  Produced by Al Haines. LONDON SOUVENIRS BY CHARLES WILLIAM HECKETHORN AUTHOR OF LONDON CONTENTS I. LONDON SOUVENIRS I. GAMBLING-CLUBS AND HIGH PLAY. Philosophers may argue, and moralists preach, the former against the folly, and the latter against the wickedness of gambling, but, as may be expected, their remonstrances pass but as a gentle breeze over the outwardly placid ocean of play, causing the fishes—the familiars of the gambling world—languidly to raise their heads, and mildly to inquire: 'What's all that row about?' Gambling is one of the strongest passions in the human breast, and no warning, no exhibition of fatal examples, will ever stop the indulgence in the excitement it procures. It assumes many phases; in all men have undergone disastrous experiences, and yet they repeat the dangerous and usually calamitous experiments. In no undertaking has so much money been lost as in mining; prizes have occasionally been drawn, but at such rare intervals as to be cautions rather than encouragements; and yet, even at the present day, with all the experience of past failures, sanguine speculators fill empty shafts with their gold, which is quickly fished up by the greedy promoters. Some of the now most respectable West End clubs originally were only gambling-hells. They are not so now; but the improvement this would seem to imply is apparent only. Our manners have improved, but not our morals; the table-legs wear frilled trousers now, but the legs are there all the same, even the blacklegs. But it is the past more than the present we wish to speak of. Early in the last century gaming was so prevalent that in one night's search the Leet's Jury of Westminster discovered, and afterwards presented to the justices, no fewer than thirty-five gambling-houses. The Society for the Reformation of Manners published a statement of their proceedings, by which it appeared that in the year beginning with December 1, 1724, to the same date in 1725, they had prosecuted 2,506 persons for keeping disorderly and gaming houses; and for thirty-four years the total number of their prosecutions amounted to the astounding figure of 91,899. In 1728 the following note was issued by the King's order: 'It having been represented to his Majesty that such felons and their accomplices are greatly encouraged and harboured by persons keeping night-houses ... and that the gaming-houses ... much contribute to the corruption of the morals of those of an inferior rank ... his Majesty has commanded me to recommend it, in his name, in the strongest manner to the Justices of the Peace to employ their utmost care and vigilance in the preventing and suppressing of these disorders, etc.' This warning was then necessary, though as early as 1719 an order for putting in execution an old statute of Henry VIII. had been issued to all victuallers, and others whom it might concern. The order ran: 'That none shall keep or maintain any house or place of unlawful games, on pain of 40s. for every day, of forfeiting their recognisance, and of being suppressed; that none shall use or haunt such places, on pain of 6s. 8d. for every offence; and that no artificer, or his journeyman, husbandman, apprentice, labourer, mariner, fisherman, waterman, or serving-man shall play at tables, tennis, dice, cards, bowls, clash, coiting, loggating, or any other unlawful game, out of Christmas, or then out of their master's house or presence, on pain of 20s.' There were thus many attempts at controlling the conduct of the lower orders, but the gentry set them a bad example. The Cocoa-Tree Club, the Tory chocolate-house of Queen Anne's reign, at No. 64, St. James's Street, was a regular gambling-hell. In the evening of a Court Drawing-room in 1719, a number of gentlemen had a dispute over hazard at that house; the quarrel became general, and, as they fought with their swords, three gentlemen were mortally wounded, and the affray was only ended by the interposition of the Royal Guards, who were compelled to knock the parties down with the butt-ends of their muskets indiscriminately, as entreaties and commands were disregarded. Walpole, in his correspondence, relates: 'Within this week there has been a cast at hazard at the Cocoa-Tree, the difference of which amounted to £180,000. Mr. O'Birne, an Irish gamester, had won £100,000 of a young Mr. Harvey, of Chigwell, just started from a midshipman into an estate by his elder brother's death. O'Birne said: "You can never pay me." "I can," said the youth; "my estate will sell for the debt." "No," said O'Birne, "I will win £10,000; you shall throw for the odd £90,000." They did, and Harvey won.' It is not on record whether he took the lesson to heart. The house was, in 1746, turned into a club, but its reputation was not improved; bribery, high play, and foul play continued to be common in it. Another chocolate-house was White's, now White's Club, St. James's Street. As a chocolate-house it was established about 1698, near the bottom of the west side of St. James's Street; it was burnt down in 1773. Plate VI. of Hogarth's 'Rake's Progress' shows a room full of players at White's, so intent upon play as neither to see the flames nor hear the watchmen bursting into the room. It was indeed a famous gambling and betting club, a book for entering wagers always lying on the table; the play was frightful. Once a man dropped down dead at the door, and was carried in; the club immediately made bets whether he was dead or only in a fit; and when they were going to bleed him the wagerers for his death interposed, saying it would affect the fairness of the bet. Walpole, who tells the story, hints that it is invented. Many a highwayman—one is shown in Hogarth's picture above referred to—there took his chocolate or threw his main before starting for business. There Lord Chesterfield gamed; Steele dated all his love news in the Tatler from White's, which was known as the rendezvous of infamous sharpers and noble cullies, and bets were laid to the effect that Sir William Burdett, one of its members, would be the first baronet who would be hanged. The gambling went on till dawn of day; and Pelham, when Prime Minister, was not ashamed to divide his time between his official table and the piquet table at White's. General Scott was a very cautious player, avoiding all indulgence in excesses at table, and thus managed to win at White's no less than £200,000, so that when his daughter, Joanna, married George Canning he was able to give her a fortune of £100,000. Another club founded specially for gambling was Almack's, the original Brooks's, which was opened in Pall Mall in 1764. Some of its members were Macaronis, the fops of the day, famous for their long curls and eye-glasses. 