Club Life of London Volume Ii Part 2

"They know who shall in times to come, Be either made or undone, From great St. Peter's-street in Rome, To Turnbal-street[7] in London.

"They know all that is good or hurt, To d.a.m.n ye or to save ye; There is the college and the court, The country, camp, and navy.

So great an university, I think there ne'er was any; In which you may a scholar be, For spending of a penny.

"Here men do talk of everything, With large and liberal lungs, Like women at a gossiping, With double tire of tongues, They'll give a broadside presently, 'Soon as you are in view: With stories that you'll wonder at, Which they will swear are true.

"You shall know there what fashions are, How perriwigs are curl'd; And for a penny you shall hear All novels in the world; Both old and young, and great and small, And rich and poor you'll see; Therefore let's to the Coffee all, Come all away with me."

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The Dutch admiral who, in June, 1667, dashed into the Downs with a fleet of eighty sail, and many fire-ships, blocked up the mouths of the Medway and Thames, destroyed the fortifications at Sheerness, cut away the paltry defences of booms and chains drawn across the rivers, and got to Chatham, on the one side, and nearly to Gravesend on the other; the king having spent in debauchery the money voted by Parliament for the proper support of the English navy.

[4] General Monk and Prince Rupert were at this time commanders of the English fleet.

[5] Lilly was the celebrated astrologer of the Protectorate, who earned great fame at that time by predicting, in June, 1645, "if now we fight, a victory stealeth upon us:" a lucky guess, signally verified in the King's defeat at Naseby. Lilly thenceforth always saw the stars favourable to the Puritans.

[6] This man was originally a fishing-tackle-maker in Tower-street, during the reign of Charles I.; but turning enthusiast, he went about prognosticating "the downfall of the King and Popery;" and as he and his predictions were all on the popular side, he became a great man with the superst.i.tious "G.o.dly brethren" of that day.

[7] Turnbal, or Turnbull-street as it is still called, had been for a century previous of infamous repute. In Beaumont and Fletcher's play, the _Knight of the Burning Pestle_, one of the ladies who is undergoing penance at the barber's, has her character sufficiently pointed out to the audience, in her declaration, that she had been "stolen from her friends in Turnbal-street."

LLOYD'S COFFEE-HOUSE.

Lloyd's is one of the earliest establishments of the kind; it is referred to in a poem printed in the year 1700, called the _Wealthy Shopkeeper, or Charitable Christian_:

"Now to Lloyd's coffee-house he never fails, To read the letters, and attend the sales."

In 1710, Steele (_Tatler_, No. 246,) dates from Lloyd's his Pet.i.tion on Coffee-house Orators and Newsvendors. And Addison, in _Spectator_, April 23, 1711, relates this droll incident:--"About a week since there happened to me a very odd accident, by reason of which one of these my papers of minutes which I had accidentally dropped at Lloyd's Coffee-house, where the auctions are usually kept. Before I missed it, there were a cl.u.s.ter of people who had found it, and were diverting themselves with it at one end of the coffee-house. It had raised so much laughter among them before I observed what they were about, that I had not the courage to own it. The boy of the coffee-house, when they had done with it, carried it about in his hand, asking everybody if they had dropped a written paper; but n.o.body challenging it, he was ordered by those merry gentlemen who had before perused it, to get up into the auction-pulpit, and read it to the whole room, that if anybody would own it, they might. The boy accordingly mounted the pulpit, and with a very audible voice read what proved to be minutes, which made the whole coffee-house very merry; some of them concluded it was written by a madman, and others by somebody that had been taking notes out of the _Spectator_. After it was read, and the boy was coming out of the pulpit, the Spectator reached his arm out, and desired the boy to give it him; which was done according. This drew the whole eyes of the company upon the Spectator; but after casting a cursory glance over it, he shook his head twice or thrice at the reading of it, twisted it into a kind of match, and lighted his pipe with it. 'My profound silence,' says the Spectator, 'together with the steadiness of my countenance, and the gravity of my behaviour during the whole transaction, raised a very loud laugh on all sides of me; but as I had escaped all suspicion of being the author, I was very well satisfied, and applying myself to my pipe and the _Postman_, took no further notice of anything that pa.s.sed about me.'"

Nothing is positively known of the original Lloyd; but in 1750, there was issued an Irregular Ode, ent.i.tled _A Summer's Farewell to the Gulph of Venice, in the Southwell Frigate_, Captain Manly, jun., commanding, stated to be "printed for Lloyd, well-known for obliging the public with the Freshest and Most Authentic Ship News, and sold by A. More, near St. Paul's, and at the Pamphlet Shops in London and Westminster, MDCCL."

