M.P.  And thus
it happened that some queer people got into Parliament, which, no doubt,
was the fact which gave rise to somebody's wise saw, and which was not
to be wondered at in the good old days, before Reform and Corrupt
Practices Prevention Acts, and similar humbugging interferences with the
liberty of the subject, were dreamt of.  In those good old days of
rotten and pocket boroughs men had Parliamentary honours thrust upon
them _nolentes volentes_.  Thus, a noble lord, who owned several such
boroughs, was asked by the returning officer whom he meant to nominate.
Having no eligible candidate at hand, he named a waiter at White's Club,
one Robert Mackreth; but, as he did not happen to be sure of the
Christian name of his nominee, the election was declared to be void.
Nothing daunted, his lordship persisted in his nomination.  A fresh
election was therefore held, when, the name of the waiter having been
ascertained, he was returned as a matter of course, and Robert Mackreth,
Esq., took his seat in St. Stephen's.  This was possible in the days of
Eldon and Perceval; in fact, in the early part of this century, 306
members, more than half of the House of Commons, were returned by 160
persons, and in 1830 it was admitted that, though there were men of
ability in the Cabinet, such as Brougham, Lansdowne, Melbourne,
Palmerston, the members of the House were 'persons of very narrow
capacities, of small reputation for talent, and without influence with
the people.'

However, the Reform Bill was passed in 1832, and pocket boroughs were
abolished.  There had been thirty-seven places returning members with
constituencies not exceeding fifty electors, and fourteen of those
places had not more than twenty electors.  There were three boroughs
each containing only one L10 householder. One of the boroughs only paid
in assessed taxes L3 9s., another L16 8s. 9d., a third L40 17s. 1d.
But, luckily for the public, the Reform Bill did not abolish the fun of
the flags, music, beer, and jokes of elections.  The delicate attentions
which could still be paid to candidates remained in full swing.  Thus,
we remember an election in the Isle of Wight: The father of one of the
candidates for Parliamentary distinction, in the Conservative interest,
had, in his youthful days, married a lady who, in a peripatetic manner,
dealt in oysters.  His rival, a Radical, paid him the compliment of
sending him daily barrows and truck-loads of oyster-shells, which were,
with his kind regards, discharged in front of the hotel where his
committee was established, and from whose windows he addressed the
electors.  It was splendid fun, and calculated to impress the
intelligent foreigner.  It showed how highly the British public
appreciated their elective franchise.  Pleasantries had, indeed, always
been the rule at election-time.  When Fox, in 1802, canvassed
Westminster, he asked a shopkeeper on the opposite side for his vote and
interest, when the latter produced a halter, and said that was all he
could give him.  Fox thanked him, but said he could not think of
depriving him of it, as no doubt it was a family relic.  At an election
at Norwich in 1875 the committee-room of the Conservative candidate was
attacked, but the agent kept up the fire and had red-hot pokers ready,
which, standing at the top of the stairs, he offered to his assailants,
but they would not take them!  In the same town the Liberals held a
prayer-meeting, at which the Conservatives presented each man with one
of Moody and Sankey's hymn-books, with something between the leaves. In
fact, the Reform Bill had not made elections pure. William Roupell
obtained his seat for Lambeth by the expenditure of L10,000, 'and,' said
a man well able to judge of the truth of his assertion, 'if he were
released from prison (to which he was sent for life for his forgeries)
and would spend another L10,000, he would be re-elected, in spite of his
having proved a criminal.'

Money carried the day at elections.  According to a speech made by Mr.
Bright at Glasgow in 1866, a member had told him that his election had
cost him L9,000 already, and that he had L3,000 more to pay. At a
contest in North Shropshire in 1876, the expenses of the successful
candidate, Mr. Stanley Leighton, amounted to L11,727, and of the
defeated candidate, Mr. Mainwaring, to L10,688.  At the General Election
of 1880, in the county of Middlesex, the expenses of the successful
candidates, Lord George Hamilton and Mr. Octavius Coope, were L11,506.
The cost of the Gravesend election, and the petition which followed and
unseated the candidate returned, was estimated at L20,000.  But the most
expensive contest ever known in electioneering was that for the
representation of Yorkshire.  The candidates were Viscount Milton, son
of Earl Fitzwilliam, a Whig; the Hon. Henry Lascelles, son of Lord
Harewood, a Tory; and William Wilberforce, in the Dissenting and
Independent interest.  The election was carried on for fifteen days, Mr.
Wilberforce being at the head of the poll all the time.  It terminated
in his favour and in that of Lord Milton.  The contest is said to have
cost the parties near half a million pounds.  The expenses of
Wilberforce were defrayed by public subscription, more than double the
sum being raised within a few days, and one moiety was afterwards
returned to the subscribers.  When Whitbread, the brewer, first opposed
the Duke of Bedford's interest at Bedford, the Duke informed him that he
would spend L50,000 rather than that he should come in.  Whitbread
replied that was nothing, the sale of his grains would pay for that.
Now, John Elwes, the miser, knew better than that.  Though worth half a
million of money, he entered Parliament, by the interest of Lord Craven,
at the expense of 1s. 6d., for which he had a dinner at Abingdon.  From
1774 he sat for the next twelve years for Berkshire, his conduct being
perfectly independent, and in his case there had been no bribery that
could be brought home to him.  He was a great gambler, and, after
staking large sums all night, he would, in the morning, go to Smithfield
to await the arrival of his cattle from his farms in Essex, and, if not
arrived, would walk on to meet them.  He wore a wig; if he found one
thrown away into the gutter, he would appropriate and wear it.  In those
days members occasionally wore dress-swords at the House.  One day a
gentleman seated next to Elwes was rising to leave his place, and just
at that moment Elwes bent forward, so that the point of the sword the
gentleman wore came in contact with Elwes's wig, which it whisked off
and carried away.  The House was instantly in a roar of laughter, whilst
the gentleman, unconscious of what he had done, calmly walked away, and
Elwes after him to recover his wig, which looked as if it was one of
those he had picked up in the gutter.

Bribes were expected and given, as we have seen.  Of course, the thing
was not done openly.  Tricks were practised, understood by all parties.
The agent would sit in a room in an out-of-the-way place.  A voter would
come in; the agent would say, 'How are you to-day?' and hold up three
fingers.  'I am not very well,' the answer would be, when the agent
would accidentally hold up his hand, upon which the voter would say that
he thought fresh air would do him good, and look out of the window as if
examining the sky.  In the meantime the agent would place five
sovereigns on the table, and also go to look at the weather.  His back
being turned to the table, the voter would quietly slip the cash into
his pocket, and, saying 'Good-morning,' take his departure.  And how
could any bribery be proved? But occasionally the people expecting
bribes were nicely taken in.  Lord Cochrane, when he first stood for
Honiton, refused to give bribes, and the seat was secured by his
opponent, who gave L5 for every vote.  On this Cochrane sent the bellman
round to announce that he would give to every one of the minority who
had voted for him 10 guineas.  At the next election no questions were
asked, and Cochrane was returned by an overwhelming majority.  Those who
had voted for him then intimated that they expected some acknowledgment
for their support.  He declined to give a penny, and when he was
reminded that, after the former election, he had given 10 guineas to
every one of the minority, he coolly replied that this was for their
disinterestedness in refusing his opponent's L5, and that to pay them
now would be acting in violation of his principle not to bribe.  And the
disinterested voters marched off with faces as long as those of horses.

The Reform Bill of 1832, which was highly objectionable to old-fashioned
Conservatives, was accused by them of having introduced some very queer
and curious members into the House.  Through this Bill the bone-grubber,
as Raike calls him, W. Cobbett, was returned for Oldham, and Brighton,
under the very nose of the Court, returned two rampant Radicals, who
openly talked of reducing the allowance made to the King and Queen.
Nay, John Gully, a prize-fighter, was returned to the House for
Pontefract, and was re-elected at the next election.  He at one time
kept the Plough Inn in Carey Street, which was pulled down just before
the erection of the new Law Courts.  Eventually he resigned his seat on
account of ill-health, as he averred; but as he became a great patron of
racing, and was a constant attendant at the various race-courses, his
ill-health was probably only a pretence for quitting a sphere for which
he felt himself unfit.  On his first election the following epigram
appeared against him:

    'If anyone ask why should Pontefract sully
    Its name by returning to Parliament Gully,
    The etymological cause, I suppose, is
    He's broken the bridges of so many noses.'


Another member who may be reckoned among the curiosities who have sat in
the House was William Roupell.  He was the illegitimate son of Richard
Palmer Roupell, a wealthy lead merchant, who invested a large sum in the
purchase of land, to which he gave the name of the Roupell Park Estate.
William was his favourite son, though he had other legitimate children;
and it was not till a few days before his father's death that he learnt
the secret of his own birth. The former had made a will, by which he
left this property to William, on condition of his making annual
payments to his brothers and sisters; but as this would have brought to
light the forgeries he had already committed during his father's
lifetime, to the amount of about L150,000, he, on his father's death,
managed to get hold of the will, which eventually he destroyed,
substituting a forged one, leaving all to his wife and William; and the
latter quickly persuaded his mother to confer the greater part of the
estates on him by deed of gift.  He soon obtained the social position
the great wealth he now possessed usually commands; he stood for
Lambeth, and by the expenditure of L10,000, as already mentioned, he
obtained the seat.  But Roupell was not only a rogue, but a fool.  By
gambling and extravagance he soon ran through the fortune he had
obtained by crooked means.  Finding the detection of his crimes
inevitable, he fled to Spain, but eventually returned, and gave himself
up to justice, confessing the forgeries he had committed.  Of course,
the persons who had purchased property then became aware that the deeds
by which they held it were worthless.  The court considered his offences
so serious that in 1862 it condemned him to penal servitude for life;
but he was released after an imprisonment of fourteen years.  In 1876 he
left Portland a free man again.  But it is with Roupell as a member of
Parliament we are chiefly concerned.  In that capacity he did not shine.
He remained in the House long enough to prove that he was disqualified
to represent a large borough like Lambeth.  He took no part in the
debates, nor did he appear to be able to grapple with and master any
question connected with politics.  Being asked one evening at the Horns,
when meeting his constituents, why he did not speak in the House of
Commons, he replied: 'Because I do not want to make a fool of myself.'
Next morning the _Times_ made merry with this confession.  He was
consequently regarded as a cipher, but he was supported by his supposed
wealth. But soon suspicious murmurs began to be heard, and he prepared
for his flight to Spain; and he decamped without making any application
for the Chiltern Hundreds, so that for a considerable time his place in
Parliament could not be filled up.  Advertisements in Galignani apprised
him of the omission, and at length the application was made.  He did not
meet with much pity, either from the public or the press; squibs without
end appeared against him in the papers.  We append a specimen of a short
one:

    'Now, the Lambeth folks this wealthy gent
      As their member did decide on,
    But little they knew he'd happened to do
      Some things he didn't oughter;
    For he'd forged a will and several deeds....

    'And the public said: "Well, this here Roupell
      Has got no more than he oughter."
    So there was an end of the wealthy gent
      As was member from over the water.'


Lambeth appears to have been unfortunate in the selection of its
Parliamentary candidates.  In 1852 the parochial party, wishing for a
local man, formed themselves into a committee to secure the election of
Mr. Joseph Harvey, of Lambeth House, a drapery establishment in the
Westminster Bridge Road. Mr. Harvey had never taken an active part in
public matters; his tastes lay not that way.  He shrank from public
life, and had no training or aptitude for addressing large meetings.
However, he was forced forward; but when he spoke at the Horns--the
speech was written for him by someone else--his total incapacity for the
position thrust on him became so apparent that he gave up the contest,
but not before he had afforded plenty of food to the squib-writers.

Parliament is not above the use of nicknames, either by way of praise or
in scorn.  Cobbett's talent for fastening such names on anyone he
disliked was very great.  He invented 'Prosperity Robinson,' 'AEolus
Canning,' 'Pink-nosed Liverpool,' 'unbaptized, buttonless blackguards,'
or Quakers.  Lord Yarmouth, from the colour of his whiskers, and from
the place which gave him his title, was known as 'Red Herrings.'  Lord
Durham so often opposed his colleagues in the Cabinet that he was called
the 'Dissenting Minister.'  Thomas Duncombe was so popular that he was
always spoken of as 'Honest' or 'Poor' Tom; his French friends called
him 'Cher Tomie.'  John Arthur Roebuck had a habit of bringing forward,
in a startling way, facts he had got hold of, and thus raising
opposition; and from a passage in a speech he made at the Cutlers'
Feast, at Sheffield, in 1858, obtained the nickname of 'Tear 'em.'  He
had just paid a visit to Cherbourg, and returned home with feelings very
unfriendly to the then ruler of France, to which he gave expression at
the feast, excusing himself at the same time for using such language
towards a neighbour by saying: 'The farmer who goes to sleep, having
placed the watch-dog, Tear 'em, over his rick-yard, hears that dog bark.
He bawls out of the window: "Down, Tear 'em, down!"  And Tear 'em does
not again disturb his sleep, till he is woke up by the strong blaze of
his corn and hay ricks.  I am Tear 'em.  Beware!  Cherbourg is a
standing menace to England.'  Michael Angelo Taylor was known by the
sobriquet of 'Chicken' Taylor.  On some points of law he had answered
the great lawyer Bearcroft, but not without apologizing for his
venturing, he being but a chicken in the law, on a fight with the cock
of Westminster Hall.  Charles Wynn was brother to Sir Watkin Wynn, and
from a peculiarity in the utterances of the latter, and the shrillness
of Charles's voice, the two went by the nicknames of 'Bubble and
Squeak.'  Sir Watkin was also known as 'Small Journal' Wynn, from his
extensive knowledge of Parliamentary rule.  William Cowper, falsely
accused of having married a second wife whilst his first was still
alive, was known as 'Will Bigamy.'

Strangers formerly were not allowed to be present at the deliberations
of the House; now they are admitted to the Strangers' Gallery, but never
to the floor of the House.  Yet sometimes there will be an intruder.
Once Lord North, when speaking, was interrupted by the barking of a dog
which had crept in.  He turned round, and said: 'Mr. Speaker, I am
interrupted by a new member.'  The dog was driven out, but got in again,
and recommenced barking, when Lord North, in his dry way, said: 'Spoke
once.'

We are near the limits of our space.  Let us conclude with recording a
few of the strange designations given to Parliaments.  The Parliament de
la Bonde was a Parliament in the reign of Edward II., to which the
Barons came armed against the Spencers, with coloured bands, or 'bonds,'
upon their sleeves, by way of distinction.  The Diabolical Parliament
was one held at Coventry in the thirty-eighth year of Henry VI.'s reign,
and in which Edward, Earl of March, afterwards King, and several of the
nobility, were attainted.  The Unlearned Parliament, held at Coventry in
the sixth year of the reign of Henry IV., was so called by way of
derision, because, by a special precept to the sheriffs in their several
counties, no lawyers were to be admitted thereto.  The Insane
Parliament, which was held at Oxford in the forty-first year of the
reign of Henry III., obtained this name from the extraordinary
proceedings of the Lords, who came with great retinues of armed men,
'when contention grew very high, and many things were enacted contrary
to the King's prerogative.'  We might add to the list, but the gas is
being turned off; so _vale_!




