Chapter XII
St. James’s Park and its associations.—Unhealthiness of the Place and neighbourhood.—Leper Hospital of St. James.—Henry the Eighth builds St. James’s Palace and the Tilt Yard.—Original State and Progressive Character of the Park.—Charles the First.—Cromwell.—Charles the Second; his Walks, Amusements, and Mistresses.—The Mulberry Gardens.—Swift, Prior, Richardson, Beau Tibbs, Soldiers, and Syllabubs.—Character of the Park at present.—St. James’s Palace during the Reigns of the Stuarts and two first Georges.—Anecdotes of Lord Craven and Prince George of Denmark.—Characters of Queen Anne and of George the First and Second.—George the First and his Carp.—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Sack of Wheat.—Horace Walpole’s Portrait of George the First.—The Mistresses of that King, and of his Son.—Mistake of Lord Chesterfield.—Queen Caroline’s Ladies in Waiting.—Miss Bellenden and the Guineas.—George the Second’s Rupture with his Father, and with his Son.—Character of that Son.—Buckingham House.—Sheffield and his Duchess.—Character of Queen Charlotte.—Advantages of Queen Victoria over her predecessors.
St. James’s Park is associated in contemporary minds with nothing but amusing recollections of bands of music, marching soldiers, maid-servants and children, drinkings of “milk from the cow,” the hoop-petticoats of the court days of George the Third, and fading images of passages in novels, or of shabby-genteel debtors sitting lounging on the benches. A little further back in point of time we see a novelist himself, Richardson, walking in it, with other invalids, for his health; then Swift crossing it from Suffolk Street in his way to Chelsea, or thinking of the Spectator and Rosamond’s Pond; then the gallants of the time of Charles the Second, with Charles himself feeding his ducks and playing at mall; then his unhappy father led through it from St. James’s Palace on his way to the scaffold at Whitehall; and then the chivalresque sports of the Tudors in the famous tilt-yard, which occupied the site of the Horse Guards. To all these points we shall return for the purpose of entering into a few particulars; but as geographers begin their accounts of a place with the soil, we shall first make a few remarks of a like nature.
The site of this park, which must always have been low and wet, is said in the days before the Conquest to have been a swamp. Yet so little understood, not only at that time but any time till within these few years, were those vitalest arts of life which have been disclosed to us by the Southwood Smiths and others, that the good citizens of London in those days built a hospital upon it for lepers (by way of purifying their skins), and people of rank and fashion have been clustering about it more and more ever since, especially of late years. “If a merry-meeting is to be wished,” says the man in Shakspeare, “may God prohibit it.” If our health is to be injured while in town by luxury and late nights, say the men of State and Parliament, let us all go and make it worse in the bad air of Belgravia. Nay, let us sit with our feet in the water, while in Parliament itself, and then let us aggravate our agues in Pimlico and the park.—There is no use in mincing the matter, even though the property of a great lord be doubled by the mistake. The fashionable world should have stuck to Marylebone and the good old dry parts of the metropolis, or gone up hill to Kensington gravel-pits, or into any other wholesome quarter of the town or suburbs, rather than have descended to the water-side, and built in the mush of Pimlico. Building and house-warming doubtless make a difference; and wealth has the usual advantages compared with poverty: but the malaria is not done away. A professional authority on the subject gave the warning five and twenty years ago in the Edinburgh Review; but what are warnings to house-building and fashion? “It is not suspected,” he says (vol. xxxvi. p. 341) “that St. James’s Park is a perpetual source of malaria, producing frequent intermittents, autumnal dysenteries, and various derangements of health, in all the inhabitants who are subject to its influence. The cause being unsuspected, the evil is endured, and no further inquiries are made.” The malaria (he tells us in another passage of the same article) “spreads even to Bridge Street and Whitehall. Nay, in making use of the most delicate miasmometer (if we may coin such a word) that we ever possessed, an officer who had suffered at Walcheren, we have found it reaching up to St. James’s Street even to Bruton Street, although the rise of ground is here considerable, and the whole space from the nearest water is crowded with houses.”
This statement, corroborated as it is by the obvious nature of the soil and air in the park, where the people to any eye coming from higher ground seem walking about only in a thinner kind of water—a perpetual haze and mugginess—ought to settle the question respecting the doom of Buckingham Palace. Her Majesty, whose life and comfort are precious to her subjects, should have her town residence in quite another sort of place. Almost everything indeed, artificial as well as natural, conspires to render the spot unwholesome. See what the royal lungs receive on all sides of the present abode whichever way the windows are opened. In front of it is the steam of the mushy ground and the canal; on the left comes draining down the wet of Constitution Hill; and on the right and at the back are the vapours of the river and the pestilential smokes of the manufactories. What an air in which to set forth the colours of the royal flag and refresh the anxieties of the owner! We never look down on the flag from Piccadilly, but we long to see it announcing the royal presence on higher ground and in a healthy breeze.
The Leper Hospital, being the ancientest known domicile in the spot before us, stood on the site of the present St. James’s Palace; so that where state and fashion have congregated, and blooming beauties come laughing through the trees, was once heard the dismal sound of the “cup and clapper,” which solicited charity for the most revolting of diseases. The spot was probably selected for the hospital, not only as being at the greatest convenient distance from the habitations of the good citizens its founders (lepers being always put as far as possible out of the way), but because it suggested itself to the imagination as possessed of an analogous dreariness and squalidity. Unfavourable circumstances in those days were only thought fit for one another, not for the super-induction of favourable ones. The lunatic was to be exasperated by whips and dark-keeping, and the leper thrust into the ditch. The world had not yet found out that light, cleanliness, and consolation were good for all. Imagine this “lake of the dismal swamp,” now St. James’s Park, with not another house nearer to it than the walls at Ludgate, presenting to the timid eyes of the Sunday pedestrian its lonely spital, which at once attracted his charity and repelled his presence (for leprosy was thought infectious), the wind sighing through the trees, and the rain mingling with the pestilential-looking mud.
The endowment of St. James’s Hospital is said to have been originally for women only, fourteen in number, to whom were subsequently added eight brethren “to administer divine service.” They were probably, however, in a good condition of life—“leper ladies,” as an old poem styles the companions of Cressida; but ladies, according to the poem, were not exempt from the duty of asking alms with the “cup and clapper;” and as it was probably a part of their business and humiliation to watch for the appearance of wayfarers, and accost them with cries and clamour, scenes of that kind may have taken place in the walk now constituting the Mall.
The hospital was exchanged with Henry the Eighth for “a consideration;” and upon its site, or near it, that soul of leprosy built a manor, and transferred into it his own bloated and corrupted body. He was then in the forty-third year of his age, and in the same year (1532) he married poor Anne Boleyn. The town-residences (as they would now be called) of the kings of England had hitherto been at Kensington, or on the banks of the Thames at London and Westminster (such as the Tower, Westminster Hall, &c.) What it was that attracted Henry to the Leper Hospital it is difficult to conceive; though the neighbourhood, no doubt, had become a little cleansed and refined by the growth of Westminster and Whitehall. Much neatness was not required by a state of manners, which, according to Erasmus, must have been one of the dirtiest in Europe, and which allowed the refuse of meats and drinks, in gentlemen’s houses, to collect under the rushes in the dining-rooms. Perhaps the new palace was to be a place of retirement for the King and his thoughtless victim, whom four years afterwards he put to death. Most likely, however, his great object was to grasp all he could, and add to the number of his parks and amusements; for the whole of the St. James’s Fields (as they were called) fell into his hands with the house, and he stocked them with game, built a tilt-yard in front of Whitehall, on the site of the present Horse Guards, together with a cock-pit in its neighbourhood; and on the downfall of Wolsey took possession of Whitehall itself, which thenceforth became added to the list of royal abodes. The new palace could never have been handsome. It had the homely look which it retains to this day, as the reader will see in the print before him; the gateway looking up St. James’s Street being evidently a remnant of it.
The Tilt Yard, as its name implies, was the chief scene of knightly amusement in the reigns of the Tudors. Here Henry jousted till he grew too fat; and here Elizabeth sat at the receipt of chivalrous adulation. The spot is full of life and colour in the eyes of one’s imagination, with heralds and coats of arms, plumed champions, caparisoned steeds, and courts looking on from draperied galleries. The present tranquil exercises on parade may be considered as a remnant of the old military shows. But the people had no admittance within the court grounds, except on favour.
The new park seems to have remained strictly enclosed as a nursery for game till the period of the civil wars of the Commonwealth. A new palace by Inigo Jones was intended to overlook it at Whitehall, of which only the Banqueting House was erected. Charles the First was brought to this house across the Park, from St. James’s Palace, in order to suffer death. Cromwell is then discerned in the park grounds taking the air in a sedan; but its popular history does not commence till the Restoration, when Charles the Second, who seems not to have known what to do with the quantity of life and animal spirits that had been suppressed during his exile, took to improving and enjoying it with great vivacity. The walks with him became real walks, for he was a great pedestrian. He had got the habit, perhaps, when he could not afford a horse. He let the people in to see him feed his ducks in the canal, a branch of which, called Duck Island, he pleasantly erected into a “Government” for the French wit and refugee, St. Evremond. He made an aviary on the south-east side of the park, thence called Birdcage Walk; turned the north side into a mall for the enjoyment of the pastimes so called, in which he excelled; introduced skating from Holland on the canal and Rosamond’s Pond (which was another branch of it on the south-west); had mistresses in lodgings east and west of him (Cleveland at Whitehall and Nell Gwyn in Pall Mall); and saw, in the course of his reign, new streets rising and old places of entertainment flourishing in other quarters of his favourite district; Spring Gardens (which became famous for the tavern called “Lockett’s”), at Charing Cross, and the Mulberry Gardens and noblemen’s mansions between Pimlico and Piccadilly. It has been a question whether the site of the Mulberry Gardens was on the spot now occupied by Arlington Street, or on that of the Queen’s Palace. We suspect it is difficult to say which, and that they extended along the whole space between the two. Particular sites are too often confounded with places near them; and houses are said to displace one another, which only occupied successive neighbourhoods. By some writers, for instance, the sites of Arlington and Old Buckingham Houses are considered as identical, while others represent them in one another’s vicinity. At all events, the Mulberry Gardens appear to have included the site of both those houses. Ladies came there in masks to eat syllabubs, and converse with their lovers. Sedley made them the scene of a play. The whole park, indeed, in Charles’s reign, may be said to have been the scene of a play, especially towards evening, when the meetings took place which Sedley and Etherege dramatised. In the morning all was duck-feeding and dog-playing and playing at mall; in the evening all intrigue and assignation. At one time Waller is admiring the King’s masterly use of the small stick; at another Pepys is asking questions of the park-keepers, or transported at sight of the court ladies on horseback; at another Evelyn is horrified (though he seems to have sought occasions for such horrors) at overhearing a “very familiar discourse” between his Majesty and that “impudent comedian,” Nelly Gwyn, who is standing at her garden-wall at the back of Pall Mall (near the present Marlborough House).