'At Almack's,' says Walpole, 'which has taken the pas of White's ... the young men of the age lose £10,000, £15,000, £20,000 in an evening.' The play at this club was only for rouleaux of £50 each, and generally there was £10,000 in gold on the table. The gamesters began by pulling off their embroidered clothes, and put on frieze garments, or turned their coats inside out for luck. They put on pieces of leather to save their lace ruffles; and to guard their eyes from the light, and to prevent tumbling their hair, wore high-crowned straw hats with broad brims, and sometimes masks to conceal their emotions. Almack's afterwards was known as the 'Goose-Tree' Club—a rather significant name—and Pitt was one of its most constant frequenters, and there met his adherents. Gibbon also was a member, when the club was still Almack's—which, indeed, was the name of the founder and original proprietor of the club. Another gaming-club was Brooks's, which at first was formed by Almack and afterwards by Brooks, a wine-merchant and money-lender. The club was opened in 1778, and some of the original rules are curious: '21. No gaming in the eating-room, except tossing up for reckonings, on penalty of paying the whole bill of the members present. 30. Any member of this society that shall become a candidate for any other club (old White's excepted) shall be ipso facto excluded. 40. Every person playing at the new quinze-table shall keep fifty guineas before him. 41. Every person playing at the twenty-guinea table shall keep no less than twenty guineas before him.' According to Captain Gronow, play at Brooks's was even higher than at White's. Faro and macao were indulged in to an extent which enabled a man to win or to lose a considerable fortune in one night. George Harley Drummond, a partner in the bank of that name, played only once in his life at White's, and lost £20,000 to Brummell. This event caused him to retire from the banking-house. Lord Carlisle and Charles Fox lost enormous sums at Brooks's. At Tom's Coffee House, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, there was playing at piquet, and the club consisting of seven hundred noblemen and gentlemen, many of whom belonged to the gay society of that day (the middle of the last century), we may be sure the play was high. Arthur's Club, in St. James's Street, so named after its founder (who died in 1761), was a famous gambling centre in its day. A nobleman of the highest position and influence in society was detected in cheating at cards, and after a trial, which did not terminate in his favour, he died of a broken heart. This happened in 1836. The Union, which was founded in this century, was a regular gambling-club. It was first held at what is now the Ordnance Office, Pall Mall, and subsequently in the house afterwards occupied by the Bishop of Winchester. In the early days of this century the most notorious gambling-club was Crockford's, in St. James's Street. Crockford originally was a fishmonger, and occupied the old bulk-shop west of Temple Bar. But, having made money by betting, 'he gave up,' as a recent writer on 'The Gambling World' says, 'selling soles and salmon, and went in for catching fish, confining his operations to gudgeons and flat-fish'; or, in other words, he established a gambling-house, first by taking over Watier's old club-house, where he set up a hazard bank, and won a great deal of money; he then separated from his partner, who had a bad year and failed. Crockford removed to St. James's Street, where he built the magnificent club-house which bore his name. It was erected at a cost of upwards of £100,000, and, in its vast proportions and palatial decorations, surpassed anything of the kind ever seen in London. To support such an establishment required a large income; yet Crockford made it, for the highest play was encouraged at his card-tables, but especially at the hazard-tables, where Crockford nightly took his stand, prepared for all comers. And he was successful, and became a millionaire. When he died he left £700,000, and he had lost as much in mining and other speculations. His death was hastened, it is said, by excessive anxiety over his bets on the turf. He retired from the management of the club in 1840, and died in 1844. The club was soon after closed, and after a few years' interval was reopened as the Naval, Military, and Civil Service Club. It was then converted into dining-rooms, called the Wellington. Later on it was taken by a joint-stock company as an auction-room, and now it is again a club-house, known as the Devonshire Club. We referred above to Watier's Club. It was established in 1807, at the instigation of the Prince of Wales, and high play was the chief pursuit of its members. 'Princes and nobles,' says Timbs in his 'Curiosities of London,' 'lost or gained fortunes amongst themselves.' But the pace was too fast. The club did not last under its original patronage, and it was then, when it was moribund, taken over by Crockford. At this club, also, macao was the favourite game, as at Brooks's. One of the most objectionable results of promiscuous gambling is the disreputable company into which it often throws a gentleman.
This is just what happened when gambling-hells were openly flourishing in London, and what happens now when gambling-clubs abound, and are almost daily raided by the police, when some actually respectable people are found mixed up with the rascaldom which supports these clubs. A perfect mania seems to have seized the lower orders of our day to gamble; but formerly, for instance, in Walpole's time, in the latter half of the last century, the upper classes were the worst offenders, of which the just-mentioned statesman and epistolary chronicler of small-beer, which, however, by long keeping has acquired a strong and lasting flavour, gives us many proofs. 