                                  *V.*

                          *FAMOUS OLD ACTORS.*


There is a boom just now in the theatrical world. New theatres are
springing up, not only in London proper, but in all its suburbs, yet it
is only history repeating itself.  From 1570 to 1629 no less than
seventeen playhouses had been built in London, and London then extended
only from the Tower to Westminster, and from Oxford Street to Blackman
Street in the Borough.  The first London theatre was the Fortune,[#]
opened about the year 1600, a large round, brick building between
Whitecross Street and Golding--now Golden--Lane, which was burnt down on
December 9, 1621.  The town was then full of actors, for besides those
playing at the various theatres, there were royal comedians.  Many
noblemen kept companies of players, nay, the lawyers acted in the Inns
of Court, and there were actors of note among them.  But the inevitable
reaction ensued.  Amidst the storms of the Revolution the stage was
neglected.  Even Shakespeare had to take a back-seat till Garrick
brought him into fashion again, though it is chiefly to the learned and
enthusiastic criticism and appreciation of German students of
Shakespeare that the revival of his plays on the stage is due.  His
reputation was 'made in Germany,' and the Germans we have to thank for a
Shakespeare who is presentable to a modern audience, which the original
writer was not; his plays were only fit to be acted before the savages
who delighted in bull and bear baiting.  This estimate of the
Shakespearian drama is not in accordance with the prevailing sentiment,
but we have a right to our opinions and the courage to express them.
However, this is only incidental to our theme, which deals more with
actors and acting than with the plays they took parts in.


[#] The Curtain is said to have been erected in 1570, on the site of the
present Curtain Road, but the date is doubtful, and it was more of an
inn than a playhouse.


There is a general opinion abroad that the realistic play is of quite
modern date, probably brought on the stage in 'L'Assommoir.'  In a
publication of July, 1797, I find it stated that 'our managers some time
ago conceived it would be proper to introduce realities instead of
fictions.  Hence we have seen real horses and real bulls on the stage,
gracing the triumphal entry of some hero.  Hence, too, real water has
been supplied in such quantities that Harlequin's leap into the sea
would now really be no joke....  The introduction of water will, no
doubt, facilitate the introduction of real sea-fights, provided we can
get real admirals and seamen.'  But the writer seems to have been
oblivious of the fact that, in the middle of the last century, already
the water of the New River had been carried under the flooring of
Sadler's Wells Theatre, the boards being removed, for the exhibition of
aquatic performances. And as to this century, long before the more
recent realistic plays, we have seen in the sixties a real cab with a
real horse brought on to the stage to give the heroine, who is about to
elope, the opportunity of uttering the pun: 'Now, four-wheeler, wo!'
(for weal or woe!).  And a very good pun it is.

The formation of the English drama is chiefly due to the 'Children of
Paul,' or pupils of St. Paul's School, in those days nicknamed the
'Pigeons of St. Paul.'  The dramatic celebrity of these juvenile
performers goes back as far as the year 1378.  Originally they confined
themselves to 'moralities,' but in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, before
whom they acted on various occasions, they appeared in the regular drama
with considerable applause.  They exhibited burlesque interludes and
farcical comedies.  Their schoolroom, which stood behind the Convocation
House near St. Paul's, was their stage; but about the year 1580 the
citizens, bent on driving all players out of the city, caused it to be
removed.  The plague had, as usual, caused great ravages in London, and
it was thought that the actors were great means of spreading it,
wherefore their performances were altogether prohibited.  When the
'Children of Paul' performed out of their own premises, it was generally
the Blackfriars Theatre they resorted to.  When they performed in the
school-house the admission was 2d. This charge was made to keep the
company select, and according to a passage in 'Jacke Drum's
Entertainment,' first printed in 1601, it _was_ select:

'SIR EDWARD: I saw the "Children of Paul's" last night, and troth, they
pleased me prettie, prettie well. The apes in time will do it
handsomely.

'PLANET: I like the audience that frequenteth there with much applause.
A man shall not be choked with the stench of garlick, nor be passed to
the barmy jacket of a beer brewer.'

The stage did not attain a dignified position till the time of
Shakespeare.  He and his fellow-actors--Burbage, Heminge, Condell,
Taylor, Kemp, Sly--ennobled it, and since then the roll of English
actors who have gained distinction on the boards is very long, and our
limited space allows us to refer to but a few of them, and then only to
some characteristic traits.

Let us commence with a defence of Garrick's conduct towards Johnson.
When the latter was preparing his edition of 'Shakespeare,' Garrick
offered him the use of his choice library.  But, entering the room, he
found Johnson, according to his usual habit, pulling the books off the
shelves, breaking their backs, more easily to read them, and throwing
them carelessly on the floor. Garrick naturally grew very angry, for
which he has been much abused, charged with 'having acted in abominably
bad taste ... without any true gentlemanly feeling ... that knowing his
friend's character ... Garrick ought to have been prepared for any
slight unfavourable consequences.  He ought to have known that much
might be excused in so great a man,' etc. Now, this is most undeserved
censure on a man of greater parts than Johnson ever could boast of.  The
only thing he ever wrote which will live is his Dictionary. As to his
greatness, if unabashed bounce and a dictatorial jaw constitute
greatness, he certainly, judging him by Bozzy's account, could lay claim
to such.  Garrick's generosity induced him to offer a bear the use of
his books.  Still, he had a right to expect that even a bear, who
professed to admire and practise literature, would know how to treat
books.  But the bear remained a bear everywhere.  He treated Mr.
Thrale's books no better.  But Garrick was generous in other ways.  He
was often visited at his villa, near Sunbury, by a gentleman with whom
he used to have long and violent arguments on various matters, the
visitor generally differing from, and contradicting, his host.  One day
Garrick, at the gentleman's request, readily lent him L100.  Their
discussions continued, but the visitor was no longer so violent in his
arguments, nor did he contradict Garrick as he had done formerly.  On
one occasion, when Garrick had reintroduced an argument his friend had
always violently combated, but now mildly conceded, Garrick, who liked a
lively discussion, jumped up and exclaimed: 'Pay me my hundred pounds,
or contradict me!'  Garrick's generous nature broke forth in that
exclamation, and he did not wish his friend to feel under an obligation.
That his character was gentle and chivalrous is proved by the fact that
his wife and he were considered the fondest pair ever known, though the
lady was a woman with plenty of spirit.  Her letter of remonstrance
against Kean's Abel Drugger was brief: 'DEAR SIR,--You don't know how to
play Abel Drugger.'  To which Kean courteously, yet wittily, replied:
'DEAR MADAM,--I know it.'  She must have been very sprightly, too, for
when at the age of ninety-eight, and about two months before her death
(November, 1822), she visited Westminster Abbey, she asked the clergyman
who attended her if there would be room for her by the side of her
David--'not,' she said, 'that I think I am likely soon to require it,
for I am yet a mere girl!'  She was a Viennese danseuse, Madame
Violette, when Garrick married her, and Horace Walpole reports that it
was whispered at the time that she had been sent over to England by no
less a person than the Empress-Queen, Maria Theresa, to be out of the
way of that somewhat jealous lady's husband.  Apprehensive that he might
be ridiculed for marrying a dancer, Garrick got some friend to satirize
him publicly beforehand.  But we have seen that the marriage turned out
a very happy one.  Garrick had been the pupil of Johnson, when the
latter kept, or attempted to keep, a school near Lichfield, and he and
his two fellow-pupils (he never had more than two) used to peep through
the keyhole of his bedroom that they might turn into ridicule the
doctor's awkward fondness for Mrs. Johnson, who was by many years her
husband's senior, and elephantine in her figure, with swollen cheeks and
a red complexion, produced by paint and the liberal use of cordials.  In
after-years Garrick used to exhibit her, by his exquisite talent of
mimicry, so as to excite the heartiest bursts of laughter.  This may
seem ungenerous, but Johnson paid Garrick back in the same coin.  Vexed
at Garrick's great success in his profession, he made it his business
always to express the greatest contempt for actors.

Quin, the contemporary of Garrick, and his rival, was employed by Prince
Frederick to instruct the Royal children in elocution, and when he was
informed of the graceful manner in which George III. had delivered his
first speech from the throne, he proudly said: 'Aye, it was I who taught
the boy to speak.'  Quin could be witty.  Disputing concerning the
execution of Charles I., and his opponent asking, 'But by what laws was
he put to death?'  Quin replied: 'By all the laws he had left them.'
When playing at Bath, he was at an evening party, where the
transmigration of souls was being discussed.  A lady, remarkable for the
whiteness of her neck and bust, asked him what animal he would wish to
be transformed into.  Quin, looking sharply at a fly then travelling
over her white neck, with an arch glance at her, said: 'A fly!'  On
another occasion to Lady Berkeley, a celebrated beauty, he said: 'Why,
your ladyship is looking as charming as the spring.'  The season was
spring, but the day was raw and cold, and Quin, seeing he had paid the
lady but a poor compliment, corrected himself by adding: 'Or, rather, I
wish the spring would look a little more like your ladyship.'

In Clare Street, Clare Market, there is a public-house called the Sun.
John Rich, the harlequin and lessee of the Duke's Theatre in Portugal
Street (long since taken down), returning from the theatre in a
hackney-coach, ordered to be driven to the Sun.  On arriving there, he
jumped out of the coach, and through the window into the public-house.
The coachman thought his fare was a 'bilk'; but whilst he was still
looking up and down the street, Rich again jumped into the coach, and
told the driver to take him to another public-house.  On reaching it,
Rich offered to pay the coachman, but the latter refused the money,
saying: 'No, none of your money, Mr. Devil; though you wear shoes, I can
see your hoofs'; and he drove off as quickly as possible. The theatre
called the Duke's Theatre, in Portugal Street, was rebuilt by
Christopher Rich, the father of the above-mentioned John, but he died
before the building was quite finished, and it was opened by John; and
it is in this theatre that the modern stage took its rise, and here the
earliest Shakespearian revivals took place.  Quin was one of the
performers there; and there the 'Beggar's Opera' was first produced, and
acted on sixty-two nights in one season, causing the saying that it made
Gay rich and Rich gay.  The opera was written under the auspices of the
Duchess of Queensberry, who agreed to indemnify Rich in all expenses if
the daring speculation should fail.

Rich, in 1731, built himself a new theatre--the Covent Garden
Theatre--on a site granted by the Duke of Bedford, at a ground-rent of
L100 per annum.  When a new lease was granted, in 1792, the ground-rent
was raised to L940 per annum.  When Thomas Killigrew was manager of the
theatre in Bear Yard, Clare Market, he was a great favourite with
Charles II.  This King at times showed great indifference to the
business of the State, and refused to attend the Council.  One day, when
he had been long expected, Lord Lauderdale went to his apartments, but
was refused admission.  His lordship complained to Nell Gwynne, upon
which she wagered him L100 that the King would that evening attend the
Council. Then she sent for Killigrew, and asked him to dress as if for a
journey, and to enter the King's rooms without ceremony, with further
instructions what he was to do then.  As soon as the King saw him, he
said:

'What, Killigrew!  Where are you going?  Did I not give orders that I
was not to be disturbed?'

'I don't mind your orders, and I am going as fast as I can.'

'Why, where are you going?'

'To hell,' replied the jester in a sepulchral tone.

'What are you going to do there?' asked the King, laughing.

'To fetch back Oliver Cromwell, to take some care of the national
affairs, for I am sure your Majesty takes none.'

And the King went to the Council.

Another famous comedian of that day was Joe Haines, who was an Oxford
M.A., but a scamp of the first order, who managed to cheat even the
rector of the Jesuit College in Paris out of L40 by a pretended note
from the Duke of Monmouth.  Not long after, meeting with a simple-minded
clergyman, he told him that he was one of the patentees of Drury Lane,
and appointed him his chaplain, instructing him at the same time to go
to the theatre with a large bell, to ring it, and call out: 'Players,
come to prayers!'  Which the clergyman did, till he found he had been
hoaxed.  In the reign of James II., this Haines turned Roman Catholic,
and told Sunderland that the Virgin Mary had appeared, and said to him:
'Joe, arise!'  To this Sunderland dryly replied that she should have
said 'Joseph,' if only out of respect for her husband.

The greatest actor at the time of Charles II. was undoubtedly Thomas
Betterton.  He joined the company of Sir William Davenant in 1662.
Pepys frequently went to see him.  In those days the pay of actors was
not what it is now; Betterton, in spite of the position he held in
public estimation, never had more than L5 a week, including L1, by way
of pension, to his wife, who retired in 1694.  In 1709 he took a
benefit, at which the money taken at the doors was L75, but he received
also more than L450 in complimentary guineas; and in the following year
he had another benefit, by which he netted about L1,000.  Of course,
according to modern notions, these are but small receipts; but they are
better than what seems to have been the standard of theatrical payments
in 1511--judging from a bill of that year, without name of place where
the acting took place, but which states that it was performed on the
feast of St. Margaret (July 20).  According to legend, the devil, in the
shape of a dragon, swallowed St. Margaret, but she speedily made her
escape, and was thus considered to possess great powers of assisting
women in childbirth.  The bill runs thus:

'To musicians, for three nights, L0 5s. 6d.; for players in bread and
ale, L0 3s. 1d.; for decorations, dresses, and play-books, L1 0s. 0d.;
to John Hobbard, priest, and author of the piece, L0 2s. 8d.; for the
place in which the presentation was held, L0 1s. 0d.; for furniture, L0
1s. 4d.; for fish and bread, L0 0s. 4d.; for painting three phantoms and
devils, L0 0s. 6d.; and for four chickens for the hero, L0 0s. 4d.'  We
see here the author received only 2s. 8d. for writing the play.  Matters
have improved since then; Sheridan realized L3,000 by the sale of his
altered play of 'Pizarro.'  In the early part of this century authors of
successful pieces received from the theatre from L250 to L500, and from
the purchaser of the copyright for publication from L100 to L400.  Then
actors received L80 a week; favourite performers--stars, as we should
now call them--were paid L50 a night.  Actors have at times found very
generous friends.  When, in 1808, Covent Garden Theatre, then under the
management of John P. Kemble, was burnt down, the loss was immense, and
the insurances did not exceed L50,000. The then Duke of Northumberland
offered Kemble the sum of L10,000 as a loan on his simple bond.  The
offer was accepted, and the bond given.  On the day appointed for laying
the first stone, the bond was returned cancelled!

Italian opera-singers have made large fortunes in England.  When Owen
McSwiney was lessee of the Haymarket, circa 1708, he engaged one
Nicolini, a Neapolitan, who really was a splendid actor and a
magnificent-looking man, with a voice which won universal admiration, at
a salary of eight hundred guineas for the season--at that time an
enormous sum.  Nicolini left the stage in 1712, and returned to Italy,
where he built himself a fine villa, which, as a testimony of his
gratitude to the nation which enriched him, he called the English Folly.
In 1721 a company of French comedians occupied the Haymarket, to the
disgust of native actors.  Aaron Hill, the dramatic author and
opera-manager, consequently had occasion to write to John Rich: 'I
suppose you know that the Duke of Montague and I have agreed that I am
to have that house half the week, and the "French vermin" the other
half.'  International courtesies were at some discount at the time!

A few theatrical anecdotes may close these lucubrations. Actors
sometimes are strangely affected by their own parts.  Betterton,
although his countenance was ruddy, when he performed Hamlet, through
the violent and sudden emotion of horror at the presence of his father's
spectre, instantly turned as white as his collar, whilst his whole body
was affected by a strong tremor.  When Booth the first time attempted
the ghost, when Betterton acted Hamlet, that actor's look at him struck
him with such horror that he became disconcerted to such a degree that
he could not speak his part.  Of Mrs. Siddons, it was said that by the
force of fancy and reflection, she used to be so wrought up in preparing
to play Lady Constance in 'King John,' that, when she set out from her
own house to the theatre, she was already Constance herself.

