Covent-Garden has lost many of its houses "studded with anecdote and history;" and the mutations among what Mr. Thackeray affectionately called its "rich cluster of brown taverns" are sundry and manifest. Its coffee-houses proper have almost disappeared, even in name. Yet, in the last century, in one short street of Covent-Garden—Russell-street—flourished three of the most celebrated coffee-houses in the metropolis: Will's, Button's, and Tom's. The reader need not be reminded of Will's, with Dryden, the Tatler and Spectator, and its wits' room on the first floor; or Button's, with its lion's head letter-box, and the young poets in the back room. Tom's, No. 17, on the north side of Russell-street, and of somewhat later date, was taken down in 1865. The premises remained with little alteration, long after they ceased to be a coffee-house. It was named after its original proprietor, Thomas West, who, Nov. 26, 1722, threw himself, in a delirium, from the second-floor window into the street, and died immediately (Historical Register for 1722). The upper portion of the premises was the coffee-house, under which lived T. Lewis, the bookseller, the original publisher, in 1711, of Pope's Essay on Criticism. The usual frequenters upstairs may be judged of by the following passage in the Journey through England, first edit., 1714:—"After the play, the best company generally go to Tom's and Will's coffee-houses, near adjoining, where there is playing at piquet and the best conversation till midnight. Here you will see blue and green ribbons, with stars, sitting familiarly and talking with the same freedom as if they had left their quality and degrees of distance at home; and a stranger tastes with pleasure the universal liberty of speech of the English nation. And in all the coffee-houses you have not only the foreign prints, but several English ones, with the foreign occurrences, besides papers of morality and party disputes." Such were the Augustan delights of a memorable coffee-house of the reign of Queen Anne. Of this period is a recollection of Mr. Grignon, sen., having seen the "balcony of Tom's crowded with noblemen in their stars and garters, drinking their tea and coffee exposed to the people." We find an entry in Walpole's Letters, 1745:—"A gentleman, I don't know who, the other night at Tom's coffee-house, said, on Lord Baltimore refusing to come into the Admiralty because Lord Vere Beauclerk had the precedence, 'it put him in mind of Pinkethman's petition in the Spectator, where he complains that formerly he used to act second chair in "Diocletian," but now he was reduced to dance fifth flower-pot.'"

In 1764 there appears to have been formed here, by a guinea subscription, a Club of nearly 700 members—the nobility, foreign ministers, gentry, and men of genius of the age; the large front room on the first floor being the card-room. The Club flourished, so that in 1768, "having considerably enlarged itself of late," Thomas Haines, the then proprietor, took in the front room of the next house westward as a coffee-room. The front room of No. 17 was then appropriated exclusively as a card-room for the subscription club, each member paying one guinea annually; the adjoining apartment being used as a conversation-room. The subscription-books are before us, and here we find in the long list the names of Sir Thomas Robinson, Bart., who was designated "Long Sir Thomas Robinson," to distinguish him from his namesake, Sir Thomas Robinson, created Lord Grantham in 1761. "Long Tom," as the former was familiarly called, was a Commissioner of Excise and Governor of Barbadoes. He was a sad bore, especially to the Duke of Newcastle, the minister, who resided in Lincoln's Inn Fields. However, he gave rise to some smart things. Lord Chesterfield being asked by the latter Baronet to write some verses upon him, immediately produced this epigram:—

Long Sir Thomas distinguished himself in this odd manner. When our Sovereign had not dropped the folly of calling himself "King of France," and it was customary at the Coronation of an English Sovereign to have fictitious Dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy to represent the vassalage of France, Sir Thomas was selected to fill the second mock dignity at the coronation of George III., to which Churchill alludes in his Ghost; but he assigns a wrong dukedom to Sir Thomas:

Of the two Sir Thomas Robinsons, one was tall and thin, the other short and fat: "I can't imagine," said Lady Townshend, "why the one should be preferred to the other; I see but little difference between them: the one is as broad as the other is long."

Next on the books is Samuel Foote, who, after the decline of Tom's, was mostly to be seen at the Bedford. Then comes Arthur Murphy, lately called to the Bar; David Garrick, who then lived in Southampton-street, (though he was not a clubbable man); John Beard, the fine tenor singer; John Webb; Sir Richard Glynne; Robert Gosling, the banker; Colonel Eyre, of Marylebone; Earl Percy; Sir John Fielding, the justice; Paul Methuen, of Corsham; Richard Clive; the great Lord Clive; the eccentric Duke of Montagu; Sir Fletcher Norton, the ill-mannered; Lord Edward Bentinck; Dr. Samuel Johnson; the celebrated Marquis of Granby; Sir F. B. Delaval, the friend of Foote; William Tooke, the solicitor; the Hon. Charles Howard, sen.; the Duke of Northumberland; Sir Francis Gosling; the Earl of Anglesey; Sir George Brydges Rodney (afterwards Lord Rodney); Peter Burrell; Walpole Eyre; Lewis Mendez; Dr. Swinney; Stephen Lushington; John Gunning; Henry Brougham, father of Lord Brougham; Dr. Macnamara; Sir John Trevelyan; Captain Donellan; Sir W. Wolseley; Walter Chetwynd; Viscount Gage, etc.;—Thomas Payne, Esq., of Leicester House; Dr. Schomberg, of Pall-Mall; George Colman, the dramatist, then living in Great Queen Street; Dr. Dodd, in Southampton-row; James Payne, the architect, Salisbury-street, which he rebuilt; William Bowyer, the printer, Bloomsbury-square; Count Bruhl, the Polish Minister; Dr. Goldsmith, Temple (1773), etc. Many a noted name in the list of 700 is very suggestive of the gay society of the period. Among the Club musters, Samuel Foote, Sir Thomas Robinson, and Dr. Dodd are very frequent: indeed, Sir Thomas seems to have been something like a proposer-general.

Tom's appears to have been a general coffee-house; for in the parish books of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, is the entry:—

Mr. Haines, the landlord, was succeeded by his son. Thomas, whose daughter is living, at the age of eighty-four, and possesses a portrait, by Dance, of the elder Haines, who, from his polite address, was called among the Club "Lord Chesterfield." The above lady has also a portrait, in oil, of the younger Haines, by Grignon.

The coffee-house business closed in 1814, about which time the premises were first occupied by Mr. William Till, the numismatist. The card-room remained in its original condition; "And, here," wrote Mr. Till, many years since, "the tables on which I exhibit my coins are those which were used by the exalted characters whose names are extracted from books of the Club, still in possession of the proprietress of the house." On the death of Mr. Till, Mr. Webster succeeded to the tenancy and collection of coins and medals, which he removed to No. 6, Henrietta-street, shortly before the old premises in Russell-street were taken down. He possesses, by marriage with the grand-daughter of the second Mr. Haines, the old Club books, as well as the curious memorial, the snuffbox of the Club-room. It is of large size, and fine tortoiseshell; upon the lid, in high relief, in silver, are the portraits of Charles I. and Queen Anne; the Boscobel oak, with Charles II. amid its branches; and at the foot of the tree, on a silver plate, is inscribed Thomas Haines. At Will's the small wits grew conceited if they dipped but into Mr. Dryden's snuffbox; and at Tom's the box may have enjoyed a similar shrine-like reputation. It is nearly all that remains of the old coffee-house in Covent Garden, save the recollection of the names of the interesting personages who once thronged its rooms in stars and garters, but who bore more intellectual distinctions to entitle them to remembrance.