'Lord Sandwich,' he reports, 'goes once or twice a week to hunt with the Duke [of Cumberland], and, as the latter has taken a turn of gaming, Sandwich, to make his court—and fortune—carries a box and dice in his pocket; and so they throw a main whenever the hounds are at fault, upon every green hill and under every green tree.' Five years later, at a magnificent ball and supper at Bedford House, 'the Duke was playing at hazard with a great heap of gold before him. Somebody said he looked like the prodigal son and the fatted calf both.' Under such circumstances it could not fail that swindlers par excellence sometimes found their way among the royal and noble gamblers. There was a Sir William Burdett, whose name had the honour of being inscribed in the betting-room at White's as the subject of a wager that he would be the first baronet who would be hanged. He and a lady, 'dressed foreign, as a Princess of the House of Brandenburg,' cheated Lord Castledurrow (Baron Ashbrook) and Captain Rodney out of a handsome sum at faro. The noble victim met the Baronet at Ranelagh, and addressed him thus: 'Sir William, here is the sum I think I lost last night. Since then I have heard that you are a professed pickpocket, and therefore I desire to have no further acquaintance with you.' The Baronet took the money with a respectful bow, and then asked his Lordship the further favour to set him down at Buckingham Gate, and without further ceremony jumped into the coach. Walpole writes to Mann, in 1750, that 'Jemmy Lumley last week had a party of whist at his own house: the combatants, Lucy Southwell, that curtseys like a bear, Mrs. Bijean, and Mrs. Mackenzy. They played from six in the evening till twelve next day, Jemmy never winning one rubber, and rising a loser of £2,000.... He fancied himself cheated and would not pay. However, the bear had no share in his evil surmises ... and he promised a dinner at Hampstead to Lucy and her sister. As he went to the rendezvous his chaise was stopped, and he was advised by someone not to proceed. But proceed he did, and in the garden he found Mrs. Mackenzy. She asked him whether he was going to pay, and, on his declining to do so, the fair virago took a horsewhip from beneath her hoop, and fell upon him with the utmost vehemence.' Members of clubs were fully aware of the nefariousness of their devotion to gambling. When a waiter at Arthur's Club was taken up for robbery, George Selwyn said: 'What a horrid idea he will give of us to the people in Newgate?' Certes, some of the highwaymen in that prison were not such robbers and scoundrels as some of the aristocratic members of those clubs. When, in 1750, the people got frightened about an earthquake in London, predicted to happen in that year, 'Lady Catherine Pelham,' Walpole tells us, 'Lady James Arundell, and Lord and Lady Galway ... go this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are going to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back, I suppose, to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish.' When the rulers of the nation on such an occasion, or any other occasion of public terror, possibly caused by their own mismanagement of public affairs, hypocritically and most impertinently ordered a day of fasting and humiliation, the gambling-houses used to be filled with officials and members of Parliament, who thus had a day off. There was one famous gambling-house we find we have not yet mentioned, viz., Shaver's Hall, which occupied the whole of the southern side of Coventry Street, from the Haymarket to Hedge Lane (now Oxenden Street), and derived its name from the barber of Lord Pembroke, who built it out of his earnings. Attached to it was a bowling-green, which sloped down to the south. The place was built about the year 1650, and the tennis-court belonging to it till recently might still be seen in St. James's Street. II. WITTY WOMEN AND PRETTY WOMEN. Certain waves of sentiment or action, or both combined, have at various times passed over the face of European society. A thousand years ago the Old Continent went madly crusading to snatch the Holy Sepulchre from the grasp of the pagan Sultan, who, sick man as he is, still holds it. The movement had certain advantages: it cleared Europe of a good deal of ruffianism, which never came back, as it perished on the journey to Jerusalem, or very properly was killed off by the justly incensed Turks, who could not understand by what right these hordes of robbers invaded their country. Then another phase of society madness arose. Some maniac, clad in armour, on a horse similarly accoutred, would appear, and challenge everyone to admit that the Lady Gwendolyne Mousetrap, whom he kept company with, and took to the tea-gardens on Sundays, was the most peerless damosel, and that whoso doubted it, would not get off by paying a dollar, but would have to fight it out with him. Then another mailed and belted chap would jump up, and maintain that the Countess of Rabbit-Warren—who was the girl he was just then booming—was the finest woman going, and that that slut Gwendolyne Mousetrap was no better than she should be. Of course, as soon as the King and Court heard of the shindy between the two knights a day was appointed when they should fight it out, the combatants being enclosed in a kind of rat-pit, officially called lists, whilst the King, his courtiers and their gentle ladies looked at the sport; and if one of the knights was killed, or perhaps both were killed, or at least maimed for life, the Lady Gwendolyne and the Countess of Rabbit-Warren, who, of course, both assisted at the spectacle, received the congratulations of the Court. Sometimes one of the knights would funk, and not come up to the scratch; then he was declared a lame duck, and the lady whom he had left in the lurch and made a laughing-stock of would erase his name from her tablets, and shy the trumpery proofs of devotion he had given her, a worn-out scarf or Brummagem aigrette, out of an upper window. This was called the age of chivalry. Then a totally different eruption of the fighting mania—which is, after all, the universal principle in human action—took place. A vagrant scholasticus would appear in a University town, and announce that he was ready to hold a disputation with any professor, Doctor of Divinity, or Master of Arts, on any mortal subject, the more subtle, and the more incomprehensible, and the more mystical, the better. Thus, one such scholasticus got into the rostrum at TÜbingen, and addressed his audience thus: 'I am about to propound three theses: the answer to the first is known to myself only, and not to you; to the second, the answer is known neither to you nor to me; to the third, the answer is known to you only.' This was a promising programme, and, indeed, proved highly edifying. 