Smith--better known as 'Gentleman Smith'--married a sister of Lord
Sandwich.  For some time the union was kept concealed, but an apt
quotation of Charles Bannister elicited the truth:

'"Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague!"' said Bannister, when Foote
bantered Smith on the subject. The latter was not proof against the
sally, and acknowledged the marriage.  'Well,' said Bannister, 'I
rejoice that you have got a Sandwich from the family; but if ever you
get a dinner from them, I'll be hanged.'  The prophecy proved true.

Michael Kelly was an English opera-singer, a musical composer, and at
one time Sheridan's manager at Drury Lane.  He then went into the wine
trade, when Sheridan advised him to put over his door: 'Michael Kelly,
composer of wine, and importer of music.'




                                 *VI.*

                *OLD JUDGES AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS.*


When I was a little boy I drew most of my notions of life and mankind
from the picture-books for my use and instruction.  I thought that Kings
and Queens wore their crowns and sceptres all day long, and took them to
bed with them, for I had thus seen them in the pictures in the books.
One engraving, I remember, I saw of a severe-looking gentleman, who had
thrown a gray doormat over his head, and sat behind a little desk
everlastingly writing away with an enormous quill pen.  It was this
quill pen which specially riveted my attention.  I was always given a
steel pen in my writing-lessons.  Why not a quill?  I asked my mother
who the man was, and was told he was a judge, and that what I took for a
door-mat was a wig which he wore to look dignified, and the great weight
of which was, moreover, intended to prevent his great legal learning
from evaporating through the pores of his skull, which was bald, but
compelled it to come out through his mouth only.

He used a quill pen to take notes of what was said by the parties
contending before him, because that, being a natural production, could
not possibly tell lies, whereas a steel pen, as an artificial
contrivance, could not be depended on for veracity; wherefore, in all
law proceedings, even at the lowest police court, quill pens only could
be used, for the law on morality and public policy grounds strongly
objects to lies; it is itself so truthful!  Of course, I believed all my
mother told me; children are so easy of belief if you only look serious
when you tell them crammers.  But I know better now, and crowns no
longer represent to me sovereignty, nor wigs wisdom.  Of another
delusion, too, I have been cured.  When I was a young man I was told
that English law was the perfection of human wisdom.  I believed this
then, for I was only a bigger child without experience.  But when I
arrived at years of discretion--that is, when I began to observe and
reflect--I could come to no other conclusion than that the axiom of the
law's wisdom was a delusion.  There are many ways of proving this, but
one argument presents itself, which renders all further proofs
unnecessary.  Can a code which comprises a number of laws, the
interpretation of whose import is liable to be declared by one judge to
mean 'Yes,' whilst another as positively maintains it means 'No,' be
called the perfection of human wisdom? The ever-growing frequency of
appeals alone is sufficient to show that the existing laws are ambiguous
in expression, and lend themselves to the idiosyncrasies of every
individual judge, which is very far from perfection. Laws should be as
precise in their definitions as mathematical formulae.  To substantiate
my reasoning, let me quote an actual case: Some twelve or thirteen years
ago, the captain of a cargo steamer belonging to a London firm, while
loading maize at Odessa, signed bills of lading which were ante-dated.
Between the false date and the real one, a few days after, of loading,
there was a considerable fall in the price of maize, and the consignees,
who were the sufferers by it, brought an action against the owners of
the steamer, they--the consignees--having discovered the ante-dating,
and recovered L437 damages, which the shipowners paid. On the captain's
return to England, he made a claim of L190 for wages, which claim was
admitted by the firm, but they set up a counter-claim for the damages
they had had to pay to the consignees, through the captain's negligence
and breach of duty in signing the ante-dated bills.  The case went to
trial before Mr. Justice Field and a jury, and was decided in the
captain's favour, both as to his wages and the counter-claim.  The
owners appealed, and the Divisional Court, consisting of Grove, Denman,
and Wills, ordered the judgment to be set aside, and a new trial
granted.  The Appeal Court ordered the original judgment in favour of
the captain to be restored.  The owners then took the cause into the
House of Lords, where Lords Watson, Blackburn, and Fitzgerald restored
the order of the Divisional Court in favour of the owners, with all the
costs they had incurred.  Now, here was a case of breach of duty as
plain as it could be, yet it took four trials, the costs amounting to
about L4,000, to decide the question. This is but one of a hundred
similar cases which might be cited.  With what wisdom can laws be framed
which can give rise to so many judicial contradictory decisions? And the
fault of this lies not with the judges, but with the legislators, whose
only wisdom seems to consist in surrounding plain matter-of-fact with a
network of sophistry, chicanery, and hair-splitting subtleties--a system
which is constantly regretted by the judges themselves, who are ever
ready to warn the public against indulgence in litigation, for English
judges, as a rule, are straightforward, honourable men, who are inclined
to take common-sense and impartial views, except when a political or
theological bias gives a twist to their judgment.  Nor can it be left
out of our consideration that men educated in the legal schools of the
Inns of Court, and by teachers strongly impressed with the dignity and
importance of their pursuit, should adhere to it with cast-iron
rigidity, thus opposing, as much as possible, the introduction of new,
and in their estimation, revolutionary and destructive opinions.  It is
due to this adherence to, and maintenance of, the principles of a
barbarous and an arbitrary regime that the judges still possess the
tremendous power of committing for contempt of court any person who may
make a remark displeasing to them, however innocently that remark may
have been made.  Years ago I defended an action brought against me by a
tradesman for certain goods he alleged he had supplied me with.  The
action was tried in a County Court.  The plaintiff made his statement,
which introduced several particulars which were as new to me as they
were false.  But my solicitor whom I had brought with me could not know
they were so.  I turned towards the judge, and stated that I could prove
in two minutes that there was not a word of truth in the plaintiff's
statements.  But the judge turned quite savagely towards me, saying:

'You must not speak to me.  You have your solicitor here.'

'But,' I replied, 'my solicitor cannot know that these assertions are
false!'

'Be silent!' thundered the judge.  'If you say another word I shall
commit you for contempt.'

Of course I said no more, but, like the parrot, thought a lot.  I knew
that a judge, a mere County Court judge, who passes his life amidst the
most sordid and depressing scenes of wretchedness, had the power of
sending me to prison, and to keep me there till I made the most abject
apology for a speech which was never intended to be offensive.  Persons
have been kept in prison for twenty years by the mere order of a judge,
who was plaintiff, jury, and judge in every such case.  This is scarcely
in accordance with our ideas of justice.  But this relic of a barbarous
age will be abolished in time, as the Courts of Doctors' Commons, or the
Palace Court, where a number of sleepy old gentlemen

    'Were sittin' at their ease,
    A-sendin' of their writs about,
    And drorin' in their fees,'

have been abolished.  And there is no doubt that our modern judges are
superior in talent, adroitness, and acuteness to those of former days.
They are men of high-breeding, combining in their characteristics those
of the courtier and of the lawyer.  Judges of the past were different;
in fact, some of the old judges were noted for their eccentricities.
Lord Thurlow was one of them.  When he was still an aspirant for
forensic fame, he was one evening at Nando's Coffee-house--now a
hairdresser's shop, opposite Chancery Lane, falsely called the palace of
Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey. Arguing keenly about a celebrated case
then before the courts, he was heard by some lawyers, who were so
pleased with his handling of the matter that next day they appointed him
junior counsel, and the cause won him a silk gown.  This was in 1754.
It is asserted that he was singularly ugly, and that when his portrait
was shown to Lavater, the physiognomist said: 'Whether that man is on
earth or in another place, which shall be nameless, I know not; but
wherever he is, he is a born tyrant, and will rule if he can.'  And the
opinion thus formed was a correct one, for Lord Thurlow was fierce and
overbearing as a statesman, and was more feared than any other member of
the Cabinet.  In 1778 he had become Lord Chancellor, and been raised to
the Peerage.  His ugliness must have been a fact, for the Duke of
Norfolk, who had at Arundel Castle a fine breed of owls, named one of
them, on account of its ugliness, Lord Thurlow.  Great fun was caused by
a messenger coming to the Duke in the Lobby of the House of Peers with
the news that Lord Thurlow had laid an egg.

In 1785 Lord Thurlow purchased Brockwell Green Farm, and other lands in
the neighbourhood of Dulwich and Norwood, and chose Knight's Hill as a
suitable site for a house.  The house was finished, but Lord Thurlow
considered it too dear--it is said to have cost L30,000--and would never
live in it, but remained in a smaller house, called Knight's Hill Farm.
As he was coming from the Queen's Drawing-room, a lady asked him when he
was going into his new house.  'Madam,' he replied, 'the Queen has just
asked me that impudent question, and, as I would not tell her, I will
not tell you.'  Both the mansion and the farmhouse disappeared long ago.

The romantic marriage of Lord Eldon, then plain Mr. John Scott, of the
Northern Circuit, forms a pleasant episode in legal history.  Bessie
Surtees was the daughter of Aubone Surtees, a banker and gentleman of
honourable descent at Newcastle.  Scott had met and danced with her at
the assemblies in that town, and his pretensions were at first favoured
by her family; but Sir William Blackett, a patrician but aged suitor,
presenting himself, Bessie was urged to throw over Scott and become Lady
Blackett.  But Bessie was faithful, and one night descended from a
window into her lover's arms, and they were married at Blackshiels,
North Britain.  The future Lord Eldon came to London with his young and
pretty wife, and settled in a humble, small house in Cursitor Street.
Their housekeeping at first must have been on a somewhat restricted
scale, for Lord Eldon, in after-life, used to relate that, in those
days, he frequently ran into Clare Market for sixpennyworth of sprats.
It was probably owing to these privations in the early days of their
married life that her husband had afterwards to complain of her
stinginess and her repugnance to society.  In fact, she seems to have
ruled him rather sternly, for we read of his often stealing into the
George Coffee House, at the top of the Haymarket, to get a pint of wine,
as Lady Eldon did not permit him to enjoy it in peace at home.  Cyrus
Redding, who tells us this, did not like Eldon either as a Tory or as a
man.  'His words,' he writes, 'were no index to his real feelings.  He
had a sterile soul for all things earthly, except money, doubts, and the
art of drawing briefs.'

Cyrus Joy, who was present at the funeral of Lord Gifford, who was
buried in the Rolls Chapel, relates that Lord Eldon and Lord Chief
Justice Abbott were placed in a pew by themselves, and that he saw Lord
Eldon, who was very shaky during the most solemn part of the service,
touch the Chief Justice, evidently for his snuff-box, for the box was
produced, and he took a large pinch of snuff, but the moment he had
taken it he threw it away.  'I was astonished,' says Joy, 'at the
deception practised by so great a man, with the grave yawning before
him.'  Whilst Lord Eldon held the Great Seal, in 1812, a fire occurred
at Encombe, his country seat in Dorsetshire.  As soon as it broke out,
Lord Eldon buried the Seal in the garden whilst the engine played on the
burning house.  All the men-servants were helping to supply it with
water.  'It was,' wrote Lord Eldon, 'a very pretty sight, for all the
maids turned out of their beds, and formed a line from the water to the
fire-engine, handing the buckets.  They looked very pretty, all in their
shifts.'  When the fire was subdued, Lord Eldon had forgotten where he
had buried the Seal, and all the gardeners and maids who had looked so
pretty by firelight were set to work to dig up the garden till the Seal
was found.  Lord Eldon could be very rude at times.  He and the
Archbishop dined with George III., when he said: 'It is a curious fact
that your Majesty's Archbishop and your Lord Chancellor married
clandestinely.  I had some excuse, certainly, for Bessie Surtees was the
prettiest girl in all Newcastle; but Mrs. Sutton was always the same
pumpkin-faced thing that she is at present.'  The King was much amused,
as we are told.

Lord Eldon's brother, Sir William Scott, had a strange matrimonial
experience.  His brother eloped with a man's daughter, and thus entered
the wedded state somewhat illegally.  Sir William may be said to have
entered it, in the true sense of the word, legally--that is, as a result
of his legal status.  He and Lord Ellenborough presided at the Old
Bailey at the trial of the young Marquis of Sligo for having, while in
the Mediterranean, lured into his yacht two of the King's sailors, for
which offence he was fined L5,000, and sentenced to four months'
imprisonment in Newgate.  Throughout the trial his mother sat in the
court, hoping that her presence would rouse in the bench or the jury
feelings favourable to her son.  When the above sentence was pronounced,
Sir William accompanied it by a long moral jobation on the duties of a
citizen.  The Marchioness sent a paper full of satirical thanks to Sir
William for his good advice to her son.  Sir William read it as he sat
on the bench, and, having looked towards the lady, received from her a
glance and a smile which sealed his fate.  Within four months he was
tied fast (on April 10, 1813) to a voluble, shrill termagant, who
rendered him miserable and contemptible.  He removed to his wife's house
in Grafton Street, and, ever economical in his domestic expenses,
brought with him his own door-plate from Doctor's Commons, and placed it
under the pre-existing plate of Lady Sligo.  Jekyll, the punster of the
day, condoled with Sir William at having to 'knock under.'  Sir William
had the plates transposed.

'You see, I don't knock under now,' he said to Jekyll.

'Not now,' replied the punster; 'now you knock up.'

This was said with reference to his advanced age.

Lord Erskine, another famous judge, when dining one day at the house of
Sir Ralph Payne, afterwards Lord Lavington, found himself so indisposed
as to be obliged to retire after dinner to another room.  When he
returned to the company, Lady Payne asked how he found himself.  Erskine
took out a piece of paper and wrote on it:

    ''Tis true I am ill, but I cannot complain,
    For he never knew pleasure who never knew Payne.'


After he had ceased to hold the Seals as Lord Chancellor--and the time
he held the office was one year only--he met Captain Parry at dinner,
and asked him what he and his crew lived on in the Frozen Sea. Parry
replied that they lived on seals.  'And capital things too, seals are,
if you only keep them long enough,' was Erskine's reply.  Being invited
to attend the Ministerial fish dinner at Greenwich when he was
Chancellor, 'To be sure,' he answered; 'what would your dinner be
without the Great Seal?'  When Erskine lived at Hampstead he was asked
at a dinner-party he attended, 'The soil is not the best in that part of
Hampstead where your seat is?'  'No,' he answered, 'very bad; for though
my grandfather was buried there as an Earl near a hundred years ago,
what has sprouted from it since but a mere Baron?'  Erskine married when
very young, and had four sons and four daughters.  When a widower and
getting old he married a second time, and his latter days were passed in
a state bordering on indigence.  He died in 1823, in poverty.  On July
17, 1826, a woman, poorly dressed, was brought before the Lord Mayor by
a chimney-sweep as a person deserving assistance.  The woman, being
interrogated, declared herself to be Lady Erskine.  The Lord Mayor
conducted her into his private room, where he heard her sad story.  She
had lived with Lord Erskine several years before he married her, which
he did in Scotland, whereby their children (four) were legitimatized.
His death left her destitute, though she had been promised a pension
from Government of twelve shillings a week, which had been paid very
irregularly, and finally withdrawn altogether, because she would not be
parted from her youngest child.  The others had been taken care of by
Government.  She had for years endeavoured to maintain herself by female
labour, but now she was totally destitute and actually starving.  The
Lord Mayor liberally supplied her present wants, and promised to
intercede for her with Government, with what result we have been unable
to ascertain.  It was Mr. H. Erskine, brother of Lord Erskine, who,
after being presented to Dr. Johnson by Boswell, slipped a shilling into
the latter's hand, whispering that it was for showing him his bear.
Erskine could mould a jury at his pleasure, yet in Parliament he was not
successful as an orator.  But when pleading he was always ready with
repartee.  Once, when insisting on the validity of an argument before
Lord Mansfield, the latter said: 'I disproved it before you were born!'
'Yes, my Lord,' replied Erskine, 'because I was not born.'  Lord Erskine
owned that the most discreditable passage in his life was his becoming
Lord Chancellor.  Some other judges seem to have had no faith in their
own works.  Lord Campbell was seated one day next to Chief Baron
Pollock, when they were both Members of the House of Commons, and said:
'Pollock, we lawyers receive the highest wages of an infamous
profession.'