In the _Gentleman's Magazine_, for 1740, we read:--"11 March, 1740, Mr. Baker, Master of Lloyd's Coffee-house, in Lombard-street, waited on Sir Robert Walpole with the news of Admiral Vernon's taking Portobello. This was the first account received thereof, and proving true, Sir Robert was pleased to order him a handsome present."

Lloyd's is, perhaps, the oldest collective establishment in the City.

It was first under the management of a single individual, who started it as a room where the underwriters and insurers of ships' cargoes could meet for refreshment and conversation. The Coffee-house was originally in Lombard-street, at the corner of Abchurch-lane; subsequently in Pope's-head-alley, where it was called "New Lloyd's Coffee-house;" but on February 14th, 1774, it was removed to the north-west corner of the Royal Exchange, where it remained until the destruction of that building by fire.

In rebuilding the Exchange, a fine suite of apartments was provided for Lloyd's "Subscription Rooms," which are the rendezvous of the most eminent merchants, ship-owners, underwriters, insurance, stock, and exchange brokers. Here is obtained the earliest news of the arrival and sailing of vessels, losses at sea, captures, recaptures, engagements, and other shipping intelligence; and proprietors of ships and freights are insured by the underwriters. The rooms are in the Venetian style, with Roman enrichments. They are--1. The Subscribers'

or Underwriters', the Merchants', and the Captains' Room. At the entrance of the room are exhibited the Shipping Lists, received from Lloyd's agents at home and abroad, and affording particulars of departures or arrivals of vessels, wrecks, salvage, or sale of property saved, etc. To the right and left are "Lloyd's Books," two enormous ledgers: right hand, ships "spoken with," or arrived at their destined ports; left hand: records of wrecks, fires, or severe collisions, written in a fine Roman hand, in "double lines." To a.s.sist the underwriters in their calculations, at the end of the room is an Anemometer, which registers the state of the wind day and night; attached is a rain-gauge.

The life of the underwriter is one of great anxiety and speculation.

"Among the old stagers of the room, there is often strong antipathy to the insurance of certain ships. In the case of one vessel it was strangely followed out. She was a steady trader, named after one of the most venerable members of the room; and it was a curious coincidence that he invariably refused to 'write her' for 'a single line.' Often he was joked upon the subject, and pressed to 'do a little' for his namesake; but he as often declined, shaking his head in a doubtful manner. One morning the subscribers were reading the 'double lines,' or the losses, and among them was this identical ship, which had gone to pieces, and become a total wreck."--_The City_, _2nd edit._, 1848.

The Merchants' Room is superintended by a master, who can speak several languages: here are duplicate copies of the books in the underwriters' room, and files of English and foreign newspapers.

The Captains' Room is a kind of coffee-room, where merchants and ship-owners meet captains, and sales of ships, etc. take place.

The members of Lloyd's have ever been distinguished by their loyalty and benevolent spirit. In 1802, they voted 2000_l._ to the Life-boat subscription. On July 20, 1803, at the invasion panic, they commenced the Patriotic Fund with 20,000_l._ 3-per-cent. Consols; besides 70,312_l._ 7_s._ individual subscriptions, and 15,000_l._ additional donations. After the battle of the Nile, in 1798, they collected for the widows and wounded seamen 32,423_l._; and after Lord Howe's victory, June 1, 1794, for similar purposes, 21,281_l._ They have also contributed 5000_l._ to the London Hospital; 1000_.l_ for the suffering inhabitants of Russia in 1813; 1000_l._ for the relief of the militia in our North American colonies, 1813; and 10,000_l._ for the Waterloo subscription, in 1815. The Committee vote medals and rewards to those who distinguish themselves in saving life from shipwreck.

Some years since, a member of Lloyd's drew from the books the following lines of names contained therein:--

"A Black and a White, with a Brown and a Green, And also a Gray at Lloyd's room may be seen; With Parson and Clark, then a Bishop and Pryor, And Water, how Strange adding fuel to fire; While, at the same time, 'twill sure pa.s.s belief, There's a Winter, a Garland, Furze, Bud, and a Leaf; With Freshfield, and Greenhill, Lovegrove, and a Dale; Though there's never a Breeze, there's always a Gale.

No music is there, though a Whistler and Harper; There's a Blunt and a Sharp, many flats, but no sharper.

There's a Danniell, a Samuel, a Sampson, an Abell; The first and the last write at the same table.