Matters in this respect mended, though not suddenly, at the Revolution. Whitehall Palace was then accidentally burnt down, and that of St. James’s becomes one of the chief residences of the sovereign, which it remains till the reign of the present. Swift and Prior are now seen walking for their health in the park,—Swift to get thin, and Prior to get fat. The heroes and hungry debtors of the novelists (for the park was privileged from arrest) make their appearance, the former with their wives or friends, the latter sitting starving on the benches. Staid ladies have Sunday promenades under the eye of staid sovereigns. Something of a new license returns with the first and second Georges; but it comes from Germany, is discreet, and makes little impression. The greatest assignation we read of is an innocent one of Richardson with a Lady Bradshaigh, who is “mighty curious” to know what sort of man he is, and accordingly moves him to describe himself in the formal terms of an advertisement, in order that he may be recognised when she meets him. Goldsmith’s Beau Tibbs, who “blasts himself with an air of vivacity” at seeing “nobody in town,” is now the pleasantest fellow we encounter in the park for many a day. The ducks, and the dogs, and the birdcages, and Rosamond’s Pond, dismal for drowning lovers, have long vanished; and the place begins to look as it used to do forty years ago. The gayest entertainment in it is “the soldiers,” with their bands of music; and the most sensual pleasure a glass of milk from the cow. A mad woman (Margaret Nicholson) makes a sensation, by attempting to stab George the Third at the palace door; but all is quiet again, sedate and orderly, even when court-days bring together a crowd of beauties. George the Fourth just lives long enough to turn Buckingham Palace into a toy, and the site of Carlton Gardens into something better. With his successors comes the greatest of all the park improvements—the conversion of the poor fields and canal into a public pleasure-ground and an ornamental piece of water. Upon this King Charles’s ducks have returned, equally improved; and if it did but possess a good atmosphere, St. James’s Park would now be as complete a place of recreation for the promenaders of its neighbourhood, as it is handsome and well-intended.
One of the most popular aspects of St. James’s Park is that of a military and music-playing and milk-drinking spot. The milk-drinkings, and the bands of music, and the parades, are the same as they used to be in our boyish days; and, we were going to add, may they be immortal. But though it is good to make the best of war as long as war cannot be helped, and though music and gold lace, &c., are wonderful helps to that end, yet conscience will not allow us to blink all we know of a very different sort respecting battlefields and days after the battle. We say, therefore, may war turn out to be as mortal, and speedily so, as railroads and growing good-sense can make it; though in the meantime, and the more for that hope, we may be allowed to indulge ourselves as we did when children, in admiring the pretty figures which it cuts in this place—the harmlessness of its glitter and the transports of its beholders. Will anybody who has beheld it when a boy ever forget how his heart leaped within him when, having heard the music before he saw the musicians, he issued hastily from Whitehall on to the parade, and beheld the serene and stately regiment assembled before the colonel, the band playing some noble march, and the officers stepping forwards to the measure with their saluting swords? Will he ever forget the mystical dignity of the band-major, who made signs with his staff; the barbaric, and as it were, Othello-like height and lustre of the turbaned black who tossed the cymbals; the dapper juvenility of the drummers and fifers; and the astounding prematureness of the little boy who played on the triangle? Is it in the nature of human self-respect to forget how this little boy, dressed in a “right earnest” suit of regimentals, and with his hair as veritably powdered and plastered as the best, fetched those amazing strides by the side of Othello, which absolutely “kept up” with his lofty shanks, and made the schoolboy think the higher of his own nature for the possibility? Furthermore, will he ever forget how some regiment of horse used to come over the Park to Whitehall, in the midst of this parade, and pass the foot-soldiers with a sound of clustering magnificence and dancing trumpets? Will he ever forget how the foot then divided itself into companies, and turning about and deploying before the colonel, marched off in the opposite direction, carrying away the school-boy himself and the crowd of spectators with it; and so, now with the brisk drums and fifes, and now with the deeper glories of the band, marched gallantly off for the court-yard of the palace, where it again set up its music-book, and enchanted the crowd with Haydn or Mozart? What a strange mixture, too, was the crowd itself—boys and grown men, gentlemen, vagabonds, maid-servants—there they all went listening, idling, gazing on the ensign or the band-major, keeping pace with the march, and all of them more or less, particularly the maid-servants, doting on the “sogers.” We, for one, confess to having drunk deep of the attraction, or the infection, or the balmy reconcilement (whichever the reader pleases to call it). Many a holiday morning have we hastened from our cloisters in the city to go and hear “the music in the park,” delighted to make one in the motley crowd, and attending upon the last flourish of the hautboys and clarionets. There we first became acquainted with feelings which we afterwards put into verse (if the recollection be not thought an impertinence); and there, without knowing what it was called, or who it was that wrote it, we carried back with us to school the theme of a glorious composition, which afterwards became a favourite with opera-goers under the title of Non più andrai, the delightful march in Figaro. We suppose it is now, and has ever since been played there, to the martialisation of hundreds of little boys, and the puzzlement of philosophy. Everything in respect to military parade takes place, we believe, in the park just as it used to do, or with little variation. The objects also which you behold, if you look at the parade and its edifices, are the same. The Admiralty, the Treasury, the back of the Minister’s house in Downing Street, and the back-front of the solid and not inappropriate building, called the Horse Guards, look as they did fifty years ago; and there also continue to stand the slender Egyptian piece of cannon, and the dumpy Spanish mortar, trophies of the late war with France. The inscriptions, however, on those triumphant memorials contain no account of the sums we are still paying for having waged it.
“The soldiers” and the “milk from the cow” do not at all clash in the minds of boyhood. The juvenile imagination ignores what it pleases, especially as its knowledge is not very great. It no more connects the idea of village massacre with guns and trumpets, than it supposes the fine scarlet coat capable of being ragged and dirty. Virgil may say something about ruined fields, and people compelled to fly for their lives; but this is only part of a “lesson,” and the calamities but so many nouns and verbs. The maid-servants, and indeed the fair sex in general, till they become wives and mothers, enjoy the like happy exemption from ugly associations of ideas; and the syllabub is taken under the trees, with a delighted eye to the milk on one side, and the military show on the other.
The late Mr. West, the painter, was so pleased with this pastoral group of cows and milk-drinkers in the park, that he went out of the line of his art to make a picture of it.
Saint James’s Palace was not much occupied by the Tudor and Stuart sovereigns. Their principal town residence was Whitehall. The first of the Stuarts may have intended to make St. James’s the residence of the Princes of Wales; for he gave it his son Henry, who died there. We have spoken of this prince and his doubtful “promise” already. The best thing known of him is the astonishment he expressed at his father’s keeping “such a bird” as Walter Raleigh locked up in a cage.
Charles the First spent the three last days of his life in this palace, occupying himself in devotion, and preparing to fall with dignity;—happy if he had but known how to value the dignity of truth, which would have saved him from the necessity. The Stuarts, unfortunate everywhere in proportion to the gravity of their pretensions, had their customary bad fortune in this palace; at least the male portion of them. James the Second’s daughters, who got his throne, were born and married there; but here also was born his son, the first Pretender, whose mother’s chamber being situate near some backstairs gave colour to the ridiculous story of his having been a spurious child smuggled into the palace in a warming pan; and here his unlucky and narrow-minded father partly resided when he per force invited his ouster and son-in-law William to take up his abode in it, and received in return notice to quit his throne. The old romantic Lord Craven, who was supposed to have been privately married to James the First’s daughter, the luckless Queen of Bohemia, and who was thus destined to witness the whole of the troubles of the English dynasty of the Stuarts, happened to be on duty at St. James’s when the Dutch troops were coming across the park to take possession of it. Agreeably to his chivalrous character, and to his habit of taking warlike steps to no purpose, the gallant veteran would have opposed their entrance; but his master forbade him; and he marched away, says Pennant, “with sullen dignity.”
“Est-il-possible” got the house after James;—we mean his daughter Anne’s husband, George of Denmark, who being no livelier a man than his father-in-law, made no other comment than these three words (Is it possible?) on the accounts given him by the poor King of every successive desertion from his cause. In due time the man of one remark followed the deserters; upon which James observed to one of the few friends left him, “Who do you think is gone now? Little Est-il-possible himself.”
St. James’s was given to Anne and her husband by the new sovereign William the Third. She made it her chief palace when she came to the throne, and such it continued to be with the sovereigns of England till the reign of George the Third, with whom its occupation was divided with Buckingham house. Lady Strafford, the wild daughter of Rochester, who lived in France because England, she said, was “too dull” for her, used to relate stories of the “orgies” in Anne’s palace. Palaces for the most part have been places of greater license than the world supposes, owing to the natural results of luxury, privilege, and the bringing of idle and agreeable people together; but the orgies which the rattle-headed Lady Strafford talked of, were probably never anything much greater than a drinking-bout of her husband, who unluckily taught his wife to drink too. Anne, between her Protestant accession and her exiled Popish kindred, her imperious favourite the Duchess of Marlborough, and her quarrelling and fluctuating Administrations, had an anxious time of it. There is an old French story of a sage but ugly cavalier, who married a handsome fool, in the persuasion that his children would inherit their mother’s beauty and his own wisdom. Unfortunately, they turned out to be specimens of his own ugliness, combined with the mother’s folly. We do not say that Queen Anne was a fool, though she was not very wise; but when her grandfather, Lord Clarendon, saw the match between his clever daughter and the future James the Second, he probably hoped that their offspring would possess the father’s figure combined with the mother’s wit; whereas neither Mary nor Anne possessed the latter, and Anne inherited the mother’s fat with the father’s dulness. She was a well-meaning and fond, but sluggish-minded woman, with no force of character; her temperament was heavy and lax; she did not know what to do with her political perplexities; and the screw-up of her nerves with strong waters appears to have become irresistible. Swift gives a curious account of her levees, in which she would sit with a parcel of courtiers about her, silently giving glances at them, and putting the end of her fan in her mouth for want of address. She was glad to get the whole set away, that she might sink into her easy chair, and complain of the troubles of human life.
St. James’s thus began with being a dull court, and dull for the most part it remained to the last—quite worthy of its external appearance. George the First and Second were both dull gentlemen, with a difference; the former a pale round-featured man, content to appear the insipid personage he was; the latter, aquiline-nosed, affecting spirit and gallantry, and attaining only to rudeness. They were people of the then German schools of breeding, very different from the present; and St. James’s at that time combined a tasteless air of decorum with gallantries equally unengaging. George the First had two German mistresses, one as lean as the other was fat; and George the Second another, remarkable for nothing but making money. Lady Wortley Montagu and Horace Walpole have given some amusing notices of the palace in connection with their Majesties and the court.