'Now, the first question,' resumed the scholasticus, 'is this: Have I got any breeches on? You don't know, but I do; I have not. The second question, the answer to which is known neither to you nor to me, is: Shall I find in this town any draper willing to advance on credit stuff enough to make me a pair? And the third question, the answer to which is known to you only, is: Will any of you pay a tailor's wages to make me a pair? And now that the argument is clearly before you, we may proceed to the consideration of the parabolic triangulation of the binocular theorem;' and then he would bewilder them with a lot of jaw-breaking words, which then, as now, passed for learning. This was called the age of scholasticism. It was succeeded by the Renaissance, which, after a good boil-up of its intellectual ingredients, settled down into a literary mud, an Acqui-la-Bollente, a Nile mud, pleasant to the soul, and fertilizing to the mind, the protoplasm of diarists and letter-writers, of whom—to mention but three—Evelyn, Pepys, and Horace Walpole were prominent patterns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is with the latter, Horace Walpole, of Strawberry Hill, we are chiefly concerned. Horace Walpole, after enlarging a cottage into a Gothic castle, with lath and plaster, and rough-cast walls, and wooden pinnacles, filled it with literary and artistic treasures. But he also gathered around him a select social circle, which included Garrick, Paul Whitehead, General Conway, George Selwyn, Richard Bentley, the poet Gray, Sir Horace Mann, and Lords Edgcumbe and Strafford. And of ladies there was no lack; there were Mrs. Pritchard, Kitty Clive, Lady Suffolk, the Misses Berry, and—would you believe it?—Hannah More! It was the age for chronicling small-beer and home-made wine, gossip, scandal, and frivolity; and Horace Walpole enjoyed existence as a cynical Seladon or platonic Bluebeard amidst this bevy of lively, gay-minded, frolicsome beauties, young and old. Happily, or unhappily, for him, he did not become acquainted with the Misses Berry before 1788, when he was seventy-one years of age. He took the most extraordinary liking to them, and was never content except when they were with him, or corresponding with him. When they went to Italy, he wrote to them regularly once a week, and on their return he installed them at Little Strawberry Hill, a house close to his own, so that he might daily enjoy their society. He appointed them his literary executors, with the charge of collecting and publishing his writings, which was done under the superintendence of Mr. Berry, their father, who was a Yorkshire gentleman. When Walpole had succeeded to the Earldom of Orford he made Mary, the elder of the two sisters, an offer of his hand. Both sisters survived him upwards of sixty years. Little Strawberry Hill, which we just mentioned as the residence of the Misses Berry, had, before their coming to live in it, been occupied by Kitty Clive, the famous actress. Born in 1711, she made her first appearance on the stage of Drury Lane, and in 1732 she married a brother of Lord Clive, but the union proved unhappy, and was soon dissolved. She quitted the stage in 1769, leaving a splendid reputation as an actress and as a woman behind her, and retired to Little Strawberry Hill, where she lived in ease, surrounded by friends and respected by the world. Horace Walpole was a constant visitor at her house, as were many other persons of rank and eminence. It was said of her that no man could be grave when Kitty chose to be merry. But she must have been a woman of some spirit, too, for when it was proposed to stop up a footpath in her neighbourhood she placed herself at the head of the opponents, and defeated the project. She died suddenly in 1785, and Walpole placed an urn in the grounds to her memory, with the inscription:
The Mrs. Pritchard mentioned above was also an actress, of great and well-deserved fame. She lived at an originally small house, called "Ragman's Castle," which she much improved and enlarged. It had, after her, various occupants, and was finally taken down by Lord Kilmorey during his occupancy of Orleans House, near which it stood. Another of the constant visitors at Strawberry Hill was Lady Suffolk, Pope's 'Chloe.' She was married to the Hon. Charles Howard, from whom she separated when she became the mistress of the Prince, afterwards George II., who, as Prince, allowed her £2,000 a year, and as King £3,200 a year, besides several sums at various times. He gave her £12,000 towards Marble Hill, the mansion still facing the Thames, which became her residence. Her husband lived long enough to become Earl of Suffolk, and dying, left her free to marry, when she was forty-five, the Hon. George Berkeley, who died eleven years after. She survived him twenty-one years, and supplied her neighbour, Horace Walpole, with Court anecdotes and scandal during all that period. Walpole calls her remarkably 'genteel'—a favourite expression of his, though now so vulgar!—and, in spite of her antecedents, she was courted by the highest in the land. Such were the morals of those days. According to Horace Walpole, her mental qualifications were not of a high order, but she was gentle and engaging in her manners, and she was a gossip with a good memory—and that answered her host's purpose admirably. Pope also made great use of her reminiscences. Like Dr. Johnson, Horace Walpole liked to fill his house with a lot of female devotees; but whilst Johnson seemed to prefer a parcel of disagreeable, ugly, and cantankerous women, always quarrelling among themselves and with everybody else, Walpole liked his women to be young and fair, full of life and mirth. By what strange circumstance was the cynical and sarcastic Walpole led into a sort of friendship with the mild and pietistic Mrs. Hannah More? It was in 1784 that this queer friendship began. It appears that about that date Hannah More had discovered at Bristol a milk woman who wrote verses, just such verses as Hannah More and Walpole—neither of whom had an idea of poetry—would consider wonderful. A subscription must be started for the benefit of the milkwoman, and Hannah More applied to Horace Walpole, who set up for a MÆcenas, though he always expressed the utmost contempt for authors, for a contribution. Of course, Hannah More did not make this application without a dose of fulsome compliment to Horace Walpole's genius, and he went into the trap, subscribed, and expressed his admiration of the milkwoman's poetry. The woman's name was Yearsley; she was quite ready to receive