Then there's Virtue and Faith there, with Wylie and Rasch, Disagreeing elsewhere, yet at Lloyd's never clash, There's a Long and a Short, Small, Little, and Fatt, With one Robert Dewar, who ne'er wears his hat: No drinking goes on, though there's Porter and Sack, Lots of Scotchmen there are, beginning with Mac; Macdonald, to wit, Macintosh and McGhie, McFarquhar, McKenzie, McAndrew, Mackie.

An evangelized Jew, and an infidel Quaker; There's a Bunn and a Pye, with a Cook and a Baker, Though no Tradesmen or Shopmen are found, yet herewith Is a Taylor, a Saddler, a Paynter, a Smyth; Also Butler and Chapman, with b.u.t.ter and Glover, Come up to Lloyd's room their bad risks to cover.

Fox, Shepherd, Hart, Buck, likewise come every day; And though many an a.s.s, there is only one Bray.

There is a Mill and Miller, A-dam and a Poole, A Constable, Sheriff, a Law, and a Rule.

There's a Newman, a Niemann, a Redman, a Pitman, Now to rhyme with the last, there is no other fit man.

These, with Young, Cheap, and Lent, Luckie, Hastie, and Slow, With dear Mr. Allnutt, Allfrey, and Auldjo, Are all the queer names that at Lloyd's I can show."

Many of these individuals are now deceased; but a frequenter of Lloyd's in former years will recognize the persons mentioned.

THE JERUSALEM COFFEE-HOUSE,

Cornhill, is one of the oldest of the City news-rooms, and is frequented by merchants and captains connected with the commerce of China, India, and Australia.

"The subscription-room is well-furnished with files of the princ.i.p.al Canton, Hongkong, Macao, Penang, Singapore, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Sydney, Hobart Town, Launceston, Adelaide, and Port Phillip papers, and Prices Current: besides shipping lists and papers from the various intermediate stations or ports touched at, as St. Helena, the Cape of Good Hope, etc. The books of East India shipping include arrivals, departures, casualties, etc. The full business is between two and three o'clock, p.m. In 1845, John Tawell, the Slough murderer, was captured at [traced to] the Jerusalem, which he was in the habit of visiting, to ascertain information of the state of his property in Sydney."--_The City_, 2nd edit., 1848.

BAKER'S COFFEE-HOUSE,

Change-alley, is remembered as a tavern some forty years since. The landlord, after whom it is named, may possibly have been a descendant from "Baker," the master of Lloyd's Rooms. It has been, for many years, a chop-house, with direct service from the gridiron, and upon pewter; though on the first-floor, joint dinners are served: its post-prandial punch was formerly much drunk. In the lower room is a portrait of James, thirty-five years waiter here.

COFFEE-HOUSES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

Of Ward's _Secret History_ of the Clubs of his time we have already given several specimens. Little is known of him personally. He was, probably, born in 1660, and early in life he visited the West Indies.

Sometime before 1669, he kept a tavern and punch-house, next door to Gray's Inn, of which we shall speak hereafter. His works are now rarely to be met with. His doggrel secured him a place in the _Dunciad_, where not only his elevation to the pillory is mentioned, but the fact is also alluded to that his productions were extensively shipped to the Plantations or Colonies of those days,--

"Nor sail with Ward to ape-and-monkey climes, Where vile mundungus trucks for viler rhymes,"

the only places, probably, where they were extensively read. In return for the doubtful celebrity thus conferred upon his rhymes, he attacked the satirist in a wretched production, int.i.tuled _Apollo's Maggot in his Cups_; his expiring effort, probably, for he died, as recorded in the pages of our first volume, on the 22nd of June, 1731. His remains were buried in the churchyard of Old St. Pancras, his body being followed to the grave solely by his wife and daughter, as directed by him in his poetical will, written some six years before. We learn from n.o.ble that there are no less than four engraved portraits of Ned Ward. The structure of the _London Spy_, the only work of his that at present comes under our notice, is simple enough. The author is self-personified as a countryman, who, tired with his "tedious confinement to a country hutt," comes up to London; where he fortunately meets with a quondam school-fellow,--a "man about town,"

in modern phrase,--who undertakes to introduce him to the various scenes, sights, and mysteries of the, even then, "great metropolis:"

much like the visit, in fact, from Jerry Hawthorn to Corinthian Tom, only antic.i.p.ated by some hundred and twenty years. "We should not be at all surprised (says the _Gentleman's Magazine_,) to find that the stirring scenes of Pierce Egan's _Life in London_ were first suggested by more homely pages of the _London Spy_."