Sir Nicholas Bacon was so learned in the law that he was appointed
attorney in the Court of Wards, and made a Privy Councillor and Keeper
of the Great Seal under Elizabeth.  When the Queen visited him at
Redgrave, she observed, alluding to his corpulence, that he had built
the house too little for himself.  'Not so, madam,' he answered; 'but
your Majesty has made me too big for my house.'  A man was brought
before Sir Nicholas accused of a crime which, under the Draconian laws
then in force, involved the penalty of death.  He was found guilty, and,
asked whether he had anything to say for himself, appealed to the
judge's compassion, seeing that he was a kind of relation to him, his
name being Hogg.  'True,' replied Bacon; 'but Hog is not Bacon till it's
hung.'  And hung, or hanged, to speak correctly, he was, and thus did
not save his bacon.  But the jest was a cruel one.




                                 *VII.*

                    *SOME FAMOUS LONDON ACTRESSES.*


Distance lends enchantment to the view, but the view frequently does not
return it, a common practice with borrowers!  Distance alone invests the
East with a halo of romance and beauty, to which it really can lay no
claim.  The romance is the invention of Western imagination, and the
beauty, if not tawdry, is monstrous.  In no respect is this excess of
imagination over the reality more apparent than in the eidolon the
European forms in his mind of Eastern female beauty.  He hears or reads
of houris, and nautch-girls, and bayaderes, and the dancing-women of
Japan and Burmah; but if ever he sees any of them he will be
disenchanted, for awkward figures they are, wrapped up in clothes like
so many sacks, twisted and tied over one another--if not old, at least
middle-aged women with rings in their noses.  Pooh! enough of them!  The
real beauties the European never gets a sight of, they are shut up in
harems.  But still he thinks the East the region of beauty, and longs
for it, even when he sees beauty in perfection in the West, where alone
it is to be found, because in Western lands alone physical and
intellectual or perfect beauty exists in combination. And this
combination is most frequently seen, as may be surmised from the nature
of her avocation, in the actress.  Women first appeared on the English
stage in 1660.  On December 6 in that year, at the performance of
'Othello' at the Duke's Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields, the prologue
spoken is entitled: 'A prologue to introduce the first woman that came
to act on the stage.'  Pepys went to see 'The Beggar's Bush' at the same
theatre on January 3, 1661, and reports: 'Here the first time that ever
I saw a woman come upon the stage.'  But the Queen had long before then,
namely, in 1633, acted in a pastoral given at Court.  The practice
having, however, been introduced at the Duke's Theatre, was continued,
to the disgust of moralists, who looked upon the 'enormous shamefulness'
of female acting as a sinful practice.  Even the intelligent and
generally liberal-minded Evelyn speaks of the drama as abused to 'an
atheistical liberty,' by the circumstance of women being suffered to
become performers.  In his Diary, October 18, 1666, he writes: 'This
night was acted my Lord Broghill's tragedy, called "Mustapha," before
their Majesties at Court, at which I was present, very seldom going to
the public theatres for many reasons now, as they were abused to an
atheistical liberty, foul and indecent women now (and never till now)
permitted to appear and act, who, inflaming several young noblemen and
gallants, became their misses, and to some their wives, witness ye Earl
of Oxford, Sir R. Howard, P. Rupert, the Earl of Dorset, and another
greater person than any of them, who fell into their snares, to ye
reproach of their noble families, and ruin of both body and soul.'  By
'another greater person,' Evelyn no doubt intended the King himself,
Charles II., who had at least three avowed mistresses taken from the
stage--Madam Davis, Mrs. Knight, and Nell Gwynne. Miss Davis was,
according to Pepys, a natural daughter of the Earl of Berkshire.  He
went to see her perform on March 7, 1666, in 'The English Princess,' and
'little Miss Davis did dance a jigg after the end of the play, and there
telling the next day's play, so that it came in by force only to see her
dance in boy's clothes.'  Mrs. Knight was a famous singer.  Kneller
painted her portrait.  Of Nell Gwynne we shall have occasion to speak
further on.  At the same theatre Mrs. Davenport, the lady who played the
part of Roxalana in 'The Siege of Rhodes,' was taken to be the Earl of
Oxford's _misse_, as at this time they began to call lewd women, as
Evelyn says.  But Evelyn evidently was badly informed.  Mrs. Davenport
for a long time refused the Earl of Oxford's presents and overtures,
but, on his offering to marry her, she consented.  The ceremony was
performed, and they lived together for some time, and then the Earl
informed her that the marriage was a sham, and that the mock parson was
one of his trumpeters.  In vain the deluded woman appealed to the laws,
in vain she threw herself at the King's feet to demand justice.  She
might consider herself lucky to obtain a pension of L300.  Pepys saw her
afterwards at the theatre, and says: 'Saw the old Roxalana in the chief
box, in a velvet gown, as the fashion is, and very handsome, at which I
was glad.'

Moll Davies was another of the King's favourites, and he is said to have
fallen in love with her through her singing 'My Lodging is on the Cold
Ground' in 'The Rivals,' a play altered by Davenant from Beaumont and
Fletcher's 'The Two Noble Kinsmen.'  Pepys frequently mentions her as a
rival to Nell Gwynne.  She had one daughter by Charles, who was
christened Mary Tudor, and was married in 1687 to the son of Sir Francis
Ratcliff, who became Earl of Derwentwater.  When the King grew tired of
her he settled a pension on her of L1,000 a year.  It was as a
descendant of this Earl that the lady who called herself Amelia,
Countess of Derwentwater, in 1868 took possession of the old baronial
castle of Devilstone, or Dilston, claiming it and the estates belonging
thereto, but then and now vested in Greenwich Hospital, as hers.  But
the Lords of the Admiralty, in 1870, defeated her claim, and she
disappeared from public view.

Another famous actress in the days of Charles II. was Margaret Hughes,
of whom Prince Rupert became enamoured.  At first she pretended to be
fiercely virtuous, so as to secure a higher price for her favours. And,
in fact, the Prince settled on her Brandenburgh House, near Hammersmith,
in which she lived about ten years.  The house afterwards became the
residence of Queen Caroline, who died there, shortly after which it was
demolished.

Whatever may be said against women appearing on the stage, there is
something more repulsive in men and boys taking female parts in a play,
at least, so it seems to our moral feelings, and aesthetically the
practice is still more objectionable.  Male performers can never
represent the spontaneous grace, melting voice, and tender looks of a
female, and the ludicrous contretemps the custom frequently caused
further showed its absurdity.  Thus, on one occasion, Charles II.
inquired why the commencement of the play was delayed.  The manager
stepped forward and craved his Majesty's indulgence, as the queen was
not yet shaved.  And whatever Prynne might say in his 'Histrio Mastix'
against female actors, the practice caught on and became general.  Of
course, the opposition did not cease at once; even in France it raised
its head as late as 1733.  A speaker against the stage spoke thus at the
Jesuits' College in Paris: 'They (the actresses) do not form the deadly
shafts of Cupid, but they level them with the eye, and shoot with the
utmost dexterity and skill.  Such women I mean as represent destructive
love characters....  How artfully do they hurl the most inconsiderable
dart!  What multitudes are wounded by a single one!'  And, indeed, what
multitudes have our Nancy Oldfields, Bracegirdles, Gwynnes, Kitty
Clives, Perditas, Meltons, and the whole galaxy of theatrical beauties
not only wounded, but conquered, and sometimes killed!

The life of an actress had many ups and downs--as it has now--in former
days.  There was the eccentric Charlotte Charke, daughter of Colley
Cibber, who for some mysterious reason for many years went in male
attire, and who acted on the stage if she could get employment.  There
was then in Bear Yard, Clare Market, a theatre, occasionally used as a
tennis-court and as an auction-room.  'Thither,' she says in her
Memoirs, 'I adventured to see if there was any character wanting--a
custom very frequent among the gentry who exhibited in that
slaughter-house of dramatic poetry.  One night, I remember, the
"Recruiting Officer" was to be performed....  To my unbounded joy
Captain Plume was so unfortunate that he came at five o'clock to say
that he did not know a word of his part....  The question being put to
me, I immediately replied that I could do such a thing, but was ...
resolved to stand upon terms ... one guinea paid in advance, which terms
were complied with.'

We mentioned above that the life of an actress has many ups and downs
even now.  In justification of that statement let us quote from the
_Star_ of September 12, 1896: 'A pathetic story of an aged lady, who had
been a popular actress, but upon whom evil days had come, and who was
found dead in a poorly-furnished bedroom in a third-floor back at
Whitfield Street, Tottenham Court Road, was told yesterday to the
coroner.  The old lady was Louisa Marshall, aged seventy, sister of a
celebrated clown at Drury Lane, who died before her. She used to teach
the piano, and had a small pension from the Musical and Dramatic Sick
Fund.  The contents of her room, an old piano and some theatrical
dresses, were said to be worth fifty shillings at most.'  But, as Byron
says, let us lay this sheet of sorrow on the shelf, and speak of lively,
joyous Nell Gwynne, who drove that amorous Pepys nearly mad.  His Diary
is full of her.  First she is simply 'pretty, witty Nell' (April 3,
1665).  On January 23, 1666, Nelly is brought to him in a box at the
theatre.  'A most pretty woman....  I kissed her, and so did my wife,
and a mighty pretty soul she is.'  On March 2, in the same year, 'Nell
... comes in like a young gallant, and hath the motions and carriage of
a spark the most that ever I saw any man have.  It makes me, I confess,
admire her.'  On May 1, 1667, he writes: 'To Westminster.  In the way
many milkmaids with their garlands upon their pails, dancing with a
fiddler before them, and saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodging's door
in Drury Lane, in her smock sleeves and bodice, looking upon one.  She
seemed a mighty pretty creature.'  But, according to her ardent admirer,
this 'mighty pretty creature' could use mighty strong language too, for
he says of her (October 5, 1667): 'But to see how Nell cursed for having
so few people in the pit was strange.'  And again, on October 26, he
reports: 'Nelly and Beck Marshall (one of the great Presbyterian's
daughters) falling out the other day, the latter called the other my
Lord Buckhurst's mistress.  Nell answered her: "I was but one man's
mistress, though I was brought up in a disreputable house to fill strong
waters to the gentlemen, and you are a mistress to three or four, though
a Presbyter's praying daughter."' And Nell may have been right, for Beck
Marshall seems to have been a trifle fast.  Pepys says, on May 2, 1668:
'To the King's (play) house, where ... the play being over, I did see
Beck Marshall come dressed off the stage, and look mighty fine and
pretty, and noble; and also Nell, in her boy's clothes, mighty pretty.
But, Lord! their confidence, and how many men do hover about them as
soon as they come off the stage, and how confident they are in their
talk!'  Pepys, in the end, seems to have cooled in his devotion to
pretty Nell, for on January 7, 1669, he wrote in his Diary: 'My wife and
I to the King's play-house....  We sat in an upper box, and the jade
Nell came and sat in the next box, a bold, merry slut, who lay laughing
there upon people, and with a comrade of hers, of the Duke's house, that
came in to see the play.'

Coal Yard, Drury Lane, seems to have been Nell Gwynne's birthplace, a
low, disreputable locality, and she died in a fine house on the south
side of Pall Mall. Previously to that, she had lived in a house on the
north side, whose site is now occupied by the Army and Navy Club.
Though Drury Lane in the days of Nell Gwynne was a fashionable locality,
it would seem that only to the southern division this epithet could be
applied; the northern end, towards Holborn, had a low and mean
character, and Coal Yard consisted of miserable tenements.  It has
recently been rebuilt, and is now called Goldsmith Street.  Nell Gwynne
died in 1691, and was pompously interred in the parish church of St.
Martin's-in-the-Fields, Dr. Tennison, the then Vicar, and afterwards
Archbishop of Canterbury, preaching her funeral sermon.  This sermon was
afterwards brought forward at Court to impede the doctor's preferment;
but Queen Mary, having heard the objection, answered: 'Well, what then?
This I have heard before, and it is a proof that the unfortunate woman
died a true penitent, who through the course of her life never let the
wretched ask in vain.'  This was certainly as noble an answer to give on
the part of a Queen as it was mean on the part of King Charles II. to
say on his deathbed: 'Don't let poor Nelly starve.'  Was it not in his
power to make provision for her, instead of leaving her to the charity
of the world?

Another both fortunate and unfortunate actress was Mrs. Montford, whose
husband was murdered as he had come to escort Mrs. Bracegirdle, after
Captain Hill's attempt at abducting this lady, on her leaving the
theatre, of which more hereafter.  On Mrs. Montford, or Mountfort--the
name is found spelt both ways--Gray wrote his ballad of 'Black-eyed
Susan.'  Lord Berkeley's partiality for her was so great that at his
decease he left her L300 a year, on condition that she did not marry; he
also purchased Cowley, near Uxbridge, for her--the place had been the
summer residence of Rich, the actor--and from time to time made her
presents of considerable sums.  She fell in love with a Mr. Booth, a
then well-known actor, but, not wishing to lose her annuity, she did not
marry him, though she gave him the preference over many others of her
suitors. Mrs. Montford had an intimate friend, Miss Santlow, a
celebrated dancer; but, through the liberality of one of her admirers,
she became possessed of a fortune, which rendered her independent of the
stage, upon which Mr. Booth proposed to her, and was accepted.  This so
affected Mrs. Montford that she became mentally deranged, and was
brought from Cowley to London to have the best advice.  As she was not
violent and had lucid moments, she was not rigorously confined, but
suffered to go about the house.  One day she asked her attendant what
play was to be performed that evening, and was told it was 'Hamlet.'  In
this piece, whilst she was on the stage, she had always appeared as
Ophelia. The recollection struck her, and with the cunning always allied
with insanity, she found means to elude the watchfulness of her
servants, and to reach the theatre, where she concealed herself till the
time when Ophelia was to appear, when she rushed on the stage, pushing
the lady who was to act the character aside, and exhibited a more
perfect representation of madness than the most consummate mimic art
could produce.  She was, in truth, Ophelia herself, the very incarnation
of madness.  Nature having made this last effort, her vital powers
failed her.  On going off, she prophetically exclaimed: 'It is all
over!'  As she was being conveyed home, 'she,' in Gray's words, 'like a
lily drooping, bowed her head and died.'

Lovely Nancy Oldfield, who quitted the bar of the Mitre, in St. James's
Market, then kept by her aunt, Mrs. Voss, became, towards the end of the
seventeenth century, the great attraction at Drury Lane.  Her intimacy
with General Churchill, cousin of the great Duke of Marlborough,
obtained for her a grave in Westminster Abbey.  Persons of rank and
distinction contended for the honour of bearing her pall, and her
remains lay in state for three days in the Jerusalem Chamber!