the money, but, having evidently a very high opinion of her own doggerel, she refused to listen to the literary advice given to her by Horace Walpole and her patroness, with whom she very soon quarrelled. Walpole condoled with Hannah thus: 'You are not only benevolence itself, but, with fifty times the genius of Dame Yearsley, you are void of vanity. How strange that vanity should expel gratitude! Does not the wretched woman owe her fame to you? ... Dame Yearsley reminds me of the troubadours, those vagrants whom I used to admire till I knew their history, and who used to pour out trumpery verses, and flatter or abuse, accordingly as they were housed and clothed, or dismissed to the next parish. Yet you did not set this person in the stocks, after procuring an annuity for her.' By this letter we see what were Horace Walpole's ideas of patronage: flattery and a pittance, independence and the stocks. Walpole was open to flattery. Dr. Johnson was not—at least, not from a woman; he despised the sex too much to care for their praise. When Hannah More laid it on very thick in his case, he fiercely turned round on her and said: 'Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth his having.' And, with all his admiration for her character, Walpole could not help sneering at what he called her saintliness, and venting his sarcasm on her silly 'Coelebs in Search of a Wife,' the absurdity of which has, indeed, been surpassed by a few modern novels of the same tendency. The last we hear of their friendship is that he made her a present of a Bible—fancy the satyr's leer with which he must have presented it to her! She paid him out for the implied irony by wishing that he would read it. Among the ladies who were neighbours of Horace Walpole, we must not omit Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who lived for some years in a house on the south side of the road leading to Twickenham Common. She may justly be considered as one of the witty, if not of the pretty, women of Walpole's time. He detested her. Probably he was somewhat jealous of her, for her letters from Constantinople on Turkish life and society earned her the sobriquet of the 'Female Horace Walpole.' He writes of her thus whilst she was living at Florence: 'She is laughed at by the whole town. Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze anyone.... She wears a foul mob, that does not cover her greasy black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled; an old mazarine blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvas petticoat. Her face swelled violently on one side, and partly covered with white paint, which for cheapness she has bought so coarse that you would not use it to wash a chimney.' In another letter he describes her dress as consisting of 'a groundwork of dirt, with an embroidery of filthiness.' When he wrote of her then, she was about fifty years of age, and seems to have retained none of the beauty which distinguished her in her earlier years. She was not only coarse in looks, but in her speech and writings, which shock modern fastidiousness. She was not the woman to please Horace Walpole, who, even when in the seventies, liked nothing better than acting as squire or cicerone to fine ladies. Lady Mary was not one of them. She was, in fact, what we now should call a regular Bohemian; and was it to be wondered at? She had been introduced into that sort of life when she was a girl only eight years old by her own father, Evelyn, Earl of Kingston. He was a member of the Kitcat Club, whose chief occupation was the proposing and toasting the beauties of the day. One evening the Earl took it into his head to nominate his daughter. She was sent for in a chaise, and introduced to the company in dirty Shire Lane in a grimy chamber, reeking with foul culinary smells and stale tobacco-smoke, and elected by acclamation. The gentlemen drank the little lady's health upstanding; and feasting her with sweets, and passing her round with kisses, at once inscribed her name with a diamond on a drinking-glass. 'Pleasure,' she says, 'was too poor a word to express my sensations. They amounted to ecstasy. Never again throughout my whole life did I pass so happy an evening.' Of course, the child could not perceive the hideousness of the whole proceeding and its surroundings: if the kisses were seasoned with droppings of snuff from the noses above, which otherwise were not always very clean—even at the beginning of this century Lord Kenyon, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, was an utter stranger to the luxury of a pocket-handkerchief, and had no delicacy about avowing it—it did not detract from the sweetness of the bon-bons with which she was regaled. The founder of the Blue-Stocking Club, Mrs. Montagu, nÉe Elizabeth Robinson, was another of Walpole's witty and handsome lady friends. As a girl she was lively, full of fun, yet fond of study. In 1742 she was married to Edward Montagu, M.P., a coal-owner of great wealth. As a girl the Duchess of Portland had called her 'La Petite Fidget'; but after her marriage she became more sedate, and a great power in the literary world. She established the Blue-Stocking Club, of which herself, Mrs. Vesey, Miss Boscawen, Mrs. Carter, Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Pulteney, Mr. Stillingfleet, and Horace Walpole were the first members. The name originally came from Venice, where, in 1400, the Academical Society delle calze had been established, whence the name was transferred to similar associations in France, there called Bas Bleus, and from the latter country it was introduced into England. Mrs. Montagu, having been left a widow with £7,000 a year, built herself a mansion, standing in a large garden at the north-west corner of Portman Square, and there the Blue-Stocking Club continued to hold its meetings for a number of years, including all the persons of her time who were celebrated in art, science, or literature, among whom may be mentioned Boswell and Johnson, the latter of whom, in the presence of ladies, somewhat modified his bearish habits. Mrs. Montagu died in 1800, and the house she had built eventually became the town residence of Viscount Portman. Of course, Horace Walpole was acquainted with the Misses Gunning—'those goddesses,' as Mary Montagu styled them. They were nieces of the first Earl of Mayo, and so got a ready introduction into London society, which literally went raving mad about them. Horace Walpole tells us that even the 'great unwashed' followed them in crowds whenever they appeared in public: there must have been an extraordinary appreciation of beauty in the rabble—and what a rabble of ruffians it was!