“This is a strange country,” said George the First on his coming to England. “The first morning after my arrival at St. James’s, I looked out of the window and saw a park with walks, a canal, &c., which they told me were mine. The next day, Lord Chetwynd, the ranger of my park, sent me a fine brace of carp out of my canal; and I was told I must give five guineas to Lord Chetwynd’s servant for bringing me my own carp out of my own canal in my own park.”
We are not to suppose that the King delivered this speech in the smart good English of its reporter, or in any English; for he was not acquainted with the language. He and his Minister Sir Robert Walpole used to converse, even on the most important matters of state, in such Latin as their school recollections furnished, the Minister understanding German or French as little as the King did English.
His Majesty, in the first days of his new court, was more agreeably surprised one evening by the sudden return of Lady Mary Wortley to the party which were assembled in his rooms, and which she had somewhat strangely pleaded a previous engagement for quitting. She returned, borne in the arms of Mr. Secretary Craggs, junior, who had met her going away, and seized hold of the fugitive. He deposited her in the ante-room; but the doors of the presence-chamber being hastily thrown open by the pages, she found herself so astonished and fluttered that she related the whole adventure to the no less astonished king; who asked Mr. Craggs whether it was customary in England to carry ladies about “like sacks of wheat.” “There is nothing,” answered the adroit secretary, “which I would not do for your Majesty’s satisfaction.”
Towards the close of this monarch’s reign, the future court historian, Horace Walpole, then a boy of ten years of age, had a longing “to see the King;” and as he was the son of the Minister, his longing was gratified in a very particular manner. A meeting was arranged on purpose the day before his Majesty took his last journey to Hanover:—
“My mother,” says Walpole, “carried me at ten at night to the apartments of the Countess of Walsingham, on the ground floor, towards the garden of St. James’s, which opened into that of her aunt the Duchess of Kendal’s; apartments occupied by George the Second after his Queen’s death, and by his successive mistresses, the Countesses of Suffolk and Yarmouth. Notice being given that the King was come down to supper, Lady Walsingham took me alone into the Duchess’s ante-room, where we found alone the King and her. I knelt down and kissed his hand. He said a few words to me, and my conductress led me back to my mother. The person of the King is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him but yesterday. It was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his pictures and coins, not tall, of an aspect rather good than august, with a dark tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat, and breeches, of snuff-coloured cloth, with stockings of the same colour, and a blue ribband over all. So entirely was he my object that I do not believe I once looked at the Duchess; but as I could not avoid seeing her on entering the room, I remember that just beyond his Majesty stood a very tall, lean, ill-favoured old lady.”
This lady, the Duchess of Kendal, a German, was the king’s lean mistress. The fat one, another German, whom he made Countess of Darlington, was “as corpulent and ample as the duchess was long and emaciated.” Walpole, who gives this account of her, adds, that he remembered being “terrified” in his infancy at her enormous figure. She had “two fierce black eyes, large and rolling between two lofty arched eyebrows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck,” &c., “and no part restrained by stays.” “It was not,” says Horace, “till the last year or two of his reign, that this foreign sovereign paid the nation the compliment of taking openly an English mistress.” This was Miss Brett, daughter of Savage’s reputed mother the Countess of Macclesfield, by her second husband, Colonel Brett, whom we have seen, in our accounts of the Streets of London, keeping company with Addison. Miss Brett was a very lively and aspiring damsel. During the visit to Hanover just mentioned, she took it upon herself to break out a door from her apartments in St. James’s Palace into the Royal garden. The eldest of the king’s grand-daughters, also a very spirited person, ordered it to be closed up again. Miss Brett, more spirited, again broke it open, and we hear of the matter no further. But the king died on his journey, and the new mistress’s empire was over.
The new King, George the Second, while Prince of Wales, had quarrelled with his father, and had been ordered to quit St. James’s with all his household. Though a great formalist, he was also a great, and indeed somewhat alarming, pretender to gallantry, being of opinion, according to Lady Wortley Montagu, that men and women were created solely to be “kicked or kissed” by him at his pleasure. It is of him that stories were told of the King’s cuffing his ministers, and kicking his hat about the room; and he is understood to be the King Arthur of Fielding’s Tom Thumb. He had a wife, however, of some real pretensions to liveliness of mind, afterwards Queen Caroline, the friend of men of letters, and a very excellent wife too, for she was charitable to her husband’s irregularities, and is said to have even shortened her life by putting her rheumatic legs into cold water in order to be able to accompany him in his walks. Here, in St. James’s Palace, as well as at Kensington, she held her literary and philosophico-religious levees (being fond of a little theological inquiry); and here also she had brought together the handsomest and liveliest set of ladies in waiting ever seen on these sober-looking premises before or since. For, though Lady Winchelsea, the poetess, was among those of James the Second, the ladies about that sombre personage and his Queen seem, for the most part, to have been both dull and ugly. His first Queen, Anne Hyde, had been a maid of honour herself, and did not encourage the sisterhood; and his second Queen, the young and handsome Mary of Modena, who had heard of the doings at Whitehall when her husband was Duke of York, condescended to be jealous of him, in spite of their difference of years; James being comparatively an old gentleman, while she was not out of her teens. Indeed, he gave cause for the jealousy, and added no hopes of amendment; for being a Papist as well as a solemn gallant, he divided his time between the ugly mistresses he was fond of, and the priests who absolved him from the offence; an absolution that was superfluous, according to his brother Charles; the “merry monarch” having been of opinion that the mistresses themselves were penance enough.
George the Second’s German mistress was a Baroness de Walmoden. On the death of Queen Caroline, he brought her over from Germany, and created her Countess of Yarmouth. She had two sons, the younger of whom was supposed to be the King’s; and a ludicrous anecdote connected with the supposition and with the abode before us, is related of the famous Lord Chesterfield. On the countess’s settlement in her state apartments, his lordship found one day in the palace ante-chamber a fair young gentleman, whom he took for the son in question. He was accordingly very profuse in his compliments. The shrewd lad received them all with a grave face, and then delightfully remarked, “I suppose your lordship takes me for ‘Master Louis;’ but I am only Sir William Russell, one of the pages.” Chesterfield piqued himself on his discernment, particularly in matters of intercourse; and it is pleasant to catch the heartless man of “the graces” at a disadvantage that must have extremely mortified him.
There is another St. James’s anecdote of Chesterfield, which shows him in no very dignified light. Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, a very amiable woman, supposed to have been one of the mistresses of George the Second, was thought to have more influence with his Majesty than she possessed. Sir Robert Walpole told his son Horace that Queen Caroline saw Lord Chesterfield one night, after having won a large sum of money at court, steal along a dark passage under her window that was lighted only by a single lamp, in order to deposit it in Mrs. Howard’s apartment, for fear of carrying it home in the dark. Sir Robert (his son adds) thought that this was the occasion of Chesterfield’s losing his credit with the Queen; but the conclusion has shown it to be unfounded. Chesterfield, however, though really a very sharp-sighted man, was rendered liable by his bad principles to a failure in what he thought his acutest views; and Caroline’s better nature may have seen through his lordship’s character without the help of the lamp and the dark passage.
The Queen’s ladies above alluded to were the famous bevy of the Howards, Lepells, and Bellendens, celebrated in the pages of Swift and Pope. They have become well known to the public by the appearance of the Suffolk Correspondence, and Lady Hervey’s Letters. George the Second, when Prince of Wales, and living in this palace with his father, had probably made love to them all, fluttering more than flattering them, between his attentions as a prince and his unengaging qualities as a brusque and parsimonious man. Miss Bellenden, who became Duchess of Argyle, is said to have observed one day to him as he was counting his money in her presence (probably with an intimation of his peculiar sense of the worth of it), “Sir, I cannot bear it. If you count your money any more, I will go out of the room.” Another version of the story says that she tilted the guineas over, and then ran out of the room while the Prince was picking them up. This is likely, for she had great animal spirits. When the Prince quarrelled with his father, and he and his household were ordered to quit St. James’s, Miss Bellenden is described, in a ballad written on the occasion, as taking her way from the premises by jumping gaily down-stairs.
The occasion of this rupture between George the First and his son was curious. Palaces are very calm-looking things outside; but within, except in very wise and happy, or very dull reigns, are pampered passions, and too often violent scenes. George the First and his son, like most sovereigns and heirs apparent, were not on good terms. The Princess of Wales had been delivered of a second son, which was to be christened; and the Prince wished his uncle the Duke of York to stand godfather with his Majesty. His Majesty, on the other hand, peremptorily insisted on dividing the pious office with the officious Duke of Newcastle. The christening accordingly took place in the Princess’s bed-chamber; and no sooner had the bishop shut the book than the Prince, furiously crossing the foot of the bed, and heedless of the King’s presence, “held up his hand and forefinger to the Duke in a menacing attitude (as Lady Suffolk described the scene to Walpole) and said, ‘You are a rascal, but I shall find you’ (meaning in his broken English, ‘I shall find a time to be revenged’).” The next morning Lady Suffolk (then Mrs. Howard), while about to enter the Princess’s apartment, was surprised to find her way barred by the yeomen with their halberds; and the same night the Prince and Princess were ordered to quit so unexpectedly, that they were obliged to go to the house of their chamberlain, the Earl of Grantham, in Albemarle Street. The father and son were afterwards reconciled, but they never heartily agreed.
Nor was the case better between George the Second and the new Prince of Wales, his son Frederick. If George the First was a common-place man of the quiet order, and George the Second of the bustling, Frederick was of an effeminate sort, pretending to taste and gallantry, and possessed of neither. He affected to patronise literature in order to court popularity, and because his father and grandfather had neglected it; but he took no real interest in the literati, and would meanly stop their pensions when he got out of humour. He passed his time in intriguing against his father, and hastening the ruin of a feeble constitution by sorry amours.