We referred above to the attempt made by Captain Hill to carry off Mrs.
Bracegirdle.  Hill had offered her his hand and had been refused.  He
determined to abduct her by force.  He induced his friend Lord Mahun to
assist him.  A coach was stationed near the Horseshoe Tavern in Drury
Lane, with six soldiers to force her into it, which they attempted to do
as she came down Drury Lane about ten o'clock at night, accompanied by
her mother and brother, and a friend, Mr. Page.  The attempt was
resisted, a crowd collected, and Hill ordered the soldiers to let the
lady go, and she was escorted home by her friends.  She then sent for
her friend Mr. Montford, who soon after turned the corner of Norfolk
Street, where Hill challenged him, as he attributed Mrs. Bracegirdle's
rejection of him to her love for Montford, which suspicion, however, was
groundless, and ran him through the body before he could draw his sword.
Hill made his escape; Montford died from his wounds.

Even in more recent days actresses have made good matches.  Miss Anna
Maria Tree, of Covent Garden, in 1825 married James Bradshaw, of
Grosvenor Place; in 1831, Miss Foote, the celebrated actress, became
Countess of Harrington; Miss Farren, Countess of Derby; Miss Brunton,
Countess of Craven; Miss Bolton became Lady Thurlow; Miss O'Neill
married a baronet; Miss Kitty Stephens became Countess of Essex; Miss
Campion was taken off the stage by the aged Duke of Devonshire.  The
list might be greatly extended, even to our own times; but the instances
quoted are sufficient to show the prizes ladies may draw in the
theatrical matrimonial lottery; and there are as good fish in the sea as
ever came out of it.




                                *VIII.*

                     *QUEER CLUBS OF FORMER DAYS.*


The Virtuoso Club was established by some members of the Royal Society,
and held its meetings at a tavern in Cornhill.  Its professed object was
to 'advance mechanical exercises, and promote useful experiments'; but,
according to Ned Ward, their discussions usually ended in a general
shindy, and results not to be described by a modern writer.  The club
claimed the merit of the invention of the barometer; but, for all that,
its proceedings afforded fine sport to the satirists: thus, the members
were said to aim at making beer without water, living like princes on
three-halfpence a day, producing a table by which a husband may discover
all the particulars of the tricks his wife may play him.  The ridicule
showered on the club at last reduced it to a little cynical cabal of
half-pint moralists, who continued to meet at the same tavern.
Convivially-disposed members of other learned societies have
occasionally formed themselves into clubs.  Thus some antiquaries, many
years since, formed a club styled 'Noviomagians.'  Mr. Crofton Croker
was its president more than twenty years, and many other distinguished
men were members.

A number of roistering companions used to hold a club at the Golden
Fleece in Cornhill, after which they named their club.  Each member on
his admission had a characteristic name assigned to him--as Sir Nimmy
Sneer, Sir Talkative Do-little, Sir Rumbus Rattle. They eventually
adjourned to the Three Tuns, Southwark.

The No-Nose Club, whether it ever existed or not, was a horrible idea in
itself; it flourished only during the lifetime of its founders.

The Club of Beaus was what its name implies--a club of fops and idiots.
The only merit they seem to have had was that their habits were always
scrupulously clean, though their language usually was filthy.  Their
meetings were held at an inn in Covent Garden.

The Quacks' Club, or Physical Society, was really an offshoot of the
College of Physicians, which met at a tavern near the Exchange, where
they discussed medical matters.  The College of Physicians at that time
was in Warwick Lane, where it remained till removed, in 1825, to
Trafalgar Square.

The Weekly Dancing Club, or Buttock Ball, was held at a tavern in King
Street, St. Giles, and was patronized by bullies, libertines, and
strumpets; footmen who had robbed their masters and turned gentlemen;
chambermaids who had stolen their mistresses' clothes and set up for
gentlewomen.  Though called a club, it was not really a close assembly,
but everyone was admitted on the payment of sixpence, and no questions
asked.  The Dancing Academy was first established about the year 1710 by
a dancing-master over the Coal Yard gateway into Drury Lane, and was so
successful that it was removed to the more commodious premises mentioned
above.  But at last it became such a nuisance that the authorities shut
it up.  The Coal Yard above mentioned, the last turning on the
north-east side of Drury Lane, is said to have been the birthplace of
Nell Gwynne.

A club cultivating a certain filthy habit, which I can only indicate as
one practised by the French peasantry, and as described in one of Zola's
novels, was established at a public-house in Cripplegate.  The manner in
which the proceedings of the club are set forth by their chronicler is
as hideous and repulsive as the writer can make it; it could not be
reproduced in any modern publication without risk of prosecution, which,
indeed, would be well deserved.  But the manners of the eighteenth
century were excessively coarse.

The Man-Killing Club, besides admitting no one to membership who had not
killed his man, also bound itself to resist the Sheriff's myrmidons on
their making any attempt to serve a writ on or seize one of them.  It
was founded in the reign of Charles II. by a knot of bullies, broken
Life-Guardsmen, and old prize-fighters. Its meetings were held at a low
public-house on the back-side of St. Clement's.  The good old times!

The Surly Club was chiefly composed of master carmen, lightermen, and
Billingsgate porters, who held their weekly meetings at a tavern near
Billingsgate Dock, where City dames used to treat their journeymen with
beakers of punch and new oysters.  The object of their meetings was the
practice of contradiction and of foul language, that they might not want
impudence to abuse passengers on the Thames.  This society first
established the thumping-post at Billingsgate, to harden its members by
whipping never to bridle their tongues from fear of corporeal
punishment.  Billingsgate language was, as may be supposed, much
improved by them.

The Atheistical Club met at an inn in Westminster, and its name
sufficiently indicates its object, namely, to take the devil's part.  A
trick was played on them by a man disguising himself in a bear's skin
and making them believe he was the devil, which occurrence, it is said,
broke up the club.  Similar societies were discovered in Wells Street,
and at the Angel, in St. Martin's Lane, and the members arrested; but,
it turning out that in these cases the devil was less black than he was
painted, the charges against them had to be withdrawn. The societies, in
fact, were more political, with republican tendencies, inspired by the
French Revolution, which was just then at its height, and the worship of
Reason seems to have been one of their principles.

The Split-farthing Club held its weekly meetings at the Queen's Head in
Bishopsgate Street, and was supposed to be composed chiefly of misers
and skinflints. If any smoker among them left his box behind him, and
wanted to borrow a pipe of tobacco of a brother, it would not be lent
without a note of hand, which was generally written round the bowl of a
pipe so as to prevent the waste of paper.

The Club of Broken Shopkeepers held its meetings at the sign of
Tumble-Down Dick, a famous boozing den in the Mint in Southwark, a
sanctuary of knaves, sots, and bankrupts, honest or swindling, against
arrest for debt.  The sign of Tumble-Down Dick was set up in derision of
Richard Cromwell, the allusion to his fall from power, or 'tumble-down,'
being very common in the satires published after the Restoration.  There
was a house with the same sign at Brentford.  Of course, the professed
object of the meetings of the broken shopkeepers was that of driving
away and forgetting care; and any new-comer among them, if he had any
cash left, was liberally allowed to expend it for the furtherance of the
club's object.

The Man-Hunting Club was composed chiefly of young limbs of the law;
uncultivated youths, though they were law students, formed themselves
into an association to hunt men over Lincoln's Inn Fields and the
neighbourhood whom they might happen to meet crossing them at ten or
eleven o'clock at night.  They would be concealed upon the grass in one
of the borders of the fields till they heard some single person coming
along, when they would spring up with their swords drawn, run towards
him, and cry: 'That's he; bloody wounds, that's he!'  Usually the person
so attacked would run away, when they would pursue him till he took
refuge in an alehouse in some neighbouring street.  But if the
man-hunters encountered a person of courage, ready to fight them, they
would sneak off, like the curs they really were.  Their meeting-place
was at a tavern close to Bear Yard, Clare Market.

The Yorkshire Club held its meetings on market-days at an inn in
Smithfield.  It was composed of sharp country-folk, who assumed the
innocence of yokels. The most flourishing members among them, says one
authority, were needle-pointed innkeepers; nick and froth victuallers,
honest horse chaunters, pious Yorkshire attorneys; the rest good,
harmless master hostlers, two or three innocent farriers, who had wormed
their masters out of their shops, and themselves into them.  When met
for business, their deliberations were about horseflesh, blind eyes,
spavins, bounders and malinders, and how to disguise defects and get rid
of the animals.

The Mock-Heroes Club met at an alehouse in Baldwin's Gardens, and was
composed chiefly of attorneys' clerks and young shopkeepers.  On
admission the new member assumed the name of some defunct hero, and ever
afterwards was at the meetings called by that name; and as the club held
its meetings in the public room, though at a separate table specially
reserved for them, this formal and ridiculous way of addressing one
another caused no slight amusement to the other persons frequenting the
room.  In other respects their language was high-flown.  Thus, one would
face about to his left-hand neighbour, with his right hand charged with
a brimming tankard, saying: 'Most noble Scipio, the love and friendship
of a soldier to you.  The thanks of a brother to my valiant friend
Hannibal, whom I cannot but value, though I had the honour to conquer.'
'My respects to you, brave Caesar,' cries one opposite, 'remembering the
battle of Pharsalia.'  And so on, till they had drunk themselves under
the table.

The Lying Club, which held its meetings at the Bell Tavern, in
Westminster, is said to have been established in 1669.  Every member was
to wear a blue cap with a red feather in it; before admittance he had to
give proof of his powers of mendaciloquence; during club hours, that is,
from four to ten p.m., no true word was to be uttered without a
preliminary 'By your leave' to the chairman; and if any member told a
'whopper' which the chairman could not beat with a greater, the latter
had to surrender his office for that evening.  Ned Ward gives some
exquisite specimens of the 'whoppers' told by members.

The Beggars' Club held its weekly meetings at a boozing ken in Old
Street.  All the sham cripples, blind men, etc., belonged to it, and
there discussed the various stratagems they had adopted to excite public
compassion, or intended to adopt for that purpose.

About 1735 a number of young gentlemen, who were pretenders to wit,
formed themselves into a society, which met at the Rose Tavern, Covent
Garden, and which they christened the Scatter-wit Society.  But their
literary performances were poor specimens of wit, contributed nothing to
the reputation of the Rose Tavern as the resort of 'men of parts,' and
consequently is not frequently mentioned in the literature of that day.

Bob Warden was the younger brother of Mr. Warden, a gentleman who,
'after having given a new turn to Jackanapes Lane, and promoted many
useful objects for the good of the public, was undeservedly hanged.'  We
may explain here that Jackanapes Lane was the original name of Carey
Street, north of the Law Courts, and the new turn Mr. Warden gave to it
is the western bend connecting it with Portugal Street.  Bob Warden,
after his brother's death, was apprenticed to a painter, but, thinking
more of his palate than his palette, he dropped the latter, and with
some money left to him, established a convivial club at the Hill, in the
Strand, where all sorts of queer characters, such as ruined gamesters,
petticoat-pensioners, Irish captains, sharpers and cheats were welcome.
As the meetings took place in a cellar, the club became known as the
Cellar Club, and was the forerunner of the Coal Hole and the Lord Chief
Baron Nicholson.  Bob, amidst his roistering customers, drank himself to
death.

For about ten years the Mohawks, or Mohocks, kept London in a state of
alarm, though they seldom ventured into the City, where the watch was
more efficient, but confined themselves chiefly to the neighbourhood of
Clare Market, Covent Garden, and the Strand.  The _Spectator_ says of
them: 'Some of them are celebrated for dexterity in tipping the lion
upon them, which is performed by squeezing the nose flat to the face and
boring out the eyes with their fingers. Others are called the
dancing-masters, and teach their scholars to cut capers by running
swords through their legs....  A third sort are the Nimblers, who set
women on their heads and commit ... barbarities on them.'  Their conduct
in the end became so alarming that a reward of L100 was offered by royal
proclamation for the apprehension of any one of them. Curious stories
were current at various times as to the origin of this society.  In the
'Memoirs' of the Marquis of Torcy, Secretary of State to Louis XIV., and
a famous diplomatist (born 1665, died 1746), the Duke of Marlborough is
said to have suggested to Prince Eugene 'to employ a band of ruffians
... to stroll about the streets by night ... and to insult people by
passing along, increasing their licentiousness gradually, so as to
commit greater and greater disorders ... that when the inhabitants of
London and Westminster were accustomed to the insults of these rioters,
it would not be difficult to assassinate those of whom they might wish
to be freed, and to cast the whole blame on the band of ruffians.'  This
project the Prince is reported to have rejected.  Swift, in his 'History
of the Four Last Years of Queen Anne,' attributes the scheme to the
Prince himself on his visit to this country, through his hatred of
Treasurer Harley.  He proposed that 'the Treasurer should be taken off
... that this might easily be done and pass for an effect of chance, if
it were preceded by encouraging some proper people to commit small riots
in the night.  And in several parts of the town a crew of ruffians were
accordingly employed about that time, who probably exceeded their
commission ... and acted inhuman outrages on many persons, whom they cut
and mangled in the face and arms and other parts of their bodies....
This account ... was confirmed beyond all contradiction by several
intercepted letters and papers.'  It is just possible that popular panic
exaggerated the doings of the Mohawks.  Perhaps they did not exceed in
savagery the drunken frolics then customary at night-time.

The Hell Fire Club was an institution of a character similar to that of
the Mohawks.  It was abolished by an order of the Privy Council in 1721,
'against certain scandalous clubs,' but it must have been revived in the
country, for John Wilkes, about 1750, was a notorious member of a club
with the above name at Medmenham Abbey, Bucks.

The Calves' Head Club for a time had its headquarters at The Cock, an
inn long since demolished, in Suffolk Street, Pall Mall.  It was one of
the many inns at which Pepys was 'mighty merry.'  The club is said to
have been originated by Milton and other partisans of the Commonwealth;
and the author of the 'Secret History of the Calves' Head
Club'--probably Ned Ward--gives an account of the melodramatic and
diabolical ceremonies observed at their banquets.  An axe was hung up in
their club-room as a sacred symbol--the destroyer of the tyrant.  But
the eating and drinking, for which, as Addison says, clubs were
instituted, were not neglected by the members.  At the banquet held in
1710 there was spent on bread, beer, and ale the sum of L2 10s.; on
fifty calves' heads, L5 5s.; on bacon, L1 10s.; on six chickens and two
capons, L1; on three joints of veal, 18s.; on butter and flour, 15s.; on
oranges, lemons, vinegar, and spices, L1; on oysters and sausages, 15s.;
on the use of pewter and linen, L1; and on various other items
additional sums, bringing the total up to L18 6s.  No wine, it will be
noticed, is included in the above bill, but there is no doubt a
considerable amount for this item should be added to it.

Early in the last century street clubs became common in various parts of
London, that is to say, clubs in which the inhabitants of one or two
streets met every night to discuss the affairs of the neighbourhood.
Out of these, we suppose, arose the Mug House Club, in Long Acre, which
soon found imitators in other parts of London. The members--gentlemen,
lawyers, and tradesmen--met in a large room.  A gentleman nearly ninety
years of age was their president.  A harp played at the lower end of the
room, and now and then a member rose and treated the company to a song.
Nothing was drunk but ale, and every gentleman had his own mug, which he
chalked on the table as it was brought in.