—of those days. But London then was no bigger than a provincial town, compared with what it is now. The two ladies speedily found husbands: the Duke of Hamilton married Elizabeth, the younger, after an evening spent in the society of the sisters and their mother at Bedford House, and was in such a hurry about it that he would wait for neither licence nor ring, and, after with some difficulty satisfying the scruples of the parson called upon to celebrate the extempore ceremony, they were married with the ring of a bed-curtain, at half an hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel. Three weeks afterwards Lord Coventry married her sister, Maria. The Duke of Hamilton dying in 1758, six years after the strange nuptials in Mayfair Chapel, the widow in the following year married Jack Campbell, afterwards Duke of Argyll. Lady Coventry did not wear her coronet long; in 1760 she died, it is said, in consequence of her excessive use of white paint. Her sister, 'twice duchessed,' survived her many years. We have far from exhausted the list of the ladies distinguished for wit and beauty who figure in Horace Walpole's 'Letters,' but our space is exhausted. We cannot, however, conclude without a few words on the 'Letters' in question. Their chief value consists in the lively descriptions of public events; not as dry and cold history records them, but by letting us have peeps behind the scenes, so as to see the wire-pullers, the secret machinery, which set in motion the actors on the political and social stage. They show us lords and ladies in their negligÉs, and how the conceit of a hairdresser, or the caprice of a lady's-maid, may make or mar the destinies of a nation. This copious letter-writing forms indeed an era in our literary history which will never return or be renewed; the prying reporter and the irrepressible interviewer now supply all the world with what the letter-writer communicated to a few friends only. This present age may be called the Age of Reminiscences: everybody is writing his; of making books there is no end! III. OLD LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES. A comparatively small room, considering it was one for public use, with dingy walls, a grimy ceiling, a sanded floor, boxes with upright backs and narrow seats, wooden chairs, liquor-stained tables, lighted up in the evening with smoky lamps or guttering candles, the whole room reeking with tobacco like a guard-room—such was the coffee-house of the later Stuart and the whole Georgian periods. Its distinctive article of furniture was spittoons. In such dens did the noblemen, in flowing wigs and embroidered coats, parsons in cassocks and bands, physicians in sable suits and tremendous perukes, together with broken-down gamesters, swindlers, country yokels, and out-at-elbows literary and theatrical adventurers, meet, not only for pleasure, but for business too. Dr. Radcliffe, who in 1685 had the largest practice in London, was daily to be seen at Garraway's, now demolished, its site being included in Martin's bank; and another favourite resort of doctors hereby was Batson's, where, as the 'Connoisseur' says, 'the dispensers of life and death flock together, like birds of prey watching for carcases. I never enter this place but it serves as a memento mori to me.... Batson's has been reckoned the seat of solemn stupidity.' Coffee-houses, indeed, had their distinct sets of customers. St. Paul's, for instance, was patronized by the clergy, both by those with fat livings and by 'battered crapes,' who plied there for an occasional burial or sermon. Dick's was frequented by members of the Temple, with whom, in 1737, Mrs. Yarrow and her daughter, who kept the house, were great favourites; wherefore, when the Rev. James Miller brought out a comedy, called 'The Coffee-House,' in which the ladies were thought to be indicated—the engraver having unfortunately fixed upon Dick's Coffee-House as the frontispiece scene—the Templars attended the first representation, and hissed the piece off the boards. Button's, in Covent Garden, was the resort of Addison and Steele, of Pope and Swift, of Savage and Davenant—in fact, of the wits of the time. At this house was the lion's head through whose mouth letters were dropped for the Tatlers and Spectators. The head was afterwards transferred to the Bedford Coffee-House, under the Piazza, and eventually, in 1827, was purchased by the Duke of Bedford, and is now at Woburn Abbey; Bedford's was the successor of Button's, and is described in the 'Memoirs' of it as having been signalized for many years as 'the emporium of wit, the seat of criticism, and the standard of taste.' In 1659 was founded the Rota Club by James Charrington, a political writer, and its members met at Miles's, in Old Palace Yard. Pepys attended one of its meetings on January 10, 1659-60. It was a kind of debating-society for the dissemination of Republican opinions. Coffee-houses, indeed, at that period became important political institutions. Nothing resembling the modern newspaper then existed; in consequence, these houses were the chief organs through which the public opinion vented itself, and so threatening to the Court did, in course of time, their influence appear, that on December 29, 1675, the King and his Cabal Ministry issued a proclamation for shutting up and suppressing all coffee-houses, 'because in such houses, and by occasion of the meeting of disaffected persons in them, diverse false, malicious, and scandalous reports were devised and spread abroad, to the defamation of his Majesty's Government, and to the disturbance of the quiet and peace of the realm.' The opinions of the judges were taken on this ridiculous edict, and they sapiently reported 'that retailing coffee might be an innocent trade, but as it was used to nourish sedition, spread lies, and scandalize great men, it might also be a common nuisance.' On a petition of the merchants and retailers of coffee and tea, permission was granted to keep open the coffee-houses until June 24 next, under an admonition that 'the masters of them should prevent all scandalous papers, books, and libels from being read in them.' This, of course, was a huge joke on the part of the Cabal, who thus constituted the concoctors and dispensers of 'dishes'—to use the hideous word