Not long after the marriage of George the Third, Buckingham House was settled on his young Queen in the event of her surviving him; and the King took such a liking to it as to convert St. James’s Palace wholly into a resort for state occasions, and confine his town residence to the new abode. Buckingham House was so called from John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, who built it. It was a dull though ornamented brick edifice, not unworthily representing the mediocre ability and stately assumptions of the owner, who was a small poet and a fastidious grandee, nearly as mad with pride as his duchess. This lady was a natural daughter of James the Second (if indeed she was even that, for a Colonel Godfrey laid claim to the paternity), and she carried herself so loftily in consequence, as to wish to be treated seriously as a princess, receiving visitors under a canopy, and going to the theatre in ermine. She and the Duchess of Marlborough, who had a rival palace next door to St. James’s, used to sit swelling at one another with neighbourly spite. Sheffield, her husband, is said to have first made love to her sister Anne (afterwards Queen), for which her uncle, Charles the Second, has been accused of sending him on an expedition to Tangier in a “leaky vessel.” The duke wrote a long complacent description of Buckingham House, that has often been reprinted, recording, among other things, the classical inscriptions which he put upon it and the princely chambers which it contained for the convenience of the births of his illustrious house. The births came to nothing in consequence of the death of his only legitimate child; a natural son inherited the property, and Government bought it for Queen Charlotte. Henceforward it divided its old appellation of Buckingham House with that of the “Queen’s House;” almost all the Queen’s children were born there; and there, as at Kew and Windsor, she may be said to have secreted her husband as much as she could from the world, partly out of judicious consideration for his infirmities, and partly in accordance with the pride as well as penuriousness that were at the bottom of manners not ungentle, and a shrewd though narrow understanding. The spirit of this kind of life was very soon announced to the fashionable world after her marriage by the non-appearance of certain festivities; and it continued as long as her husband lived, and as far as her own expenditure was concerned; though when her son came to the throne she astonished the public by showing her willingness to partake of festivities in an establishment not her own. A deplorable exhibition of her tyrannous and unfeeling habits of exaction of the attentions of those about her is to be found in the Diary of Madame d’Arblay (Miss Burney), whom they nearly threw into a consumption. It is clear that they would have done so, had not the poor waiting-gentlewoman mustered up courage enough to dare to save her life by persisting in her request to be set free. Queen Charlotte was a plain, penurious, soft-spoken, decorous, bigoted, shrewd, over-weening personage, “content” through a long life “to dwell on decencies for ever,” inexorable “upon principle” to frailty, but not incapable of being bribed out of it by German prepossessions, and whatever else might assist to effect the miracle, as was seen in the instance of Mrs. Hastings, who had been Warren Hastings’s mistress, and who was, nevertheless received at court. Pleasant as her Majesty might have been to Miss Burney, who seems to have loved to be “persecuted,” she was assuredly no charmer in the eyes of the British nation; nor was she in the slightest degree lamented when she died. Nevertheless she was a very good wife, for such we really believe her to have been; we mean not merely faithful, (for who would have tempted her?) but truly considerate, and anxious, and kind; and besides this she had another merit, not indeed of the same voluntary description, but one for which the nation is strongly indebted to her, though we are not aware that it has ever been mentioned. We mean that her cool and calculating brain turned out to be a most happy match for the warmer one of her husband, in ultimate as well as immediate respects; for it brought reason back into the blood of his race, and drew a remarkable line in consequence between him and his children; none of whom, however deficient in abilities, partook of their father’s unreasonableness, while some went remarkably counter to his want of orderliness and self-government. The happy engraftment of the Cobourg family on the stock, completed this security in its most important quarter; and if ever a shade of more than ordinary sorrow for the necessity should have been brought across the memory in that quarter by a ridiculous pen, the sense of the security ought to fling it to the winds, with all the joy and comfort befitting the noblest brow and the wisest reign that have yet adorned the annals of its house.
SMITH, ELDER, & CO.’S POPULAR LIBRARY.
Fcp. 8vo. Limp Cloth.
By the Sisters BRONTË.
2s. 6d. each.
JANE EYRE. By Charlotte Brontë.
SHIRLEY. By Charlotte Brontë.
VILLETTE. By Charlotte Brontë.
THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL. By Anne Brontë.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS. By Emily Brontë.
AGNES GREY. By Anne Brontë. With Preface and Memoir of the Sisters, by Charlotte Brontë.
THE PROFESSOR. By Charlotte Brontë. To which are added the Poems of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë.
By Mrs. GASKELL.
2s. 6d. each.
WIVES AND DAUGHTERS.
NORTH AND SOUTH.
SYLVIA’S LOVERS.
CRANFORD, and other Tales.
MARY BARTON, and other Tales.
RUTH, and other tales.
LIZZIE LEIGH, and other Tales.
LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË.
By LEIGH HUNT.
2s. 6d. each.
Imagination and fancy; or, Selections from the English Poets.
THE TOWN: Its Memorable Characters and Events. Illustrated.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LEIGH HUNT.
MEN, WOMEN, AND BOOKS; a Selection of Sketches, Essays, and Critical Memoirs.
WIT AND HUMOUR: Selected from the English Poets.
A JAR OF HONEY FROM MOUNT HYBLA; or, Sweets from Sicily in Particular, and Pastoral Poetry in General.
TABLE TALK. To which are added IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS OF POPE AND SWIFT.
London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.
SMITH, ELDER, & CO.’S POPULAR LIBRARY—continued.
Pictorial Covers, price 2s. each.
By WILKIE COLLINS.
NO NAME.
AFTER DARK.
ARMADALE.
⁂The above may also be had in Limp Cloth, price 2s. 6d. each.
By HOLME LEE.
AGAINST WIND AND TIDE.
SYLVAN HOLT’S DAUGHTER.
KATHIE BRANDE.
WARP AND WOOF.
ANNIS WARLEIGH’S FORTUNES.
THE WORTLEBANK DIARY.
BASIL GODFREY’S CAPRICE.
MAUDE TALBOT.
COUNTRY STORIES.
KATHERINE’S TRIAL.
MR. WYNYARD’S WARD.
THE BEAUTIFUL MISS BARRINGTON.
London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.
Footnotes
1 See Evenings at Home, by Dr. Aikin and Mrs. Barbauld.
2 History of England, 4to. 1670, p. 11.
3 We learn this from Selden’s notes to the Polyolbion of Drayton.
4 Picture of London, 1824, p. 3.
5 These etymologies are to be found in Maitland’s History and Survey of London. Fol. 1756. Vol. i. Book i.
6 In the notes to Drayton’s Polyolbion, Song viii.
7 There is a Lunden in Sweden, mentioned by Maitland, vol. i. ubi sup. It is the capital of the province of Schonen. Another town of the name is in Danish Holstein.
8 “We have one word,” says Dr. Pegge, “which has not a single letter of its original, for of the French peruke, we got periwig, now abbreviated to wig. Earwig comes from eruca, as Dr. Wallis observes, Anonymiana, p. 56. The French word jour (day) comes from dies, through diurnus, diurno, giorno; so giornale, journal. Uncle is from avus, through avunculus. For Inhimthorpe, and other impossibilities, see Cosmo the Third’s Travels through England, in the reign of Charles II.”
9 Pennant’s London, third edition, 4to., p. 3.
10 Picture of London, p. 12.
11 Picture of London, p. 14. For a larger account of this and other matters briefly touched upon in the present introduction, see Brayley’s London and Middlesex, vol. i. The spirit of them, however, will appear in our work, together with particulars hitherto unnoticed.
12 Id. p. 13.
13 Since this paragraph was written, the wonderful events have taken place in France, which have so agitated the whole of Europe, and which promise to open a new epoch in human history. May all benefit from them, as we believe all may, without real injury to any one!
14 Parentalia, p. 290, quoted in the work next mentioned.
15 Brayley’s London and Middlesex, vol. i. p. 87.
16 Parentalia, p. 27.
17 Survey of London, p. 262. First edition.
18 Fine Arts of the English School, quoted in Brayley, vol. ii. p. 217.
19 Londinium Redivivum, iii., p. 134.
20 Londinium Redivivum, iii., p. 81.
21 Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii., pp. 71, 73.
22 Moser, in the European Magazine, July, 1807.
23 Poems. Gilchrist’s edition, 1807, p. 5.
24 Microcosmographie, quoted in Pennant.
25 Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century, vol. i. p. 281.
26 London and Middlesex, vol. ii., p. 229.
27 Ancient Mysteries described, &c., 1823, p. 195.
28 Purvey’d is the word of Mr. Chalmers; who says, however, that he knows not on what principle the right of “purveying such children” was justified, “except by the maxim that the king had a right to the services of all his subjects.” See Johnson and Steeven’s Shakspeare, Prolegomena, vol. ii., p. 516.
29
“His bushy beard, and shoe-strings green,
His high-crown’d hat, and satin doublet,
Mov’d the stout heart of England’s queen,
Though Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it.”—Gray.
30 Maitland’s History of London, vol. ii., p. 1170.
31 The Bishop’s second wife was a Lady Baker, who is said, by Mr. Brayley, to have been young as well as beautiful, and probably did not add to the prelate’s repose.
32 London and Middlesex, vol. ii., p. 231.
33 The active habits of our ancestors enabled them to bear these out-of-door sermons better than their posterity could; yet, as times grew less hardy, they began to have consequences which Bishop Latimer attributed to another cause. “The citizens of Raim,” said he, in a sermon preached in Lincolnshire, in the year 1552, “had their burying-place without the city, which, no doubt, is a laudable thing; and I do marvel that London, being so great a city, hath not a burial-place without, for no doubt it is an unwholesome thing to bury within the city, especially at such a time when there be great sickness, and many die together. I think, verily, that many a man taketh his death in Paul’s Churchyard, and this I speak of experience; for I myself, when I have been there on some mornings to hear the sermons, have felt such an ill-savoured unwholesome savour, that I was the worse for it a great while after; and I think no less, but it is the occasion of great sickness and disease.”—Brayley, vol. ii., p. 315. After all, the Bishop may have been right in attributing the sickness to the cemetery. We have seen frightful probabilities of the same kind in our own time; and nothing can be more sensible than what he says of burial-grounds in cities.
34 Maitland, vol. ii., p. 949.
35 The reader, perhaps, will agree with us in thinking, that the last three lines of this poetry are unworthy of the rest, and put Jane in a theatrical attitude which she would not have effected.
36 Some account of London, third edition, p. 394.
37 Chalmers’s British Poets, vol. iv., p. 91.
38 “After which, once ended,” says Stow, “the preacher gat him home, and never after durst look out for shame, but kept him out of sight like an owle; and when he once asked one that had been his olde friende, what the people talked of him, all were it that his own conscience well shewed him that they talked no good, yet when the other answered him, that there was in every man’s mouth spoken of him much shame, it so strake him to the hart, that in a few daies after, he withered, and consumed away.”—Brayley, vol. i., p. 312.
39 From a MS. in the British Museum, quoted by Brayley, vol. ii., p. 312.
40 A Dance of Death (for the subject was often repeated) is a procession of the various ranks of life, from the pope to the peasant, each led by a skeleton for his partner. Holbein enlarged it by the addition of a series of visits privately paid by Death to the individuals. The figurantes, in his work, by no means go down the dance “with an air of despondency.” The human beings are unconscious of their partners (which is fine); and the Deaths are as jolly as skeletons well can be.
41 Brayley, vol. ii., p. 320.
42 See Todd’s Milton, vol. vii.; Aubrey’s Letters and Lives; and Ben Jonson’s Poems. Gill’s specimen of a satire is very bad, and the great laureate’s answer is not much better. The first couplet of the latter, however, is to the purpose:—
“Shall the prosperity of a pardon still
Secure thy railing rhymes, infamous Gill?”