In 1770 some young gentlemen, on returning from the grand tour it was
then customary to make after leaving college--a tour which was supposed
to lick the young cubs into shape and refine their manners, of course an
illusion, since, whilst abroad, they associated chiefly with the scum of
English society then swarming on the Continent--some of these young
gentlemen, on their return, established in St. James's Street the Savoir
Vivre Club, where they held periodical dinners, of which macaroni was a
standing dish.  This club was the nursery of the Macaronis, a phalanx of
mild Hyde Park beaux, who were distinguished for nothing but the
ridiculous dress they assumed.  An unfinished copy of verses found among
Sheridan's papers, and which Thomas Moore considered as the foundation
of certain lines in the 'School for Scandal,' delineates the Macaronis
in a few masterly strokes:

    'Then I mount on my palfrey as gay as a lark,
    And, followed by John, take the dust in Hyde Park.
    In the way I am met by some smart Macaroni,
    Who rides by my side on a little bay pony;
    ... as taper and slim as the ponies they ride,
    Their legs are as slim, and their shoulders no wider,' etc.


The Savoir Vivre Club did not outlive the reign of the Macaronis, which
lasted about five years, and the club ended its days--the chairmen and
linkmen never having understood its foreign appellation--as a
public-house bearing the name and sign of The Savoy Weavers. There were,
in the last century especially, no end of Small clubs, whose objects in
most cases were trivial and ridiculous.  Short notice is all they
deserve.

The Humdrum Club was composed of gentlemen of peaceable dispositions,
who were satisfied to meet at a tavern, smoke their pipes, and say
nothing till midnight.  The Twopenny Club was formed by a number of
artisans and mechanics, who met every night, each depositing on his
entering the club-room his twopence. If a member swore, his neighbours
might kick him on the shins.  If a member's wife came to fetch him, she
was to speak to him outside the door.  In the reign of Charles II. was
established the Duellists' Club, to which no one was admitted who had
not killed his man.  The chronicler of the club naively says: 'This
club, consisting only of men of honour, did not continue long, most of
the members being put to the sword or hanged.'

The Everlasting Club, founded in the first decade of the last century,
was so called because its hundred members divided the twenty-four hours
of day and night among themselves in such a manner that the club was
always sitting, no person presuming to rise till he was relieved by his
appointed successor, so that a member of the club not on duty himself
could always find company, and have his whet or draught, as the rules
say, at any time.

The tradespeople and workmen of the past seem to have had a passion for
clubs; but there is this to be said in their favour, theirs were only
drinking clubs. Our modern patrons of low-class clubs establish them for
the worse pursuits of gambling and betting.




                                 *IX.*

                *CURIOUS STORIES OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE.*


In the _Weekly Journal_ of January 2, 1719-20, can be read: 'It was the
observation of a witty knight many years ago, that the English people
were something like a flight of birds at a barn-door.  Shoot among them
and kill ever so many, the rest shall return to the same place in a very
little time, without any remembrance of the evil that had befallen their
fellows.'  The pigeons at Monte Carlo, whom the cruel-minded idiots who
fire at them have missed, instead of flying at once and for ever from
the murderous spot, perch on the cage in which their fellows are kept,
and are easily caught again, to be eventually killed.  'Thus the
English,' the _Weekly Journal_ concludes, 'though they have had examples
enough in these latter times of people ruined by engaging in projects,
yet they still fall in with the next that appears.'  And thus the Stock
Exchange flourishes.  That desolation-spreading upastree was planted in
the mephitic morass of the national debt.  It is considered deserving of
blame in an individual to get into debt, yet sometimes his doing so is
unavoidable--his means are insufficient for his wants. But a nation has
no excuse for taking credit and getting into debt.  There is wealth
enough in the country to pay cash for all it requires; and if it borrows
money merely to subsidize foreign tyrants to enchain their own subjects,
it commits a criminal act.  But nearly the whole of our national debt
has such an origin, and its poisonous produce is the Stock Exchange.
The word 'stock-jobber' was first heard in 1688, when a crowd of
companies sprang into existence, and it was then that the Stock Exchange
was first established as an independent institution at Jonathan's
Coffee-house, in Change Alley, in or about 1698.  Before then the
brokers had carried on their business in the Royal Exchange.  London at
that time abounded--at what time does it not?--with new projects and
schemes, many of them delusory, consequently the legitimate transactions
of the Royal Exchange were inconveniently interfered with by the
presence of so many jobbers and brokers--that pernicious spawn of the
public funds, as Noortbouck calls them--and they were ordered to leave
the Exchange.  They just crossed the road and went to Jonathan's, 'and
though a public nuisance, they serve the purposes of ministers too well,
in propagating a spirit of gaming in Government securities, to be
exterminated, as a wholesome policy would dictate.'  There, at
Jonathan's, 'you will see a fellow in shabby clothes,' as we read in the
'Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London,' 'selling L10,000 or
L12,000 in stock, though perhaps he may not be worth at the same time
10s., and with as much zeal as if he were a director, which they call
selling a bear-skin.'  Thus this latter expression seems very old.  The
business of stock-jobbing increased, in spite of some feeble repressive
attempts on the part of Government in 1720, the House of Commons passing
a vote 'that nothing can tend more to the establishment of public credit
than preventing the infamous practice of stock-jobbing'; and also
passing at the same time an Act enabling persons who had been sufferers
thereby to obtain an easy and speedy redress.[#]  In spite of this the
brokers contrived to thrive to such an extent that they found it
necessary to take a more commodious room in Threadneedle Street, to
which admission was obtained on payment of sixpence.  The Bank Rotunda
was at one period the place where bargains in stocks were made; but
there the brokers were as great a nuisance as they had been at the Royal
Exchange, and were turned out.  It was then they took the room in
Threadneedle Street, and in the year 1799 they raised L12,150 in 1,263
shares of L50 each, and purchased a site in Capel Court, comprising
Mendoza's boxing-room and debating forum and buildings contiguous, on
which the present Stock Exchange was erected, and opened in 1801.  Capel
Court was so called from the London residence of Sir William Capel, Lord
Mayor of London in 1504.  Within the last decade the building has been
considerably enlarged and beautified.


[#] An Act passed in 1734 forbade time bargains under a penalty of L500
on brokers and their clients, and of L100 for contracting for the sale
of stock of which the person was not possessed. Both these statutes were
repealed circa 1860.


Stockbrokers are supposed to lead very harassed and restless lives--yes,
if they speculate on their own account and with their own money, a folly
which no experienced broker ever thinks of committing.  He speculates
for other people, and with their money, and, well, if before the
official hour of opening--viz., eleven o'clock--a chance presents itself
of a deal with a customer's stock on the broker's account, by which a
little benefit accrues to the latter, the customer knows nothing about
it, and what you are ignorant of does not hurt.  The broker is, in this
respect, very much like the lawyer.  Neither the broker nor the lawyer
can be expected to share their clients' anxieties concerning investments
or disputed interests, and they don't.  When either of them leaves his
office for his suburban villa or Brighton breezes, he leaves all
thoughts of business behind him in the office, considering that the
freedom from care he enjoys at home is honestly earned, and no doubt it
is--in his estimation.

Until within the first quarter of this century a singular custom
concerning the admission of Jews to the Stock Exchange was in existence.
The number of Jew brokers was limited to twelve, and these could secure
the privilege only by a liberal gratuity to the Lord Mayor for the time
being.  'During the Mayoralty of Wilkes, one of the Jew brokers was
taken seriously ill, and Wilkes is said to have speculated pretty openly
on the advantage he would derive from filling up the vacancy.  The son
of the broker, meeting the Lord Mayor, reproached Wilkes with wishing
his father's death.  'My dear fellow,' replied Wilkes, with the
sarcastic humour peculiar to him, 'you are in error, for I would rather
have all the Jew brokers dead than your father.'

The funds are much affected by political events; that goes without
saying.  Their rise or fall may be very rapid.  It was exceptionally so
in the early period of the French revolutionary war.  In March, 1792,
the Three per Cents, were at 96, in 1797 they were as low as 48, the
lowest they ever fell to.  The possession of prior or exclusive
intelligence enables persons to speculate with great success.  A broker
who casually became acquainted with the failure of Lord Macartney's
negotiation with the French Directory, made L16,000 while breakfasting
at Batson's Coffee-house, Cornhill, and had he not been timid, might
have gained half a million, so great was the fluctuation, owing to the
news being entirely unexpected.

But the magnates of the money market did not rely on casual
intelligence.  They left no stone unturned to obtain reliable
information in advance even of Government.  Thus Sir Henry Furnese, a
bank director, paid for constant despatches from Holland, Flanders,
France and Germany.  He made an enormous haul by his early intelligence
of the surrender of Namur in 1695.  King William gave him a diamond ring
as a reward for early information; yet he was not above fabricating
false news, and he had his tricks for influencing the funds. If he
wished to buy, his brokers looked gloomy, and, the alarm spread, they
concluded their bargains. Marlborough had an annuity of L6,000 from
Medina, the Jew, for permission to attend his campaigns.  During the
troubles of 1745, when the rebels advanced towards London, stocks fell
terribly.  Sampson Gideon, a famous Jew broker, managed to have the
first news of the Pretender's retreat.  He hastened to Jonathan's,
bought all the stock in the market, spending all his cash, and pledging
his name for more.  This stroke of business made him a millionaire.

During the last years of the French wars a difference of 8 per cent.,
and even 10 per cent., would occur within an hour, and thus great
fortunes might be won or lost within that short time.  It was also a
period of gigantic frauds, but of these later on.

Of all the sons of Maier Amschel Rothschild, Nathan, born in 1777, was
undoubtedly the most prominent. Inheriting his father's spirit, he left
his home at the early age of twenty-two, and in 1798 opened a small shop
as a banker and money-lender at Manchester.  He had left Frankfurt,
where his father's house had just been knocked into ruins by the
bombardment of Marshal Kleber, with only a thousand florins in his
pocket.  But the cotton interest was just then beginning to develop
itself, and Nathan took such clever advantage of the opportunities this
offered him, that at the end of five years he came from Manchester to
London with a fortune of L200,000, where he became the son-in-law of
Levi Barnett Cohen, one of the Jewish City magnates. The report of his
Manchester successes had preceded him to the Capital, and he immediately
engaged largely in Stock Exchange speculations.  Whilst houses of the
oldest standing were tottering or falling, owing to the State loan of
1810 having turned out a failure, and the fortunes of the Peninsular War
seemed most doubtful, some drafts of Wellington to a considerable amount
came over here, and there was no money in the Exchequer to meet them.
Nathan Rothschild, satisfied as to England's final victory, purchased
the bills at a large discount, and finally found the means of redeeming
them at par.  It was a splendid speculation, which resulted in his
entering into closer intercourse with the Ministry, and he was chiefly
employed in transmitting the subsidies which England furnished--most
foolishly indeed--to the Continental Powers.  The circumstance that
Nathan was supplied by his brothers at Frankfurt and elsewhere with the
earliest and most reliable intelligence, and his trustworthy connections
and arrangements in London, enabled him to turn such knowledge to
immediate and profitable account.  But there being then neither railways
nor telegraphs, news was slow in coming. Nathan trained carrier pigeons,
and organized a staff of agents, whose duty it was to follow the march
of the armies, and daily and hourly to send reports in cipher, tied
under the wings of the pigeons.  His agents, by means of fast-sailing
boats, taking the shortest routes, indicated by Nathan himself--the
mail-boats between Folkestone and Boulogne of the present day follow one
of these routes--carried large sums between the coasts of Germany,
France, and England.  And when events on the Continent were coming to a
crisis, Nathan on more than one occasion hurried over to the Continent
to watch the course of affairs.  It is said that Nathan Rothschild, on
June 18, 1815, was on the field of Waterloo,[#] and watched the battle
till he saw the French troops in full retreat, when he immediately rode
back to Brussels, whence a carriage took him to Ostend. The sea was
stormy; in vain Nathan offered 500 francs, 600 francs, 800 francs, to
carry him across; at last a poor fisherman risked his life for 2,000
francs, and his frail barque, which carried Caesar and his fortunes,
landed Nathan in the evening at Dover.  When he appeared on June 20,
leaning against his usual pillar in the Stock Exchange, everything and
everybody looked gloomy.  He whispered to a few of his most intimate
friends that the allied army had been defeated.  The dismal news spread
like wildfire, and there was a tremendous fall in the funds.  Nathan's
known agents sold with the rest, but his unknown agents bought every
scrap of paper that was to be had.  It was not till the afternoon of
June 21 that the news of the victory of Waterloo became known.  Nathan
was the first to inform his friends of the happy event, a quarter of an
hour before the news was given to the public.  The funds rose faster
than they had fallen, and Nathan still leant against his pillar in the
southern corner of the Stock Exchange, but richer by about a million
sterling. From that day the career of Nathan was one of ever-increasing
prosperity; his firm became the agents of all European Governments; he
made bargains with the Czar of Russia and with South American Republics,
with the Pope and the Sultan.  About the morality of the Waterloo
episode the less said the better, but peers and princes of the blood,
bishops and archbishops, partook of his sumptuous banquets, whilst he
calculated to a penny on what a clerk could live!


[#] To an article I wrote twenty-five years ago on this topic I find
appended the following note: 'We give the following on the authority of
Martin, but must add that a private friend, who formerly filled an
office of trust in the firm of Rothschild Brothers, declares the whole
to be a fiction.'  But who this friend was we cannot now remember.


Another financier, who almost rivalled Rothschild as a speculator, was
Abraham Goldsmid, who was ruined by a conspiracy.  He, in conjunction
with a banking establishment, had taken a large Government loan. The
conspirators managed to cause the omnium stock to fall to 18 discount.
The result was Goldsmid's failure and eventually his suicide, whilst the
conspirators made a profit of about L2,000,000.

Among other notable stockbrokers we must not omit Francis Bailey,
F.S.A., President of the Royal Astronomical Society, who retired from
the Stock Exchange in 1825.  In 1851 he repeated at his house in
Tavistock Place, Russell Square, the Cavendish experiment of weighing
the earth, and calculating its bulk and figure, and at the same time
verifying the standard measure of the British nation, and rectifying
pendulum experiments.  In the garden of the house a small observatory
was erected for those purposes, and is, we believe, still standing.

We alluded a little while ago to some gigantic frauds in Stock Exchange
operations.  One of the most extraordinary and elaborate of such frauds
was that carried out by De Berenger and Cochrane-Johnstone in 1814.
Napoleon's military operations against the allies had greatly depressed
the funds.  On February 21, 1814, about one o'clock a.m., a violent
knocking was heard at the door of the Ship Inn, then the chief hotel at
Dover.  When the door was opened, a person in a richly-embroidered
scarlet uniform announced himself as an aide-de-camp of Lord Cathcart
(who was aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington in 1815), and as the
bearer of important news.  The allies had gained a great victory, and
entered Paris; Napoleon had been captured and killed by Cossacks, who
had cut his body into a thousand pieces.  Immediate peace was now
certain.  The stranger ordered a post-chaise, and departed for London,
but before leaving, he sent a note containing the news to the Port
Admiral, who received it about four a.m.; but the morning being foggy,
the telegraph could not be worked.  The sham aide-de-camp--really De
Berenger, an adventurer, afterwards a livery stable-keeper--dashed along
the road, throwing napoleons to the post-boys whenever he changed
horses.  At Bexley Heath it was clear to him that the telegraph could
not have worked, so he moderated his pace, spreading at the same time
the news of Napoleon's defeat and death.  At Lambeth he entered a
hackney-coach, telling the post-boys to spread the news, which reached
the Stock Exchange about ten o'clock, in consequence of which the funds
rose, but fell again when it was found that the Lord Mayor had had no
intelligence.  But about twelve o'clock three persons, two of whom were
dressed as French officers, drove in a post-chaise over London Bridge;
their horses were bedecked with laurels.  The officers scattered papers
among the crowd, announcing the death of Napoleon and the fall of Paris.
They then paraded through Cheapside and Fleet Street, passed over
Blackfriars Bridge, and drove rapidly to the Marshgate, Lambeth, got
out, changed their cocked hats for round ones, and disappeared as
mysteriously as their confederate, De Berenger, had done a few hours
earlier.