then employed—of coffee and tea censors and licensers of books, and judges of the truth or falsehood of political opinions and intelligence. After that no more was heard of the matter, and the coffee-houses remained political debating clubs, as is proved by the remarks on them in the Spectator and similar publications. See, for instance, Nos. 403, 476, 481, 521, etc. The first London coffee-house was set up by one Bowman, coachman to Mr. Hodges, a Turkey merchant. Others say that Mr. Edwards brought over with him a Ragusa servant, Pasqua Rosee, who was associated with Bowman in establishing the first coffee-house in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill. But the partners soon quarrelled. They parted, and Bowman opened a coffee-house in St. Michael's Churchyard, from which we may infer that the public took to the new drink. Rosee issued handbills headed: 'The vertue of the coffee-drink. First made and publicly sold in England by Pasqua Rosee, at the sign of his own head.' The original of one of them is preserved in the British Museum. It is generally said that the second coffee-house in London was that established as the Rainbow (now a tavern) in Fleet Street, by one Fair, a barber, in the year 1657. In the Mercurius Politicus of September 30, 1658, an advertisement appeared, setting forth the virtues of the then equally new beverage, namely, tcha, or tay, or tee, which was sold at the Sultaness Head Cophee-house, in Sweeting's Rents, by the Royal Exchange. We thus see that as early as 1658 there were already three coffee-houses in London. But coffee met with opponents. The vintners called it 'sooty drink'; lampooners said it undermined virile power, and that to drink it was to ape the Turks and insult one's canary-drinking ancestors. Fair, the founder of the Rainbow, already mentioned, was indicted for 'making and selling a sort of liquor, called coffee, whereby in making it he annoyed his neighbours by evil smells, and for keeping of fire for the most part night and day, to the great danger and affrightment of his neighbours.' But Farr stood his ground, and in time became a person of importance in the parish, and coffee-houses multiplied. Cornhill and its purlieus were full of them. There were the Great Turk, Sword Blade, Rainbow, Garraway, Jerusalem, Tom's, and Weston's Coffee-Houses in Exchange Alley alone; in St. Michael's Alley, close by, there were, besides Rosee's, Williams's, and other coffee-houses. They also, as we have seen, had been established further west than the City, and they were also, as already mentioned, places of rendezvous, where appointments were made, where lawyers met clients, and doctors patients, merchants their customers, clerks their masters, where farce-writers, journalists, politicians, and literary hacks went to pick up ideas, and, as it was then called, watch, and if they could, catch the humours of the town. The Spectator, in his very first number, acknowledges his indebtedness to coffee-houses. 'There is no place of general resort,' he says, 'wherein I do not often make my appearance. Sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's (on the north side of Russell Street, at the corner of Bow Street), and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's (St. Paul's Churchyard), and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights at St. James's (the famous Whig coffee-house from the time of Queen Anne to late in the reign of George III.), and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes there to hear and improve.' There was another Will's in Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, which was also a haunt of the Spectator, as were the other coffee-houses in that neighbourhood. He says in his ninety-ninth number: 'I do not know that I meet in any of my walks objects which move both my spleen and laughter so effectually as these young fellows at the Grecian, Squire's, Searle's, and all other coffee-houses adjacent to the law, who rise early for no other purpose but to publish their laziness.' It appears that it was usual to resort to the coffee-house as early as six o'clock in the morning. In 'Moser's Vestiges,' Will's is thus referred to: 'All the beaux that used to breakfast in the coffee-houses and taverns appendant to the Inns of Court struck their morning strokes in an elegant dÉshabille, which was carelessly confined by a sash of yellow, red, blue, green, etc., according to the taste of the wearer. The idle fashion was not quite worn out in 1765. We can remember having seen some of these early loungers in their nightgowns, caps, etc., at Will's, Lincoln's Inn Gate, about that period.' But the coffee-houses were not all for beer and skittles only. In the City especially, the business of the City, and of England, in fact, was transacted in them. Merchants and other business people, professional men, brokers, agents, had not then their private offices, which could only be reached through the ante-den of quill-driving cerberi, milgo clerks. All the transactions of daily life were then largely carried on in public, as they are in all communities, until they arrive at a high state of civilization. Even now among the peasantry of various European countries a man cannot have his child christened without the ceremony being rendered a public spectacle. And so here in England, in the barbarous days of dingy and musty coffee-houses, they were consulting-rooms, offices, counting-houses, auction-rooms, and shops. When the business was done, or in order to further it, refreshments of all sorts were handy, for the coffee-house did not confine itself to that innocent beverage, but supplied stronger stuffs; it was, in fact, a tavern, and many of the houses, now openly so called, were formerly coffee-houses. And the business transacted at them was, as may be imagined, of the most varied character. Agents for the purchase or sale of estates, houses and other property, instead of seeing people at their offices, met them at coffee-houses. Thus one Thomas Rogers advertised that he gave attendance daily at the Rainbow by the Temple; on Tuesdays at Tom's, by the Exchange, and on Thursdays at Will's, near Whitehall, for transacting agency business. This was legitimate enough, but what of the sale of human flesh at a coffee-house? In 1708 an advertisement appeared: 'A black boy, twelve years of age, fit to wait on a gentleman, to be disposed of at Denis's Coffee-house, in Finch-lane.' And again, in 1728: 'To be sold, a negro