43 History of London, vol. ii., p. 1166.
44 Life of Sir Christopher Wren, in the Library of Useful Knowledge, No. 24, p. 27.
45 Wordsworth.
46 Brayley, vol. ii., p. 303.
47 In his Life, vol. iii., p. 98. Edit. 1827.
48 Unless, indeed, we are to suppose, as has been suggested, that Sermon Lane is a corruption of Sheremoniers Lane, that is, the lane of the money clippers, or such as cut and rounded the metal which was to be coined or stamped into money. There was anciently a place in this lane for melting silver, called the Blackloft—and the Mint was in the street now called Old Change, in the immediate neighbourhood. See Maitland, ii., 880 (edit. of 1756.)
49 Letters to Stella, in the duodecimo edition of his works, 1775, Letter vi., p. 43.
50 Boswell’s Life of Johnson, eighth edition, vol. iv., p. 93.
51 History of London, vol. ii., p. 925.
52 The Tatler. With notes historical, biographical, and critical 8vo. 1797. Vol. iv., p. 206.
53 Pennant’s London, p. 377.
54 Of William III.
55 The genius of Clarke, which, agreeably to his unhappy end, was tender and melancholy, was unsuited to the livelier intoxication of Dryden’s feast, afterwards gloriously set by Handel. Clarke has been styled the musical Otway of his time. He was organist at St. Paul’s, and shot himself at his house in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Mr. John Reading, organist of St. Dunstan’s, who was intimately acquainted with him, was going by at the moment the pistol went off, and upon entering the house “found his friend and fellow-student in the agonies of death.” Another friend of his, one of the lay vicars of the cathedral, relates of him, that a few weeks before the catastrophe, Clarke had alighted from his horse in a sequestered spot in the country, where there was a pond surrounded by trees, and not knowing whether to hang or drown himself, tossed up a piece of money to see which. The money stuck in the earth edgeways. Of this new chance for life, poor Clarke, we see, was unable to avail himself.
56 See Maitland, vol. ii., p. 949.
57 Since this was written, the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Court in Doctors’ Commons on matters of divorce has been transferred to a new “Court of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes,” sitting at Westminster.
58 Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii., p. 473.
59 On the authority of Langton, Johnson’s friend. See Memoirs, Anecdotes, &c., by Letitia Matilda Hawkins, vol. i., p. 293.
60 Censura Literaria, vol. iii., p. 254.
61 Life, Diary, and Correspondence of Sir William Dugdale, by Hamper. Lond. 1827. Our memorandum has omitted the page. The letter was written to Dugdale by Randall Holme, a brother herald.
62 Another opinion, however, is that the spear had been given to one of his ancestors as having been a magistrate of some description. This supposition seems to be supported by the grant of arms to John Shakspeare in 1599, which has been printed by Mr. Malcolm. But Shakspeares in Warwickshire are as plentiful as blackberries, and perhaps the name originated in the stout arms of a whole tribe of soldiers.
63 Vix ea nostra voco—(as above translated). The effect is stronger if the whole passage is called to mind. It is Ovid;
Nam genus, et proavos, et quæ non fecimus ipsi,
Vix ea nostra voco.—Metamor. lib. 13. v. 140.
For birth, and rank, and what our own good powers
Have earned us not, I scarcely call them ours.
Ovid, himself a man of birth, puts this sentiment in the mouth of Ulysses, a king. But then he was a king whose talents were above his royalty.
64 Life of Gibbon, in the Autobiography, vol. i.
65 Lamb’s Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, p. 147.
66 Maitland, vol. i., p. 28.
67 Malcolm, Londinium Redivivum, iv., p. 367.
68 Spectator, vol. i., No. 28.
69 Malone, in his Historical Account of the English Stage, has an ingenious parallel between these inn-theatres and the construction of the modern ones. “Many of our ancient dramatick pieces,” he observes, “were performed in the yards of carriers’ inns, in which, in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the comedians, who then first united themselves in companies, erected an occasional stage. The form of these temporary play-houses seems to be preserved in our modern theatre. The galleries in both are ranged over each other on three sides of the building. The small rooms under the lowest of these galleries answer to our present boxes; and it is observable, that these, even in theatres which were built in a subsequent period expressly for dramatick exhibitions, still retained their old name, and were frequently called rooms by our ancient writers. The yard bears a sufficient resemblance to the pit, as at present in use. We may suppose the stage to have been raised in this arena, on the fourth side, with its back to the gateway of the inn, at which the money for admission was taken. Thus in fine weather, a play-house, not incommodious, might have been formed.” Reed’s Edition of Johnson’s and Steevens’s Shakspeare, vol. iii., p. 73.
70 Tatler, No. 127.
71 Londinium Redivivum, ii., 375.
72 History of London, ii., 880.
73 The whipping of the criminals in Bridewell took place after the church service.
74 Dunciad, book ii., v. 269.
75 See Walter Scott’s edition of Dryden, vol. x., p. 372. “Abhorrers” were addressers on the side of the court, who had avowed “abhorrence” of the proceedings of the Whigs. The word was a capital one to sound through a trumpet.
76 Aubrey says that his death took place in a cellar in Long Acre; and adds; “Mr. Edm. Wylde, &c., had made a collection for him, and given him money.” But Aubrey’s authority is not valid against Wood’s. He is to be read like a proper gossip, whose accounts we may pretty safely reject or believe, as it suits other testimony.
77 Wood’s Athenæ Oxonienses, fol. vol. ii., p. 145.
78 Baker’s Biographia Dramatica. Reed’s edition, 1782, vol. i., p. 207.
79 Malone in the Prolegomena to Shakspeare, as above, vol, iii., p. 287.
80 Correspondence of Samual Richardson, &c., by Anna Letitia Barbauld, vol. i., p. 97.
81 Our authority (one of the highest in this way) is Mr. Nichols, in his Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. iv., p. 579.
82
“—— Apoplexy cramm’d intemperance knocks
Down to the ground at once, as butcher felleth ox;”—
says Thomson, in his Castle of Indolence. It was the death which the good-natured, indolent poet probably expected for himself, and which he would have had, if a cold and fever had not interfered; for there is an apoplexy of the head alone, as well as of the whole body; and men of letters who either exercise little, or work overmuch, seem almost sure to die of it, or of palsy; which is a disease analogous. It is the last stroke, given in the kind resentment of nature, to the brains which should have known better than bring themselves to such a pass. In the biography of Italian literati, “Mori’ d’ apoplessia”—(he died of apoplexy)—is a common verdict.
83 Correspondence, as above, vol. i., p. 177.
84 Correspondence, &c., by Mrs. Barbauld, vol.i., p. 183.
85 Life and Reign of King James I., quoted in Howell’s State Trials, vol. ii., p. 745.
86 State Trials, ut supra, p. 762.
87 “It is an opinion which universally prevails with regard to those cross-legged monuments,” says Dr. Nash, “that they were all erected to the memory of Knights Templars. Now to me it is very evident that not one of them belonged to that order; but, as Mr. Habingdon, in describing this at Alve church, hath justly expressed it, to Knights of the Holy Voyage. For the order of Knights Templars followed the rule of the Canons regular of St. Austin, and, as such, were under a vow of celibacy. Now there is scarcely one of these monuments which is certainly known for whom it is erected; but it is as certain, that the person it represented was a married man. The Knights Templars always wore a white habit, with a red cross on the left shoulder. I believe, not a single instance can be produced of either the mantle or cross being carved on any of these monuments, which surely would not have been omitted, as by it they were distinguished from all other orders, had these been really designed to represent Knights Templars. Lastly, this order was not confined to England only, but dispersed itself all over Europe: yet it will be very difficult to find one cross-legged monument anywhere out of England; whereas they would have abounded in France, Italy, and elsewhere, had it been a fashion peculiar to that famous order. But though, for these reasons, I cannot allow the cross-legged monuments to have been for Knights Templars, yet they had some relation to them, being the memorials of those zealous devotees, who had either been in Palestine, personally engaged in what was called the Holy War, or had laid themselves under a vow to go thither, though perhaps they were prevented from it by death. Some few, indeed, might possibly be erected to the memory of persons who had made pilgrimages there merely out of private devotion. Among the latter, probably, was that of the lady of the family of Mepham, of Mepham in Yorkshire, to whose memory a cross-legged monument was placed in a chapel adjoining to the one collegiate church of Howden, in Yorkshire, and is at this day remaining, together with that of her husband on the same tomb. As this religious madness lasted no longer than the reign of Henry III. (the tenth and last crusade being published in the year 1268), and the whole order of Knights Templars was dissolved by Edward II., military expeditions to the Holy Land, as well as devout pilgrimages there, had their period by the year 1312; consequently none of those cross-legged monuments are of a later date than the reign of Edward II., or beginning of Edward III., nor of an earlier than that of King Stephen, when these expeditions first took place in this kingdom.”—History and Antiquities of Worcestershire, fol. vol. i., p. 31. Since Dr. Nash wrote, however, it has been denied that even the cross legs had any thing to do with crusades.
88 Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. We quote no edition, because where we could we have modernised the spelling; which is a justice to this fine old author in a quotation, in order that nobody may pass it over. With regard to Chaucer being of the Temple, and to his beating the Franciscan in Fleet Street, all which is reported, depends upon the testimony of a Mr. Buckley, who, according to Speght, had seen a Temple record to that effect.
89 Prothalamion.
90 “Shove-groat, named also Slyp-groat, and Slide-thrift, are sports occasionally mentioned by the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and probably were analogous to the modern pastime called Justice Jervis, or Jarvis, which is confined to common pot-houses, and only practised by such as frequent the tap-rooms.”—Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, 1828, chap, i., sect. xix. It is played with halfpence, which are jerked with the palm of the hand from the edge of a table, towards certain numbers described upon it.
91 Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii., p. 290.
92 Sir John Davies, who was afterwards Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, and wrote a poem on the Art of Dancing (so lively was the gravity of those days!) “bastinadoed” a man at dinner in the Temple Hall, for which he was expelled. The man probably deserved it, for Davies had a fine nature; and he went back again by favour of the excellent Lord Ellesmere.
93 Dunciad, book ii.
94 Boswell’s Life of Johnson, eighth edit., 8vo. 1816, vol. iv., p. 27.
95 Boswell’s Life of Johnson, eighth edit. 1816, vol. i., p. 398.
96 Boswell’s Life of Johnson, eighth edit. 1816, vol. i., p. 378.
97 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 421.
98 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 271.
99 Spence’s Anecdotes, Singer’s edit. p. 355.
100 Swift’s Works, ut supra, vol. iv., p. 41.
101 Tatler, No. 142. According to the author of a lively rattling book, conversant with the furniture of old times, Arbuthnot was a great amateur in sticks. “My uncle,” says he, “was universally allowed to be as deeply skilled in caneology as any one, Dr. Arbuthnot not excepted, whose science on important questions was quoted even after his death; for his collection of the various headed sticks and canes, from the time of the first Charles, taken together, was unrivalled.”—Wine and Walnuts, vol. i., p. 242.