The funds now rose again, but when, after hours of anxious expectation,
it was discovered that the news, on which many bargains had been made,
was false, there was, of course, wailing and gnashing of teeth. A
committee was appointed by the Stock Exchange to track out the
conspiracy, as on the two days before stocks to the amount of L826,000
had been purchased by persons implicated.  One of the gang had, for a
blind, called on Lord Cochrane, and Cochrane-Johnstone, a relation of
his, had purchased Consols for him, that he might unconsciously benefit
by the fraud.  The Tories, eager to destroy a political enemy,
concentrated all their rage on him, and he was tried, fined L1,000, and
sentenced to stand for one hour in the pillory; but this latter part of
the sentence was not carried out, as Sir Francis Burdett had declared
that if it was done he would stand beside his friend on the scaffold of
shame. Cochrane was further stripped of his knighthood, and his
escutcheon kicked down the steps of St. George's Chapel at Windsor.  But
in his old age his innocence and the injustice done to him were
recognised, and his coronet restored to him unsoiled.  But could this
atone for all the wrong inflicted, and all the misery endured? Those who
wish to know all the details of this remarkable fraud will find them in
the two volumes of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1814.  The first
volume gives a full account of the evidence produced at the trial.




                                  *X.*

                *WITS AND BEAUX OF OLD LONDON SOCIETY.*


A mere beau, a 'man of dress,' as our dictionaries define him, is a
pitiful object--a walking and talking doll, painted and bedizened, and
as imbecile-looking as a wax figure.  The man who chooses to go in for
being a beau should, if he does not wish to be thoroughly contemptible,
possess, besides physical beauty, a stock of brains, elegant manners,
ready wit, and moral courage.  The gentleman who at the seaside dresses
altogether in white must have a personally distinguished appearance not
to be taken for his own _chef de cuisine_.  Beaux are rather out of
fashion just now--mashers and fops replace them.  In the last century
they were more plentiful.  Perhaps the then prevailing popinjay style of
dress, with its embroidered and many-coloured coats and waistcoats,
gaudy breeches, wigs and swords, lent itself more readily to the
assumption of the character than does our more subdued costume.  In
those days the aspirants to the title of beau were termed bucks,
gallants, macaronis; and one of their distinguishing features, as the
plays and portraits of those days abundantly demonstrate, was their
having small legs with slender calves--possibly to show they were not
footmen in disguise.  And, as a rule, in those days the valet had more
brains than his master.

Beaux have always been a fruitful and pleasant theme for the satirist's
pen.  The _Spectator_, in No. 275, describes the dissection of a beau's
head, which is found to contain no brain, but in the usual place for
one, smelling strongly of essences and orange-flower water, a kind of
horny substance, cut into a thousand little faces or mirrors.  Further,
a lot of ribbons, laces, and embroidery, billets-doux, love-letters,
snuff, fictions, vows, oaths, and a spongy substance, known as nonsense.
A muscle, not often discovered in dissections, was found, the _os
cribriforme_, which draws the nose upwards when by that motion it
intends to express contempt.  The ogling muscles were very much worn
with use.  The individual to whom this head had belonged had passed for
a man for about thirty years, and died in the flower of his youth by the
blow of a fire-shovel, he having been surprised by an eminent citizen as
he was paying some attentions to his wife. This analysis of a beau's
head, or character, was written in 1712.  In 1757 an essayist described
him thus in doggerel:

    'Would you a modern beau commence,
    Shake off that foe to pleasure, sense.
    Scorn real, unaffected worth,
    Despise the virtuous, good and brave,
    To ev'ry passion be a slave....
    Be it your passion, joy and fame
    To play at ev'ry modish game....
    Harangue on fashion, point and lace....
    Affect to know each reigning belle
    That throngs the playhouse or the Mall.
    Though swearing you detest a fool,
    Be versed in Folly's ample school....
    These rites observed, each foppish elf
    May view an emblem of himself.'


The combination of wit and beau in one person has, nevertheless,
occasionally been seen, and the ordinary, or numskulled, beau has shared
in the reputation created by such a combination, just as all judges are
assumed to be sober.  But in the days when beaux flourished wit of a
very attenuated kind tickled the fancy of the public, who haunted the
taverns patronized by the so-called wits.  Even the jokes which passed
at the Mermaid between Shakspere, Ben Jonson, and other professed
jesters must appear to modern readers who are not absurdly prepossessed
in favour of all that savours of antiquity, as heavy, dull, and often
far-fetched.  To justify what may appear rank heresy, let me quote one
of Tarleton's 'witty' sayings.  Tarleton was Shakspere's friend and
fellow-actor, _the_ low comedian of Queen Elizabeth's reign, who
probably suggested to Shakspere some of his jesters and fools.  Now,
this is what is transmitted to us as a specimen of his wit: Tarleton,
keeping an ordinary in Paternoster Row, would approve of mustard
standing before his customers to have wit. 'How so?' inquired one.  'It
is like a witty scold, meeting another scold, begins to scold first.
So,' says he, 'the mustard, being licked up and knowing that you will
bite it, begins to bite you first.'  'I'll try that,' says a gull, and
the mustard so tickled him that his eyes watered.  'How now?' says
Tarleton.  'Does my jest savour?'  'Ay,' says the gull, 'and bite too.'
'If you had had better wit,' says Tarleton, 'you would have bit first.
So, then, conclude with me that dumb, unfeeling mustard has more wit
than a talking, unfeeling fool, as you are.'  And this was considered 'a
rare conceit' in the days of Shakspere.  We are rather more exacting
now.

The beaux of the days we are speaking of were, indeed, poor specimens of
humanity.  They were a noisy, swaggering lot, as we learn from the
author of 'Shakspere's England.'  'If a gallant,' he says, 'entered the
ordinary ... he would find the room full of fashion-mongers ...
courtiers, who came there for society and news; adventurers who have no
home ... quarrelsome men paced about fretfully fingering their
sword-hilts, and maintaining as sour a face as that Puritan moping in a
corner, pent up by a group of young swaggerers, disputing over cards....
The soldiers bragged of nothing but of their employment in Ireland and
in the Low Countries....  The mere dullard sat silent, playing with his
glove, or discussing at what apothecary's the best tobacco was to be
bought.'

But let us, in the career of an individual, Beau Fielding, famous in his
day, show how beaux then acquired a reputation.  Scotland Yard was so
called from a palace which stood there, and was the residence of the
Kings of Scotland on their annual visit to do homage for their kingdom
to the Crown of England. On the union of the Scottish and English Crowns
the palace was allowed to go to decay.  Parts of it served as occasional
residences for various persons, one of whom was Robert Fielding, who
died there in the early part of the last century.  This Fielding was
generally known as Beau Fielding.  The _Tatler_, in August, 1709 (Nos.
50 and 51), thus describes him: 'Ten _lustra_ and more are wholly passed
since Orlando (R. Fielding) first appeared in the metropolis of this
island, his descent noble, his wit humorous, his person charming.  But
to none of these advantages was his title so undoubted as that of his
beauty.  His complexion was fair, but his countenance manly; his stature
of the tallest, his shape the most exact; and though in all his limbs he
had a proportion as delicate as we see in the work of the most skilful
statuaries, his body had a strength and firmness little inferior to the
marble of which such images are formed.  This made Orlando the universal
flame of all the fair sex; innocent virgins sighed for him as Adonis,
experienced widows as Hercules.  Thus did this figure walk alone, the
pattern and ornament of our species, but, of course, the envy of all who
had the same passions, without his superior merit, and pretences to the
favour of that enchanting creature, woman.  However, the generous
Orlando believed himself formed for the world, and not to be engrossed
by any particular affection....  Woman was his mistress, and the whole
sex his seraglio.  His form was always irresistible; and if we consider
that not one of five hundred can bear the least favour from a lady
without being exalted above himself ... we cannot think it wonderful
that Orlando's repeated conquests touched his brain.  So it certainly
did, and Orlando became an enthusiast in love....  He would still add to
the advantages of his person that of a profession which the ladies
always favour, and immediately commenced soldier....  Our hero seeks
distant climes ... after many feats of arms ... Orlando returns home,
full, but not loaded, with years....  The beauteous Villaria (Barbara,
daughter and heiress of William Villiers, Lord Viscount Grandison, of
the Kingdom of Ireland) ... became the object of his affection....
According to Milton,

    '"The fair with conscious majesty approved."

Fortune having now supplied Orlando with necessaries for his high taste
of gallantry and pleasure, his equipage and economy had something in
them more sumptuous and gallant than could be conceived in our
degenerate age, therefore ... all the Britons under the age of sixteen
... followed his chariot with shouts and acclamations....  I remember I
saw him one day stop, and call the youths about him, to whom he spoke as
follows: "Good youngsters, go to school, and do not lose your time in
following my wheels.  I am loath to hurt you, because I know not but you
are all my own offspring....  Why, you young dogs, did you never see a
man before?"  "Never such a one as you, noble General," replied a truant
from Westminster. "Sirrah, I believe thee; there is a crown for thee.
Drive on, coachman." ... Fortune being now propitious to the gay
Orlando, he dressed, he spoke, he moved as a man might be supposed to do
in a nation of pigmies ... he sometimes rode in an open tumbril, of less
size than ordinary, to show the largeness of his limbs, and the grandeur
of his personage, to the greater advantage....  In all these glorious
excesses did ... Orlando live ... until an unlucky accident brought to
his remembrance that ... he was married before he courted the nuptials
of Villaria.  Several fatal memorandums were produced to revive the
memory of this accident, and the unhappy lover was for ever banished her
presence, to whom he owed the support of his first renown and
gallantry....  Orlando, therefore, now rages in a garret.'  The Barbara
Villiers mentioned by the _Tatler_ was identical with Lady Castlemaine,
Duchess of Cleveland, whose scandalous history is notorious. She was
sixty-five years old when she fell in love with Fielding and married
him.  The 'unlucky accident' of the _Tatler_ was the fact that a few
weeks before Fielding had been taken in by an adventuress, one Mary
Wadsworth, whom, taking her for a rich widow, he had married.  On his
second--bigamous--marriage, the first wife revealed the fact to Lady
Castlemaine, who, having been shamefully treated by Fielding, was glad
to get rid of him.  The first marriage was proved in a court of law, and
sentence passed on Fielding to be burnt in the hand.  By interest in
certain quarters he was spared this ignominious punishment; but he was
left destitute, and died forgotten and forsaken.

The _Tatler_ gave Fielding a noble descent, and he, in fact, claimed
descent from the Hapsburgs; and on the strength of his name ventured to
have the arms of Lord Denbigh emblazoned on his coach, and to drive
about the ring in Hyde Park.  At the sight of the immaculate
coat-of-arms on the plebeian chariot, 'all the blood of the Hapsburgs'
flew to the head of Basil, fourth Earl of Denbigh.  In a high state of
fury, he at once procured a house-painter, and ordered him to daub the
coat-of-arms completely over, in broad daylight, and before all the
company in the ring.  The beau tamely submitted to the insult.

Fielding had several competitors in the beau-ship; contemporary with him
were Beau Edgeworth and Beau Wilson.  Of the former but little is on
record; the latter's career was cut short at an early date, for when he
was not much beyond his twentieth year he was killed in a duel between
him and John Law, afterwards so famous as the originator of the
Mississippi scheme. The duel took place on the site of the present
Bloomsbury Square.  A mushroom growth of beaux arose about the year
1770, some of whom having travelled in Italy, and introduced macaroni as
a new dish, they came to be designated by that name.  They dressed in
the most ridiculous fashion, wearing their hair in a very high foretop,
with long side-curls, and an enormous chignon behind.  Their clothes
were tight-fitting, while silk stockings in all weathers were _de
rigueur_.  This folly was of but short duration.

In the first half of the eighteenth century flourished Beau Nash--a
great contrast in manners, character, social position, and conduct to
Beau Fielding; but as his life was passed at Bath he cannot be reckoned
among London beaux.  Yet we mention him, as in his earlier years he was
slightly connected with the Metropolis, by the fact that he was entered
for the Temple, though he never followed the law as a profession.

We have to come down to comparatively recent times to encounter a beau
of some note; that beau was known as Beau George Brummel.  He was born
in 1777, and sent to Eton, where he enjoyed the credit of being the best
scholar, the best oarsman, and the best cricketer of his day.  His
father was Under-Secretary to Lord North, and left each of his children
some L30,000.  At Eton he made many aristocratic friends, and thus
obtained the entree to Devonshire House, where the beautiful Georgiana,
Duchess of Devonshire, held her court, and where she introduced Brummell
to the Prince Regent, who gave him a commission in the 10th Hussars.
But the army, with its restraints, did not suit the beau; he left it,
and then resided in Chesterfield Street, where the Prince, finding in
him a kindred spirit of vanity and frivolity, used to visit him in the
morning to see him make his toilet, and to learn the art of tying his
neckerchief fashionably.  And frequently the Prince would stay all day
to enjoy his friend's intellectual discourse, stopping to take a chop or
steak with him, and not returning home till the next morning, half-seas
over. The beau spent his time chiefly at Brighton and at Carlton House,
and regularly established himself as a leader of fashion, his horses and
carriages, his dogs, walking-sticks and snuff-boxes, but especially his
clothes, becoming patterns to all the empty-headed noodles who required
guidance in such matters.  But such show could not be supported on the
income derived from his patrimony; Brummell therefore went in heavily
for gambling, with varying luck.  Once at Brooks's he played with
Alderman Combe, nicknamed 'Mash-tub,' Lord Mayor and brewer.  The
dice-box circulated. 'Come, Mash-tub,' said the beau, who was the
caster, 'what do you set?'  'Twenty-five guineas,' said the Alderman.
The beau won, and eleven more similar ventures.  As he pocketed the
money, he said: 'Thank you, Alderman; henceforth I shall drink no porter
but yours.'  'I wish, sir,' replied Combe, 'that every other blackguard
in London would say the same.'  At the Watier Club, established at the
instigation of the Prince of Wales, Brummell suffered heavy losses, so
that ever after he was in constant pecuniary difficulties, though
Fortune smiled on him at times.  Indulging in all the superstitious
tendencies of gamblers, he at one time attributed his luck to the
finding of a crooked sixpence in the kennel, as he was walking with Mr.
Raikes, who tells the story, through Berkeley Square.  He had a hole
bored in the coin, and attached it to his watch-chain.  As for the
succeeding two years he had great luck at the table and on the turf, he
attributed it to the lucky sixpence.  He is supposed to have made nearly
L30,000 during that time.