boy, aged eleven years. Enquire at the Virginia Coffee-house, Threadneedle-street.' Sometimes the keeper of the coffee-house sold goods on account of others; thus from an advertisement in the Postman, January, 1705, we learn that Mr. Shipton, at John's Coffee-house, in Exchange Alley, sold someone's famous razor strops. The landlords of those places, indeed, seem to have been very accommodating, especially in the taking in of letters, thus anticipating the practice of modern newspaper shops. And they were not squeamish as to the advertisements, answers to which were to be sent to them. Thus a gentleman (?) in the General Advertiser, October, 1745, expressed a wish to hear from a lady he had seen in one of the left-hand boxes at Drury Lane, and who seemed to take particular notice of a gentleman who sat about the middle of the pit (the advertiser, of course). Letter to be left for 'P.M.F.', at the Portugal Coffee-house, near the Exchange. In 1762 a young man advertised for his mother, 'who, in 1740, resided at a certain village near Bath, where she was delivered of a son, whom she left with a sum of money under the care of a person in the same parish, and promised to fetch him at a certain age, but has not since been heard of ... if living, she is asked to send a letter to "J.E.", at the Chapter Coffee-house, St. Paul's Churchyard ... this advertisement is published by the person himself [i.e., the son, born near Bath] not from motives of necessity, or to court any assistance (he being by a series of happy circumstances possessed of an easy and independent fortune).' It would, I fancy, be difficult at the present day to find anyone, having a reputation of any note to keep up, willing to receive answers to such an advertisement, which, if it was not a fraud, looked terribly like an attempt at one. It happened in those days, as it occasionally does now, that the estates of gentlemen who married late in life passed away to remote branches; the 'young gentleman' had no doubt reflected on this subject. The Turk's Head seems, to judge by advertisements, to have been somewhat heathenish. Here is another advertisement, also from the Morning Post, answers to which it took in: 'Whereas there are ladies, who have £2,000, £3,000, or £4,000 at their command, and who, from not knowing how to dispose of the same to the greatest advantage ... afford them but a scanty maintenance ... the advertiser (who is a gentleman of independent fortune, strict honour and character, and above reward) acquaints such ladies that if they will favour him with their name and address ... he will put them into a method by which they may, without any trouble, and with an absolute certainty, place out their money, so as to produce them a clear interest of 10 or 12 per cent.... on good and safe securities. Direct to "R.J.," Esq., at the Turk's Head Coffee-house, Strand.' We pity any lady who fell into the clutches of this 'gentleman of independent fortune'! And how the Turk's Head must have grinned when answers to 'R.J.' arrived! About the same time a gentleman advertised that he knew a method, which reduced it almost to a certainty to win a considerable sum by insuring numbers in the lottery. For ten guineas the gentleman was prepared to 'discover the plan.' Answers to be sent to the York Coffee-house, St. James's Street. Another gentleman is willing to lend £3,000 to anyone having sufficient interest to procure him a Government appointment, worth £200 or £300 per annum. Answers to this were to be sent to the Chapter Coffee-house, St. Paul's. To some of the coffee-houses it would seem porters were attached, ready to run errands for customers, or the outside public; some of them seem to have earned a reputation of a certain character. Thus Cynthio (Spectator, No. 398) employs Robin, the porter, who waits Will's Coffee-house, to take a letter to Flavia. 'Robin, you must know,' we are told, 'is the best man in the town for carrying a billet; the fellow has a thin body, swift step, demure looks, sufficient sense, and knows the town ... the fellow covers his knowledge of the nature of his messages with the most exquisite low humour imaginable; the first he obliged Flavia to take was by complaining to her that he had a wife and three children, and if she did not take that letter, which he was sure there was no harm in, but rather love, his family must go supperless to bed, for the gentleman would pay him according as he did his business.' He would seem to have been a mild Leporello. We find the cheapness of living at coffee-houses frequently extolled in the publications and conversations of the day in which they were most flourishing. An Irish painter, whom Johnson knew, declared that £30 a year was enough to enable a man to live in London, without being contemptible. He allowed £10 for clothes and linen. He said a man might live in a garret at 1s. 6d. a week; few people would inquire where he lodged, and if they did, it was easy to say: 'Sir, you will find me at such and such a place'—just as nowadays impecunious swells, who live in garrets, manage to keep up their club subscription, and give as their address that of the club. By spending threepence at a coffee-house, Johnson's Irish painter further argued, a man might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread-and-milk for a penny, and do without supper. On clean-shirt day the painter went out to pay visits, as Swift also did. With regard to the persons employed in a coffee-house, we learn from one advertisement: 'To prevent all mistakes among gentlemen of the other end of the town, who come but once a week to St. James's Coffee-house, either by miscalling the servants, or requiring such things from them as are not properly within their respective provinces, this is to give notice that Kidney, keeper of the book-debts of the outlying customers, and observer of those who go off without paying, having resigned that employment, is succeeded by John Sowton, to whose place of caterer of messages and first coffee-grinder William Bird is promoted, and Samuel Bardock comes as shoe-cleaner in the room of the said Bird.' Well, the coffee-houses are things of the past; a few survive as taverns. What may be considered as their successors are called coffee-shops, patronized by working-men chiefly, but the 'humours' are of the tamest description; they may supply statistics to temperance apostles, but no literary entertainment to the public. |
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