102 Tatler, No. 86.
103 Spence’s Anecdotes, by Singer, p. 337.
104 Ibid.
105 Tatler, as above, vol. iv., p. 600.
106 Censura Literaria, vol. iv., p. 345.
107 Imitations of Horace, Ep. i., book ii.
108 Pennant, ut supra, p. 172.
109 Faerie Queen, book vi., canto iii.
110 Britannia’s Pastorals, book i., song iii.
111 Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii., p. 279.
112 See Malcolm’s Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii., 453.
113 Boswell, ut supra, vol. i., p. 441.
114 Malone, on the passage in Boswell, ibid.
115 Boswell, vol. ii., p. 117.
116 Beauclerk, of the St. Alban’s family, was a descendant of Charles II., whom he resembled in face and complexion, for which Johnson by no means liked him the less.
117 Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, &c. Allman, 1822, p. 69.
118 Boswell, vol. iii., p. 398.
119 Johnson’s Court runs into Gough Square, “a place lately built with very handsome houses, and well inhabited by persons of fashion.”—Maitland’s History and Survey of London, by Entick, folio, 1756 p. 961.
120 Boswell, vol. i., p. 384.
121 Boswell, vol. i., p. 400.
122 Id., p. 408.
123 Boswell, vol. ii., p. 469.
124 Boswell, vol. ii., p. 455.
125 Ibid., vol. iv., p. 77.
126 Ibid., vol. iii., p. 327.
127 Gay’s Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London, book ii.
128 Pennant, ut supra, p. 139.
129 Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii., p. 397.
130 Biographia Dramatica, from Oldys’s MS. Notes on Langbaine.
131 Censura Literaria, vol. i., p. 176.
132 State Poems, vol. ii., p. 143,
[133] Boswell, vol. i., p. 383.
134 Boswell, vol. iii., p. 331.
135 Dugdale’s Antiquities of Westminster. Heraldic MS. in the Museum, quoted in Londinium Redivivum (vol. ii., p. 282). Brydges’s Collins’s Peerage. Belsham’s Life of Lindsey. We have been thus minute in tracing the occupancies of this house, from the interest excited by some of the members connected with it. Pennant says, upon the authority of the Sydney Papers, that Leicester bequeathed it to his son-in-law, which appears probable, since the latter possessed it. Perhaps the herald was confused by the name of Robert, which belonged both to son and son-in-law.
136 Howell’s State Trials, vol. i., p. 1343.
137 Todd’s edit. of Spenser, vol. i., p. cxli.
138 Godwin’s History or the Commonwealth, vol. i., p. 410.
139 Boswell, vol. iv., p. 276.
140 Trivia; or the Art of Walking the Streets of London, book iii. Of a similar, and more perplexing facetiousness was the trick of extracting wigs out of hackney coaches. “The thieves,” says the Weekly Journal (March 30, 1717), “have got such a villanous way now of robbing gentlemen, that they cut holes through the backs of hackney coaches, and take away their wigs, or fine head-dresses of gentlewomen; so a gentleman was served last Sunday in Tooley Street, and another but last Tuesday in Fenchurch Street; wherefore this may serve as a caution to gentlemen and gentlewomen that ride single in the night-time, to sit on the fore-seat, which will prevent that way of robbing.”—Malcolm’s Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century, second edit., vol. i., p. 104.
141 Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii.
142 Second Part of Henry IV. act 3. sc. 2.
143 Birch’s Negotiations, pp. 206, 207, quoted in the work above mentioned, p. 189. Whenever we quote from any authorities but the original, we beg the reader to bear in mind, first, that we always notice our having done so; and, secondly, that we make a point of comparing the originals with the report. Both Monmouth and Birch, for example, have been consulted in the present instance.
144 We allude to the celebrated saying of Gibbon respecting the Fairy Queen.
145 In his Letters on the English Nation. But we quote from memory.
146 We conclude so from our authorities in both instances. Mr. Malcolm’s Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii., p. 398.
147 See his life in Chalmers’s General Biographical Dictionary, vol. v., p. 280.
148 General Biographical Dictionary, 8vo., 1812, vol. vii.
149 Letters on the English Nation.
150 Life, in Chalmers’s English Poets, p. 26.
151 Spence’s Anecdotes, p. 376.
152 Idem, p. 46.
153 Memoirs of the Life, Writings, &c., of William Congreve, Esq., 1730, p. xi. Curll discreetly omits his name in the titlepage. [On reconsidering this interview (though we have no longer the book by us, and therefore speak from memory) we are doubtful, whether the lady was not Mrs. Bracegirdle, instead of the duchess.]
154 Lives of the Poets, &c., by Mr. Cibber and others, 1753.
155 Pennant’s London, ut supra, p. 124. Swift’s Letters to Stella. The particulars of the case are taken from Howell’s State Trials. vol. xii., p. 947.
156 “Captain Baily, said to have accompanied Raleigh in his last expedition to Guiana, employed four hackney coaches, with drivers in liveries, to ply at the May-pole in the Strand, fixing his own rates, about the year 1634. Baily’s coaches seem to have been the first of what are now called hackney-coaches; a term at that time applied indiscriminately to all coaches let for hire.” The favourite Buckingham, about the year 1619, introduced the sedan. The post-chaise, invented in France, was introduced by Mr. Tull, son of the well-known writer on husbandry. The stage first came in about the year 1775; and mail-coaches appeared in 1785.—See a note to the Tatler, as above, vol. iv., p. 415.
157 This was written in 1834.
158 The faults of the New Church are, that it is too small for the steeple; that it is divided into two stories, which make it still smaller; that the entablature on the north and south parts is too frequently interrupted; that pediments are “affectedly put over each projection;” in a word, that a little object is cut up into too many little parts, and rendered fantastic with embellishment. See the opinions of Gwynn, Ralph, and Malton, quoted in Brayley’s London and Middlesex, vol. iv., p. 199.
159 Life of James I. quoted in Pennant, p. 155.
160 L’Estrange’s Life of Charles I., quoted in D’Israeli’s Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles I., vol. ii., p. 218.
161 L’Estrange’s Life of Charles I.
162 Steenie—a familiarisation of Stephen. The name was given Buckingham by James I., in reference to the beauty of St. Stephen, whose face, during his martyrdom, is described in the New Testament as shining like that of an angel.
163 See the account of the Paradise of Glory, in vol. ii., p. 225.
164 Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq., 2nd edition, vol. i., p. 309.
165 Id., p. 357.
166 Lives and Letters, as above.
167 See three Poems in his Genuine Remains.—Chalmers’s British Poets, vol. viii., p. 187.
168 British Poets, vol. vii., p. 101.
169 Londinium Redivivum, vol. iv., p. 410.
170 Gentleman’s Magazine for 1793, p. 88.
171 Memoirs and Correspondence, as above, vol. i., p. 182.
172 Vol. ii., p. 348.
173 Memoirs and Correspondence, as above, vol. iii., p. 75.
174 Id., p. 185.
175 Vol. iv., p. 81.
176 Granger’s Biographical History of England, 1824, vol. v., p. 356.
177 Pennant, ut supra, p. 144.
178 Where he likens Jupiter’s house in the Milky Way to the palace of Augustus:—
“Hic locus est, quem, si verbis audacia detur,
Haud timeam magni dixisse Palatia cœli.”
Lib. i. v. 175.
Which Sandys, by a felicitous conceit in the taste of his age (and of Ovid too), has transferred to the palace of Charles the First, and rendered still more applicable to the Milky Way:—
“This glorious roofe I would not doubt to call,
Had I but boldness giv’n me, Heaven’s White-Hall”
179 Pennant, p. 147.
180 It was a joke, probably invented, against a late festive alderman, that some lover of Terence, at a public dinner, having toasted two royal brothers, who were present, under the title of the Adelphi (the Greek word for “brothers”), the Alderman said, that as they were on the subject of streets, “he would beg leave to propose ‘Finsbury Square.’”
181 Boswell, iv., p. 102.
182 Id., p. 106.
183 Boswell, vol. i., p. 225.
184 Near Holland House, Kensington. Addison died in that house.
185 “York Stairs,” says the author of the ‘Critical Reviews of Public Buildings,’ quoted in ‘Brayley’s London and Middlesex,’ “form unquestionably the most perfect piece of building that does honour to Inigo Jones: it is planned in so exquisite a taste, formed of such equal and harmonious parts, and adorned with such proper and elegant decorations, that nothing can be censured or added. It is at once happy in its situation beyond comparison, and fancied in a style exactly suited to that situation. The rock-work, or rustic, can never be better introduced than in buildings by the side of water; and, indeed, it is a great question whether it ought to have been made use of anywhere else. On the side next the river appear the arms of the Villiers family; and on the north front is inscribed their motto: Fidei Coticula Crux,—The Cross is the touch-stone of faith. On this side is a small terrace, planted with lime-trees; the whole supported by a rate raised upon the houses in the neighbouring streets; and being inclosed from the public, forms an agreeable promenade for the inhabitants.”
186 Diary, vol. i., p. 221.
187 “Memoirs of John Evelyn, Esq.” Second edit. vol. ii., p. 364.
188 In 1596, Northampton writes thus to Lord Burghley (Essex’s great enemy), upon presenting to him a devotional composition. “The weight of your lordship’s piercing judgment held me in so reverend an awe, as before I were encouraged by two or three of my friends, who had a taste, I durst not present this treatise to your view: but since their partiality hath made me thus bold, my own affection to sanctify this labour to yourself hath made me impudent.”
Yet in the year succeeding, our authority observes, he has the following passage in a letter to Essex:—“Some friend of mine means this day, before night, to merit my devotion and uttermost gratitude by seeking to do good to you; the success whereof my prayers in the meantime shall recommend to that best gale of wind that may favour it. Your lordship, by your last purchase, hath almost enraged the dromedary that would have won the Queen of Sheba’s favour by bringing pearls. If you could once be as fortunate in dragging old Leviathan (Burghley) and his cub, tortuosum colubrum (Sir Robert Cecil), as the prophet termeth them, out of this den of mischievous device, the better part of the world would prefer your virtue to that of Hercules.” See “Memoirs of the Peers of James I.” p. 240. Such “wise men” are the worst of fools. And here he was acting, as such men are apt to do, like one of the commonest fools, in saying such contradictory things under his own hand.
189 Vol. iv., p. 308.
190 “Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury,” in the “Autobiography,” p. 110.