At the outset of the work we have a description--not a very flattering one, certainly--of a common coffee-house of the day, one of the many hundreds with which London then teemed. Although coffee had been only known in England some fifty years, coffee-houses were already among the most favourite inst.i.tutions of the land; though they had not as yet attained the political importance which they acquired in the days of the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_, some ten or twelve years later:--

"'Come,' says my friend, 'let us step into this coffee-house here; as you are a stranger in the town, it will afford you some diversion.'

Accordingly in we went, where a parcel of muddling muckworms were as busy as so many rats in an old cheese-loft; some going, some coming, some scribbling, some talking, some drinking, some smoking, others jangling; and the whole room stinking of tobacco, like a Dutch scoot [schuyt], or a boatswain's cabin. The walls were hung round with gilt frames, as a farrier's shop with horse-shoes; which contained abundance of rarities, viz., Nectar and Ambrosia, May-dew, Golden Elixirs, Popular Pills, Liquid Snuff, Beautifying Waters, Dentifrices, Drops, and Lozenges; all as infallible as the Pope, 'Where every one (as the famous Saffolde has it) above the rest, Deservedly has gain'd the name of best:' every medicine being so catholic, it pretends to nothing less than universality. So that, had not my friend told me 'twas a coffee-house, I should have taken it for Quacks' Hall, or the parlour of some eminent mountebank. We each of us stuck in our mouths a pipe of sotweed, and now began to look about us."

A description of Man's Coffee-house, situate in Scotland-yard, near the water-side, is an excellent picture of a fashionable coffee-house of the day. It took its name from the proprietor, Alexander Man, and was sometimes known as Old Man's, or the Royal Coffee-house, to distinguish it from Young Man's and Little Man's minor establishments in the neighbourhood:--

"We now ascended a pair of stairs, which brought us into an old-fashioned room, where a gaudy crowd of odoriferous _Tom-Essences_ were walking backwards and forwards with their hats in their hands, not daring to convert them to their intended use, lest it should put the foretops of their wigs into some disorder. We squeezed through till we got to the end of the room, where, at a small table, we sat down, and observed that it was as great a rarity to hear anybody call for a dish of _Politician's porridge_, or any other liquor, as it is to hear a beau call for a pipe of tobacco; their whole exercise being to charge and discharge their nostrils, and keep the curls of their periwigs in their proper order. The clashing of their snush-box lids, in opening and shutting, made more noise than their tongues. Bows and cringes of the newest mode were here exchanged, 'twixt friend and friend, with wonderful exactness. They made a humming like so many hornets in a country chimney, not with their talking, but with their whispering over their new _Minuets_ and _Bories_, with their hands in their pockets, if only freed from their snush-box. We now began to be thoughtful of a pipe of tobacco; whereupon we ventured to call for some instruments of evaporation, which were accordingly brought us, but with such a kind of unwillingness, as if they would much rather have been rid of our company; for their tables were so very neat, and shined with rubbing, like the upper-leathers of an alderman's shoes, and as brown as the top of a country housewife's cupboard. The floor was as clean swept as a Sir Courtly's dining-room, which made us look round, to see if there were no orders hung up to impose the forfeiture of so much Mop-money upon any person that should spit out of the chimney-corner. Notwithstanding we wanted an example to encourage us in our porterly rudeness, we ordered them to light the wax-candle, by which we ignified our pipes and blew about our whiffs; at which several Sir Foplins drew their faces into as many peevish wrinkles, as the beaux at the Bow-street Coffee-house, near Covent-garden did, when the gentleman in masquerade came in amongst them, with his oyster-barrel m.u.f.f and turnip-b.u.t.tons, to ridicule their fopperies."

A cabinet picture of the Coffee-house life of a century and a half since is thus given in the well-known _Journey through England_ in 1714: "I am lodged," says the tourist, "in the street called Pall Mall, the ordinary residence of all strangers, because of its vicinity to the Queen's Palace, the Park, the Parliament House, the Theatres, and the Chocolate and Coffee-houses, where the best company frequent.

If you would know our manner of living, 'tis thus: we rise by nine, and those that frequent great men's levees, find entertainment at them till eleven, or, as in Holland, go to tea-tables; about twelve the _beau monde_ a.s.semble in several Coffee or Chocolate houses: the best of which are the Cocoa-tree and White's Chocolate-houses, St. James's, the Smyrna, Mrs. Rochford's, and the British Coffee-houses; and all these so near one another, that in less than an hour you see the company of them all. We are carried to these places in chairs (or sedans), which are here very cheap, a guinea a week, or a shilling per hour, and your chairmen serve you for porters to run on errands, as your gondoliers do at Venice.