A coolness between the Prince and the beau arose after a few years;
various reasons are assigned for it. He was, for instance, said to have
taken the part of Mrs. Fitzherbert, who had been privately married to
the Prince Regent at Carlton House; he is reported to have asked Lady
Cholmondeley, in the hearing of the Prince, and pointing to him, 'Who is
your fat friend?'  Though it is also reported that this question was put
to Jack Lee, as he was walking up St. James's Street, arm-in-arm with
the Prince, a few days after the beau had quarrelled with the latter.
But this blew over, and Brummell was again invited to Carlton House,
where he took too much wine.  The Prince said to his brother, the Duke
of York: 'I think we had better order Mr. Brummell's carriage before he
gets quite drunk.'  Another version of the second rupture is that
Brummell took the liberty of saying to the Prince: 'George, ring the
bell.'  The Prince rang it, and told the servant who answered it: 'Mr.
Brummell's carriage.'  This Brummell always denied; however, he was a
second time forbidden Carlton House.  For a few years he was a hanger-on
at Oatlands, the seat of the Duke of York, then, having lost large sums
at play, he was obliged to fly the country, and having lived for some
years in obscurity at Calais, he obtained the post of British Consul at
Caen--for which his previous career, of course, eminently fitted him!
He died in that town in poor circumstances in 1840.

Let us conclude this short account of the poor moth, basking in the
royal sunshine for awhile, with one or two anecdotes.  One day a
youthful beau approached Brummell, and said: 'Permit me to ask you where
you get your blacking?'  'Ah,' said the beau, 'my blacking positively
ruins me.  I will tell you in confidence--it is made with the finest
champagne!'  He was once at a party in Portman Square.  On the cloth
being removed, the snuff-boxes made their appearance; Brummell's was
particularly admired; it was handed round, and a gentleman, finding it
somewhat difficult to open, incautiously applied a desert-knife to the
lid.  Brummell was on thorns, and at last could contain himself no
longer, and addressing the host, he said, loud enough to be heard by the
company: 'Will you be good enough to tell your friend that my snuff-box
is not an oyster?'

England has had no regular beau since the time of Brummell, though
occasionally some crack-brained individual has attempted to wear his
mantle.  Such a one was Ferdinand Geramb, a tight-laced German General
and Baron, who in the second decade of this century strutted about the
parks, conspicuous for his ringlets, his superb moustaches, and immense
spurs. It was asserted that he was a German Jew, who, having married the
widow of a Hungarian Baron, assumed her late husband's title.  His fiery
moustaches were closely imitated by many illustrious personages, and
gold spurs several inches long became the fashion--one fool makes many.
It is to him the British army is indebted for the introduction of hussar
uniforms.  Having to leave England under the Alien Act, he went to
Hamburg, where he set himself to writing against the Emperor Napoleon,
who shut him up in the Castle of Vincennes. There, in terrible fear of
being shot, he made a vow that should he regain his liberty he would
renounce the devil and his works, and join the Trappist community. He
was released at the Restoration, and at once entered a Trappist
monastery, under the name of Brother Joseph, and in course of time
became Abbot and Procurator-General of the Order.  No more fighting of
duels now, no more keeping the bailiffs who wanted to seize him for debt
at bay for twelve days in an English country house which he had
fortified; he submitted to the severest rules of the Order, and in 1831
made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and died at Rome in 1848.




                                 *XI.*

               *LONDON SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES.*


In the year 1765 a Frenchman, who did not give his name, visited London,
and afterwards published in Paris an account of his visit.

'I reached London,' he says, 'towards the close of the day ... and at
last, quite by chance, I found myself settled in an apartment in the
house of the _Cruisinier Royal_ in Leicester Fields.  This neighbourhood
is filled with small houses, which are mostly let to foreigners.'  On
the following day he walked down Holborn and the Strand to St. Paul's,
then crossed London Bridge, and returned to his hotel by walking through
Southwark and Lambeth to Westminster, 'a district full of mean houses
and meaner taverns.'  The localities named have not greatly altered
their character since then.  In another place our traveller says: 'Even
from the bridges it is impossible to get a view of the river, as the
parapets are ten feet high....  The reason given for all this is the
inclination which the English, and the Londoners especially, have for
suicide.  It is true that above and below the town the banks are
unprotected, and offer an excellent opportunity to those who really wish
to drown themselves; but the distance is great, and, besides, those who
wish to leave the world in this manner prefer doing so before the eyes
of the public.  The parapets, however, of the new bridge [Blackfriars]
which is being built will be but of an ordinary height.'  Suicidal
tendencies must indeed have greatly declined, since the most recently
erected bridges, the new Westminster and Blackfriars, have particularly
low parapets.

Of the streets our author says: 'They are paved in such a manner that it
is barely possible to ride or walk on them in safety, and they are
always extremely dirty.... The finest streets ... would be impassable
were it not that on each side ... footways are made from four to five
feet wide, and for communication from one to the other across the street
there are smaller footways elevated above the general surface of the
roadway, and formed of large stones selected for the purpose.... In the
finest part of the Strand, near St. Clement's Church, I noticed, during
the whole of my stay in London, that the middle of the street was
constantly covered with liquid stinking mud, three or four inches
deep....  The walkers are bespattered from head to foot....  The
natives, however, brave all these disagreeables, wrapped up in long blue
coats, like dressing-gowns, wearing brown stockings and perukes, rough,
red and frizzled.'

Well, we cannot find much fault with this description, unflattering as
it is, for in the last century London certainly was one of the most
hideous towns to live in, and its inhabitants the most uncouth,
repulsive set of 'guys'!  Concerning Oxford Street our author makes a
false prognostic: 'The shops of Oxford Street will disappear as the
houses are sought after for private dwellings by the rich.  Soon will
the great city extend itself to Marylebone, which is not more than a
quarter of a league distant.  At present it is a village, principally of
taverns, inhabited by French refugees.'

Our traveller sees but four houses in London which will bear comparison
with the great hotels in Paris.  To the inconvenience of mud, he says,
must be added that of smoke, which, mingled with a perpetual fog, covers
London as a pall.  We, to our sorrow, know this to be true even now.

But we have improved in one respect: our old watchmen or 'Charleys' have
disappeared before the modern police.  Concerning these watchmen our
author says: 'There are no troops or guard or watch of any kind, except
during the night by some old men, chosen from the dregs of the people.
Their only arms are a stick and a lantern.  They walk about the streets
crying the hour every time the clock strikes ... and it appears to be a
point of etiquette among hare-brained youngsters to maul them on leaving
their parties.'

Our Frenchman formed a correct estimate of the London watchman of his
day--nay, it held good to the final extinction of the 'Charleys.'  In
December, 1826, a watchman was charged before the Lord Mayor with
insubordination.  On being asked who had appointed him watchman, the
prisoner replied that he was in great distress and a burden to the
parish, who therefore gave him the appointment to get rid of him.  The
Lord Mayor: 'I thought so; and what can be expected from such a system
of choosing watchmen?  I know that most of the men who are thus burdens
on the parish are the vilest of wretches, and such men are appointed to
guard the lives and property of others!  I also know that in most cases
robberies are perpetrated by the connivance of watchmen.'

But in some cases our author is really too good-naturedly credulous.
Says he: 'The people of London, though proud and hasty, are good at
heart, and humane, even in the lowest class.  If any stoppage occurs in
the streets, they are always ready to lend their assistance to remove
the difficulty, instead of raising a quarrel, which might end in murder,
as is often the case in Paris.'  This is really too innocent!  And our
French visitor must have been very fortunate indeed never to have got
into a London crowd of roughs or of pickpockets, who create stoppages in
the streets for the only purpose of pursuing their trade, and who seldom
hesitate to commit violence if they cannot rob without it.  Our author's
belief, indeed, in London honesty is boundless.  'In order that the
pot-boys,' he says, 'may have but little trouble in collecting them [the
pewter pots in which publicans send out the beer], they are placed in
the open passages, and sometimes on the doorsteps of the houses.  I saw
them thus exposed ... and felt quite assured against all the cunning of
thieves.'  But more astounding is the statement that there are no poor
in London!  'A consequence,' says our visitor, 'of its rich and numerous
charitable establishments and the immense sums raised by the poor-rates,
which impost is one which the little householders pay most cheerfully,
as they consider it a fund from which, in the event of their death,
their wives and children will be supported.'  Fancy a little householder
paying his poor-rate cheerfully!  And what a mean opinion must our
author have had of the spirit of the householder who calmly contemplated
his family, after his death, going to the parish!

The Frenchman returns once more to our usual melancholy, 'which,' he
says, 'is no doubt owing to the fogs' and to our fat meat and strong
beer.  'Beef is the Englishman's ordinary diet, relished in proportion
to the quantity of fat, and this, mixed in their stomachs with the beer
they drink, must produce a chyle, whose viscous heaviness conveys only
bilious and melancholic vapours to the brain.'

It certainly is satisfactory to have so scientific an explanation of the
origin of our spleen.

Another French writer in 1784--M. La Combe--published a book, entitled
'A Picture of London,' in which, _inter alia_, he says: 'The highroads
thirty or forty miles round London are filled with armed highwaymen and
footpads.'  This was then pretty true, though the expression 'filled' is
somewhat of an exaggeration.  The medical student of forty or fifty
years ago seems to have been anticipated in 1784, for M. La Combe tells
us that 'the brass knockers of doors, which cost from 12s. to 15s., are
stolen at night if the maid forgets to unscrew them'--a precaution which
seems to have gone out of fashion.  'The arrival of the mails,' our
author says, 'is uncertain at all times of the year....  Persons who
frequently receive letters should recommend their correspondents not to
insert loose papers, nor to put the letters in covers, because the tax
is sometimes treble, and always arbitrary, though in a free country.
But rapacity and injustice are the deities of the English.'  M. La Combe
does not give us a flattering character.  'An Englishman,' he says,
'considers a foreigner as an enemy, whom he dares not offend openly, but
whose society he fears; and he attaches himself to no one.'  Perhaps it
was so in 1784, but such feelings have nearly died out--at least, among
educated people.  M. La Combe, in another part of his book, exclaims:
'How are you changed, Londoners! ... Your women are become bold,
imperious, and expensive. Bankrupts and beggars, coiners, spies and
informers, robbers and pickpockets abound....  The baker mixes alum in
his bread ... the brewer puts opium and copper filings in his beer ...
the milkwoman spoils her milk with snails.'

Do more recent writers judge of us more correctly? We shall see.

I have lying before me a French book, the title of which, translated
into English, runs, 'Geography for Young People.'  It is in its eighth
edition, and written by M. Levi, Professor of Belles-Lettres, of History
and Geography in Paris.  The date of the book is 1850. The Professor in
it describes London, and if his pupils ever have, or rather had,
occasion to visit our capital, they must have been unable to recognise
it from their teacher's description of it.  Among the many blunders he
commits, there are some which are excusable in a foreigner, because they
refer to matters which are often misapprehended even by natives; but to
describe London as possessing a certain architectural feature which a
mere walk through the streets with his eyes open would have shown him to
have no existence at all is rather unpardonable in a professor who takes
on himself to teach young people geography.  But what does M. Levi say?
He says: 'In London you never see an umbrella, because all the streets
are built with arcades, under which you find shelter when it rains, so
that an umbrella, which to us Parisians is an indispensable article, is
perfectly useless to a Londoner.'  M. Levi evidently, if ever he was in
London, visited the Quadrant only, before the arcade was pulled down,
and thereupon wrote his account of London.  Yet he must have looked
about a bit, for he tells us of splendid cafes to be met with in every
street; the nobility patronize them; 'one of them accidentally treads on
the toes of another, a duel is the consequence, and to-morrow morning
one of them will have ceased to live.'

M. Levi reminds us of the Frenchman who came over to England with the
object of writing a book about us. He arrived in London one Saturday
night, and being tired, at once went to bed.  At breakfast next morning
he asked for new bread; the waiter told him they only had yesterday's.
Out came the Frenchman's note-book, in which he wrote: 'In London the
bread is always baked the day before.'  He then asked for the day's
paper, but was again told they had yesterday's only. A memorandum went
into the note-book: 'The London newspapers are always published
yesterday.'  He then thought he would present the letter of introduction
he had brought with him to a private family, so having been directed to
the house, he saw a lady near the window, reading.  Not wishing to
startle or disturb her, he gave a gentle single rap.  This not being
answered, he had to give a few more raps, when at last a servant partly
opened the door and asked his business. He expressed his wish to see the
master of the house. 'Master never sees anybody to-day, but he will
perhaps to-morrow,' replied the servant, and shut the door in his face.
Another memorandum was added to the previous ones: 'In London people
never see anyone to-day, but always to-morrow.'  Having nothing to do,
he thought he would go to the theatre.  He inquired for Drury Lane, and
was directed to it.  The doors being shut, he lounged about the
neighbourhood till they should open.  As it grew later and later, and
there was no sign of a _queue_, he at last addressed a passer-by, and
asked him when the theatre would open. 'It won't open to-day,' was the
reply.  This was the last straw that broke the camel's back.  Our
Frenchman hurried back to his hotel, wrote in his note-book, 'In London
there are theatres, but they never open today,' took a cab, caught the
night mail, and hastened to leave so barbarous a country.

This description of London life is about as correct as that recently
given in Max O'Rell's 'John Bull and his Womankind.'  What kind of
people did O'Rell visit?

I look at another book before me, written in Italian, and entitled:
'Semi-serious Observations of an Exile on England.'  The book was
published at Lugano in 1831, but the author--Giuseppe Pecchio--dates his
preface from York in 1827.

He speaks thusly of the approach to London by the Dover road: 'If the
sky is gloomy, the first aspect of London is no less so.  The smoky look
of the houses gives them the appearance of a recent fire.  If to this
you add the silence prevailing amidst a population of a million and a
half of inhabitants, all in motion (so that you seem to behold a stage
full of Chinese shadows), and the uniformity of the houses, as if you
were in a city of beavers, you will easily understand that on entering
into such a beehive pleasure gives way to astonishment.  This is the old
country style, but since the English have substituted blue pills for
suicide, or, still better, have made a journey to Paris--since, instead
of Young's "Night Thoughts," they read the novels of Walter Scott, they
have rendered their houses a little more pleasing in outward appearance.
In the West End especially they have adopted a more cheerful style of
architecture.  But I do not by this mean to imply that the English
themselves have become more lively; they still take delight in ghosts,
witchcraft, cemeteries, and similar horrors.  Woe to the author who
writes a novel without some apparition to make your hair stand on end!'

In speaking of the thinness of the walls and floors of London houses, he
says: 'I could hear the murmur of the conversation of the tenant of the
room above and of that of the one below me; from time to time the words
"very fine weather," "indeed," "very fine," "comfort," "comfortable,"
"great comfort," reached my ears.  In fact, the houses are
ventriloquous.  As already mentioned, they are all alike.  In a
three-storied house there are three perpendicular bedrooms, one above
the other, and three parlours, equally so superposed.'  We know how much
of this description is true.

'Why are the English,' he asks, 'not expert dancers? Because they cannot
practise dancing in their slightly-built houses, in which a lively caper
would at once send the third-floor down into the kitchen.  This is the
reason why the English gesticulate so little, and have their arms always
glued to their sides.  The rooms are so small that you cannot move about
rapidly without smashing some object,' or, as we should say, you cannot
swing a cat in them.

'Strangers are astounded,' continues our author, 'at the silence
prevailing among the inhabitants of London. But how could a million and
a half of

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