191 Boswell, vol. i., p. 81.
192 The author of a “History of the Clubs of London” (vol. ii. p. 3.), says that this is not the Beef-Steak Club of which Estcourt, the comedian, was steward, and Mrs. Woffington president. He derives its origin from an accidental dinner taken by Lord Peterborough in the scenic room of Rich the Harlequin, over Covent Garden Theatre. The original gridiron, on which Rich broiled the Peer’s beef-steak, is still preserved, as the palladium of the club; and the members have it engraved on their buttons. It has generally, we believe, admitted the leading men of the day, of whatever description, provided they can joke and bear joking. The author just mentioned says, that Lord Sandwich’s and Wilkes’s days are generally quoted as the golden period of the society.
193 Londinium Redivivum, vol. iv., p. 302.
194 Tatler, No. 100.
195 “Lives and Letters,” ut supra.
196 “Worthies of England,” ut supra.
197 Gifford’s “Works of Ben Jonson,” vol. i., p. ix.
198 Pennant, ut supra, p. 176
199 Diary, ut supra, vol. ii., p. 185.
200 “Memoires of Lady Fanshawe, &c., written by herself.” 1729, p. 267.
201 “Memoires of Lady Fanshawe, &c., written by herself.” 1729, p. 298.
202 “Life of William Lord Russell, with some Account of the Times in which he lived.” By Lord John Russell, 3rd edition, 1820, vol. ii., p. 18, &c.
203 “History of the Reign of James the Second.” Introductory Chapter. It is worth while, as a puzzle for the reader, to give here the contested point in the statute, which Lord Russell’s enemies thought so clear against him, and his friends so much in his favour. 13 Car. II. “Provided always, that no person be prosecuted for any of the offences in this act mentioned, other than such as are made and declared to be high treason, unless it be by order of the King’s Majesty, his heirs or successors, under his or their sign manual, or by order of the Council Table of his Majesty, his heirs or successors, directed unto the attorney-general for the time being: or some other counsel learned to his Majesty, his heirs or successors, for the time being: nor shall any person or persons, by virtue of this present act, incur any of the penalties herein before-mentioned, unless he or they be prosecuted within six months next after the offence committed, and indicted thereupon within three months after such prosecution; anything herein contained to the contrary notwithstanding.”
204 Life, as above, vol. i., p. 121.
205 Hume’s History of England, vol. x. chap. 69.
206 Rapin’s History of England, 1731, vol. xiv., p. 333.
207 Burnet’s History of his Own Times.
208 Burnet’s History of his Own Times, 12mo., 1725, vol. ii., p. 260.
209 Mr. Fox, in his history above-mentioned.
210 Burnet and Tillotson thought so too, when James II. afterwards forced the church to declare one way or other.
211 In his Journal, Burnet says that he often sung “within himself,” but that the words were not audible. When his companion asked him what he was singing, he said the beginning of the 119th Psalm. It is stated in the Life by his descendant (who has added some original passages from papers at Woburn), that “just as they were entering Lincoln’s Inn Fields, he said, ‘This has been to me a place of sinning, and God now makes it the place of my punishment.’” He had lived freely in his youth, though he is not the Russell spoken of in the Memoirs of Grammont, as many are led to believe by the engravings of him inserted in that work. The person there mentioned was a cousin.
212 For complete reports of all the trials connected with the Rye House Plot, and for several pamphlets written pro and con upon Lord Russell’s case, see the “State Trials,” vol. ix., beginning at p. 357.
213 We quote the Earl of Bedford’s reply from Granger’s Biographical History of England, not being able to refer to Orrery, who we believe is the authority for it. Burnet’s Journal is to be found at the end of Lord Russell’s Life, by his descendants.
214 Lounger’s Common-Place Book, 1805. 8vo. vol. i., p. 301.
215 Anecdotes of Painting, in his Works, 4to. vol. iii., p. 364.
216 Walpole’s Works, ut supra, vol iii., p. 364.
217 Life of Edward Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, in the Autobiography p. 145. It is an honour to Grotius, who wrote a book, De Veritate, on the other side of the question, that he encouraged so renowned an antagonist to publish: though, perhaps, he saw less danger in it than singularity. At all events, he could anticipate no harm from the close.
218 Malcolm’s Customs and Manners of London, from the Roman Invasion to the Year 1700, vol. i., p. 318.
219 Poems on Affairs of State, from the Time of Oliver Cromwell to the Abdication of King James the Second, vol. i., p. 147.
220 It is still a phrase with the vulgar to say, a man “shams Abram.”
221 Manners and Customs, vol. i., p. 322.
222 Historical Account of the English Stage, p. 320.
223 It has recently been pulled down to make room for the enlargement of the museum of the College of Surgeons.
224 See Malone, pp. 135, 136.
225 Malone, p. 135.
226 Ibid., p. 136.
227 Malone, p. 136.
228 Memoirs, ut supra, vol. i., p. 167.
229 Memoirs of the English Court in the Reign of Charles II., &c., by the Countess of Dunois, part ii., p. 71.
230 Memoirs of Count Grammont, 8vo. 1811, vol. ii. p. 142.
231 With whom Charles II. was in love—afterwards Duchess of Richmond.
232 The famous wit and debauchee.
233 Pepys’ Memoirs, vol. iii., p. 136.
234 Pepys’ Memoirs, vol. iv., p. 99.
235 Id. p. 222.
236 Pepys’ Memoirs, vol. iv., p. 2.
237 Cibber’s Apology, chap. v., &c.
238 See Tatler, No. 167.
239 Cibber’s Apology, 2d edit. p. 138.
240 “Lounger’s Common Place Book,” vol. ii., p. 137.
241 Malcolm’s Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century, vol. i., p. 417.
242 Malcolm, et seq., p. 421.
243 Lounger’s Common-Place Book, vol. ii., p. 139.
244 Lounger’s Common-Place Book, vol. ii., p. 141.
245 “For,” says the note, “while the mucilaginous qualities of porter may form one criterion of the nourishment it yields, it does not follow that mere nourishment is or ought to be the only consideration in a labouring man’s use of malt liquor, or any other aliment. It is well known that flesh-meats yield chyle in greater abundance than any production of the vegetable kingdom; but Franklin would not have considered this any argument for living wholly upon meat. The fact is, that the stimulating quality of all fermented liquors (when moderately taken) is an essential part of the refreshment, and therefore of the strength they yield.
‘We curse not wine—the vile excess we blame.’”
[To this Franklin might have answered, that the want of stimulus is generally produced by a previous abuse of it, and that the having recourse to fermented liquors is likely to continue the abuse, whatever may be said about moderation. The moderation is so difficult, that it is better to abstain than to hazard it. It is true (not to quote the words irreverently) “man does not live by bread alone,” but by sociality and good-humour; and that even a little excess occasionally is not to be narrowly considered; but for the purposes of labour we may surely gather from the recorded experience of those who have laboured most, whether physically or mentally, first, that the more temperate our habits, the more we can perform; and, secondly, that an habitual abstinence from some kinds of refreshment is the only way to secure them.]
246 Life of Benjamin Franklin, 1826, p. 31.
247 P. 160.
248 Lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Hooker, &c. by Izaac Walton, 1825, p. 22.
249 Life of Donne, in Chalmers’s “British Poets.”
250 For complete particulars of the history of James’s daughter and son-in-law, and their gallant adherents, see “Memoirs of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia,” by Miss Benger, and “Collins’s Peerage,” by Sir Egerton Brydges, vol. v., p. 446. Miss Benger is as romantic as if she had lived in the queen’s time, but she is diligent and amusing. The facts can easily be separated from her colouring.
251 See Baker’s Biographia Dramatica, vol. ii.
252 See Baker, passim.
253 Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii., chap. 24. Most of the above particulars respecting Hart and Mohun have been gathered from that work. There are scarcely any records of them elsewhere.
254 Cibber’s ‘Apology,’ ut supra, p. 226.
255 “March 1st (1671). I thence walked with him through St. James’s Parke to the garden, where I both saw and heard a very familiar discourse between... and Mrs. Nellie, as they called an impudent comedian, she looking out of her garden on a terrace at the top of the wall, and... standing on ye greene walke under it. I was heartily sorry at this scene. Thence the King walked to the Duchess of Cleveland, another lady of pleasure, and curse of our nation.”—Evelyn’s ‘Memoirs,’ ut supra, vol. ii., p. 339. It would be curious to know how Mr. Evelyn conducted himself during this time, if he and the King saw one another.
256 Miscellaneous Works of the Duke of Buckingham and others. 1704, vol. i., p. 34.
257 The verses are attributed to Etherege; but, from a Scotch rhyme in them of trull and will, are perhaps not his.
258 History of His own Times, Edin. 1753, vol. i., p. 387.
259 Tatler, No. 182.
260 Tatler, No. 188. See also No. 7.
261 Apology, p. 303.
262 Baker’s Biographia Dramatica, Art. Farquhar, vol. i., p. 155. Faithful Memoirs, &c., of Mrs. Anne Oldfield, by Egerton, p. 76.
263 Apology, p. 250.
264 Tatler, No. 10.
265 Letters from the Rev. J. Orton and the Rev. Sir John Stonhouse, quoted in the “General Biographical Dictionary,” vol. xxiii. p. 326.
266 Memoirs, p. 144.
267 Memoirs of Richard Cumberland, written by himself, 4to. p. 59. Davies, in his “Life of Garrick,” vol. i. p. 136, gives us a different idea of the preference awarded by the audience. To be sure, upon his knowledge, he says only that Quin was defeated “in the opinion of the best judges;” but he adds, from report, an anecdote that looks as if the general feeling also was against him. “When Lothario,” he says, “gave Horatio the challenge, Quin, instead of accepting it instantaneously, with the determined and unembarrassed brow of superior bravery, made a long pause, and dragged out the words,
‘I’ll meet thee there!’
in such a manner as to make it appear absolutely ludicrous. He paused so long before he spoke, that somebody, it was said, called out from the gallery, ‘Why don’t you tell the gentleman whether you will meet him or not?’”
268 Davis’s Miscellanies, ut supra, vol. i., p. 126.
269 Since this was written, Covent Garden has been converted into an Italian Opera House, has been a second time burnt, and a third time rebuilt; the architect being Mr. Barry, a son of Sir Charles Barry, who designed and erected the New Houses of Parliament.
270 Alluding to her performance of Cordelia, &c., with the one, and of Juliet, Belvidera, &c., with the other.
271 The Rosciad.
272 “He (Thomson) left behind him the tragedy of ‘Coriolanus,’ which was, by the zeal of his patron, Sir George Lyttleton, brought upon the stage for the benefit of his family, and recommended by a prologue, which Quin, who had long lived with Thomson in fond intimacy, spoke in such a manner as showed him ‘to be,’ on that occasion, ‘no actor.’ The commencement of this benevolence is very honourable to Quin; who is reported to have delivered Thomson, then known to him only for his genius, from an arrest, by a very considerable present; and its continuance is honourable to both, for friendship is not always the sequel of obligation.” Life, by Dr. Johnson, in Chalmers’s ‘Poets,’ p. 409.
273 Alas! now dead. This passage was written before the departure of our admirable friend.
274 Scott’s ‘Dryden,’ vol. viii., p. 178.
275 In the prologue to Etherege’s play of the ‘Man of Mode.’ Scott’s ‘Dryden,’ vol. x., p. 340.
276 Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii., p. 317.
277 Cibber’s ‘Lives of the Poets’ vol. iii., p. 252.
278 Works of Dryden, vol. i., p. 387. Sir Walter thus notices a letter of Tonson’s on the subject of Dryden’s contribution to one of the volumes known under the title of his Miscellanies:—“The contribution, although ample, was not satisfactory to old Jacob Tonson, who wrote on the subject a most mercantile expostulatory letter to Dryden, which is fortunately still preserved, as a curious specimen of the minutiæ of a literary bargain in the seventeenth century. Tonson, with reference to Dryden, having offered a strange bookseller six hundred lines for twenty guineas, enters into a question in the rule of three, by which he discovers and proves, that for fifty guineas he has only 1,446 lines, which he seems to take more unkindly, as he had not counted the lines until he had paid the money; from all which Jacob infers, that Dryden ought, out of generosity, at least to throw him in something to the bargain, especially as he had used him more kindly in Juvenal, which, saith old Jacob, is not reckoned so easy to translate as Ovid.”—Vol. i., p. 379.
279 Dryden, vol. i., p. 114.
280 Dryden, vol. i., p. 203.
281 Poems on State Affairs, vol. i., p. 99.
282 Spence’s ‘Anecdotes,’ p. 263.
283 Spence’s ‘Anecdotes,’ p. 59.
284 Vol. xv., p. 218.
285 Spence, p. 263.
286 Ibid., p. 286.
287 Boswell, vol. i., p. 373.
288 Boswell, vol. iii., p. 378.
289 It is still so called by many of the poorer orders, who are oftener in the right in their old English than is suspected. Some of them call it Common Garden, which is a better corruption than its present one.
290 Londinium Redivivum, vol. iv., p. 213.
291 Londinium Redivivum, vol. iv., p. 219.
292 Memoirs of Mrs. Letitia Pilkington. Dublin, 1748, vol. i., p. 136.
293 Hazlitt’s ‘Picture Galleries of England,’ p. 80.
294 The best account we are acquainted with of the various Beef-steak Clubs has been given us by the good-humoured author of ‘Wine and Walnuts.’ His book is an antiquarian fiction, but not entirely such; and the present account, among others, may be taken as fact. George Lambert, Rich’s scene-painter at Covent Garden, says he, “being a man of wit, and of repute as an artist, was frequently visited by persons of note while at his work in the scene-room. In those days it was customary for men of fashion to visit the green-room, and to indulge in a morning lounge behind the curtain of the theatre. Lambert, when preparing his designs for a pantomine or new spectacle (for which exhibitions the manager, Rich, was much renowned), would often take his chop or steak cooked on the German stove, rather than quit his occupation for the superior accommodation of a neighbouring tavern. Certain of his visitors, men of taste, struck with the novelty of the thing perhaps, or tempted by the savoury dish, took a knife and fork with Lambert, and enjoyed the treat. Hence the origin of the Beef-steak Club, whose social feasts were long held in the painting-room of this theatre, which, from its commencement, has enrolled among its members persons of the highest rank and fortune, and many eminent professional men and distinguished wits. The Club subsequently met in an apartment of the late theatre; then it moved to the Shakspeare Tavern; thence again to the theatre; until, being burnt out in 1812, the meetings adjourned to the Bedford. At present the celebrated convives assemble at an apartment at the English Opera House in the Strand.
“At the same time this social club flourished in England, and about the year 1749, a Beef-steak Club was established at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, of which the celebrated Mrs. Margaret Woffington was president. It was begun by Mr. Sheridan, but on a very different plan to that in London, no theatrical performer, save one female, being admitted; and though called a Club, the manager alone bore all the expenses. The plan was, by making a list of about fifty or sixty persons, chiefly noblemen and members of Parliament, who were invited. Usually about half that number attended, and dined in the manager’s apartment in the theatre. There was no female admitted but this Peg Woffington, so denominated by all her contemporaries, who was seated in a great chair at the head of the table, and elected president for the season.
“‘It will readily be believed,’ says Mr. Victor, who was joint proprietor of the house, ‘that a club where there were good accommodations, such a lovely president, full of wit and spirit, and nothing to pay, must soon grow remarkably fashionable.’ It did so—but we find it subsequently caused the theatre to be pulled to pieces about the manager’s head.
“Mr. Victor says of Mrs. Margaret, ‘she possessed captivating charms as a jovial, witty bottle companion, but few remaining as a mere female.’ We have Dr. Johnson’s testimony, however, who had often gossipped with Mrs. Margaret in the green-room at old Drury, more in the lady’s favour.
“This author (Victor) says, speaking of the Beef-steak Club, ‘It was a club of ancient institution in every theatre; when the principal performers dined one day in the week together (generally Saturday), and authors and other geniuses were admitted members.’
“The club in Ivy Lane, celebrated by Dr. Johnson, was originally a Beef-steak.”
295 From a paper of Steele’s in the ‘Spectator,’ No. 468.
296 Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin, Esq., &c., by James Thomas Kirkman, vol. ii., p. 419.
297 Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin, Esq., by James Thomas Kirkman, vol. ii., p. 416.
298 A few days after writing this passage, we saw the shrubs making their appearance.
299 Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs, by J. Cradock, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., vol. i., p. 117.
300 Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs, by J. Cradock, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., vol. iv., p. 166.
301 Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs, by J. Cradock, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., vol. i., p. 143.
302 Cradock, as above, p. 144.
303 Love and Madness, a Story too True, in a series of Letters, &c. 1822, p. 11.
304 Cradock’s Memoirs, vol. iv., p. 166.
305 Boswell, vol. iii., p. 414.
306 Cradock’s Memoirs, vol. i., p. 146.
307 Cradock’s Memoirs, vol. iv., p. 166.
308 Account of John Partridge, in the Appendix to the Tatler, vol. iv., p. 613.
309 Anecdotes, Manners, and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century, vol. i., p. 407.
310 Tatler, ut supra, vol. iii., p. 397.
311 Anecdotes, Manners, &c. ut supra, vol. iii., p. 239.
312 Spence, ut supra, pp. 2, and 49.
313 Johnson’s Life of Prior.
314 Arbuthnot was a lover of the table, and is understood to have embittered his end by it; a charge which has been brought against Pope. Perhaps there is not one that might be brought with more safety against ninety men out of a hundred.
315 Journey to the Next World.
316 The house was probably on the site now occupied by the south-east corner of New Coventry Street.
317 For masterly criticisms on Hogarth, see the “Works of Charles Lamb,” vol. ii., p. 88, and the “Picture Galleries of England,” p. 181.
318 Pennant, p. 120.
319 Page 143.
320 Pennant, p. 112. He quotes Archenholz’s Tableau d’Angleterre, 183.
321 State Trials, ut supra, vol. v., p. 1236.
322 Id. pp. 1284, 1286.
323 State Trials, vol. v., p. 1282.
324 Scott’s Edition of “Dryden,” vol. ix., p. 270.
325 See the life of him by his retainer Fairfax, and the account of him on his deathbed in the “Collection of Letters of several Persons of Quality and others.”
326 MSS. Birch, 4221, quoted in the Notes of the Tatler, ut supra, vol. i., p. 208.
327 Life of Prior in the “Lives of the Poets.”
328 New Monthly Magazine, vol. xvii., p. 140.
329 Memoirs of the Life and Writings of De Foe, 1829, vol. ii., p. 116.
330 Pennant, p. 110.
331 Extracted from Salisbury’s Flying Post, of October 27, 1696, in Malcolm’s Manners and Customs of London to the year 1700, vol. i., p. 396.
332 See State Trials, ut supra, “Egerton’s Memoirs of Mrs. Oldfield;” “Swift’s Great and Mean Figures,” vol. xvii., 1765; and the “History of Orlando the Fair, in the Tatler,” as above, Nos. 50 and 51. “The author of Memoirs of Fielding in the Select Trials,” says a note on the latter number, “admits, that for all the ludicrous air and pleasantry of this narration (Steele’s), the truth of facts and character is in general fairly represented.”
333 Discourses delivered at the Royal Academy. Sharpe’s Edition, vol. ii., pp. 113, 115.
334 Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in the “Autobiography,” p. 79.
335 Chambers, short guns, or cannon, standing upon their breaching without carriages, chiefly used for festive occasions; and having their name most probably from being little more than chambers for powder. It was by the discharge of these chambers in the play of Henry VIIIth. that the Globe Theatre was burnt in 1613. Shakspeare followed pretty closely the narrative of Cavendish.—Singer.
336 Mumchance appears to have been a game played with dice, at which silence was to be observed.—Singer.
337 Probably a handsomer figure than the King. This (though not the subtlest imaginable) would be likely to be among Wolsey’s court-tricks, and modes of gaining favour.
338 This “dashed out” is in the best style of bluff King Hal, and capitally well said by Cavendish.
339 Lingard, vol. iv., p. 246. (Quarto Edit.)
340 Vol. iii., p. 862, Edit. 1808.
341 Folio edit
342 Ut supra, p. 347. Henry had been afflicted with this ulcer a long while. He was in danger from it during his marriage with Anne Bullen. It should be allowed him among his excuses of temperament; but then it should also have made him more considerate towards his wives. It never enters the heads, however, of such people that their faults or infirmities are to go for anything, except to make others considerate for them, and warrant whatever humours they choose to indulge.
343 Nicholls’s “Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth,” year 1595, pp. 4-8. “He will ever bear in his heart the picture of her beauty.” “He now looks on his mistress’s outside with the eyes of sense, which are dazzled and amased.”
344 See the poems in Anderson’s Edition, vol. ii., p. 706.
345 From an article in the second volume of that elegant and interesting publication, the “Retrospective Review;” the discontinuance of which, some years back, was regretted by every lover of literature.
346 Biographical History of England. Vol. ii., p. 7. Fifth Edition.
347 Nugæ Antiquæ, Ed. 1804, vol i., p. 348, et seq. (Quoted in a note to Peyton’s “Catastrophe of the Stuarts,” in “Secret History of the Court of James I.” Vol. ii., p. 387.)
348 Harris, vol. i., p. 17.
349 Harris, vol. i., p. 79.
350 See the Poem of “Gotham” in Churchill’s works.
351 Secret History, &c., as above, vol. ii., p. 1.
352 Jesse’s Memoirs of the Court of England during the Reign of the Stuarts, vol. ii., p. 91.
353 Ibid., p. 94.
354 Jesse, vol. ii., p. 79.
355 Boulogne.