Club Life of London Volume Ii Part 15

FOOTNOTE:

[33] Jesse's 'London and its Celebrities.'

THE YOUNG DEVIL TAVERN.

The notoriety of the Devil Tavern, as common in such cases, created an opponent on the opposite side of Fleet-street, named "The Young Devil." The Society of Antiquaries, who had previously met at the Bear Tavern, in the Strand, changed their rendezvous Jan. 9, 1707-8, to the Young Devil Tavern; but the host failed, and as Browne Willis tells us, the Antiquaries, in or about 1709, "met at the Fountain Tavern, as we went down into the Inner Temple, against Chancery Lane."

Later, a music-room, called the Apollo, was attempted, but with no success: an advertis.e.m.e.nt for a concert, December 19, 1737, intimated "tickets to be had at Will's Coffee-house, formerly the Apollo, in Bell Yard, near Temple Bar." This may explain the Apollo Court, in Fleet-street, unless it is found in the next page.

c.o.c.k TAVERN, FLEET-STREET.

The Apollo Club, at the Devil Tavern, is kept in remembrance by Apollo Court, in Fleet-street, nearly opposite; next door eastward of which is an old tavern nearly as well known. It is, perhaps, the most primitive place of its kind in the metropolis: it still possesses a fragment of decoration of the time of James I., and the writer remembers the tavern half a century ago, with considerably more of its original panelling. It is just two centuries since (1665), when the Plague was raging, the landlord shut up his house, and retired into the country; and there is preserved one of the farthings referred to in this advertis.e.m.e.nt:--"This is to certify that the master of the c.o.c.k and Bottle, commonly called the c.o.c.k Alehouse, at Temple Bar, hath dismissed his servants, and shut up his house, for this long vacation, intending (G.o.d willing) to return at Michaelmas next; so that all persons whatsoever who may have any accounts with the said master, or _farthings belonging to the said house_, are desired to repair thither before the 8th of this instant, and they shall receive satisfaction." Three years later, we find Pepys frequenting this tavern: "23rd April, 1668. Thence by water to the Temple, and there to the c.o.c.k Alehouse, and drank, and eat a lobster, and sang, and mightily merry. So almost night, I carried Mrs. Pierce home, and then Knipp and I to the Temple again, and took boat, it being now night."

The tavern has a gilt signbird over the pa.s.sage door, stated to have been carved by Gibbons. Over the mantelpiece is some carving, at least of the time of James I.; but we remember the entire room similarly carved, and a huge black-and-gilt clock, and settle. The head-waiter of our time lives in the verse of Laureate Tennyson--"O plump head-waiter of the c.o.c.k!" apostrophizes the "Will Water-proof"

of the bard, in a reverie wherein he conceives William to have undergone a transition similar to that of Jove's cup-bearer:--

"And hence (says he) this halo lives about The waiter's hands, that reach To each his perfect pint of stout, His proper chop to each.

He looks not with the common breed, That with the napkin dally; I think he came, like Ganymede, From some delightful valley."

And of the redoubtable bird, who is supposed to have performed the eagle's part in this abduction, he says:--

"The c.o.c.k was of a larger egg Than modern poultry drop, Stept forward on a firmer leg, And cramm'd a plumper crop."

THE HERCULES' PILLARS TAVERNS.

Hercules Pillars Alley, on the south side of Fleet-street, near St.

Dunstan's Church, is described by Strype as "altogether inhabited by such as keep Publick Houses for entertainment, for which it is of note."

The token of the Hercules Pillars is thus described by Mr.

Akerman:--"ED. OLDHAM AT Y HERCVLES. A crowned male figure standing erect, and grasping a pillar with each hand.--Rx. PILLERS IN FLEET STREET. In the field, HIS HALF PENNY, E. P. O." "From this example,"

ill.u.s.tratively observes Mr. Akerman, "it would seem that the locality, called Hercules Pillars Alley, like other places in London, took its name from the tavern. The mode of representing the pillars of Hercules is somewhat novel; and, but for the inscription, we should have supposed the figure to represent Samson clutching the pillars of temple of Dagon. At the trial of Stephen Colledge, for high-treason, in 1681, an Irishman named Haynes, swore that he walked to the Hercules Pillars with the accused, and that in a room upstairs Colledge spoke of his treasonable designs and feeling. On another occasion the parties walked from Richard's coffee-house[34] to this tavern, where it was sworn they had a similar conference. Colledge, in his defence, denies the truth of the allegation, and declares that the walk from the coffee-house to the tavern is not more than a bow-shot, and that during such walk the witness had all the conversation to himself, though he had sworn that treasonable expressions had been made use of on their way thither.

"Pepys frequented this tavern: in one part of his _Diary_ he says, 'With Mr. Creed to Hercules Pillars, where we drank.' In another, 'In Fleet-street I met with Mr. Salisbury, who is now grown in less than two years' time so great a limner that he is become excellent and gets a great deal of money at it. I took him to Hercules Pillars to drink.'"

Again: "After the play was done, we met with Mr. Bateller and W.

Hewer, and Talbot Pepys, and they followed us in a hackney-coach; and we all supped at Hercules Pillars; and there I did give the best supper I could, and pretty merry; and so home between eleven and twelve at night." "At noon, my wife came to me at my tailor's, and I sent her home, and myself and Tom dined at Hercules Pillars."

Another noted "Hercules Pillars" was at Hyde Park Corner, near Hamilton-place, on the site of what is now the pavement opposite Lord Willoughby's. "Here," says Cunningham, "Squire Western put his horses up when in pursuit of Tom Jones; and here Field Marshal the Marquis of Gransby was often found." And Wycherley, in his _Plain Dealer_, 1676, makes the spendthrift, Jerry Blackacre, talk of picking up his mortgaged silver "out of most of the ale-houses between Hercules Pillars and the Boatswain in Wapping."

Hyde Park Corner was noted for its petty taverns, some of which remained as late as 1805. It was to one of these taverns that Steele took Savage to dine, and where Sir Richard dictated and Savage wrote a pamphlet, which he went out and sold for two guineas, with which the reckoning was paid. Steele then "returned home, having retired that day only to avoid his creditors, and composed the pamphlet only to discharge his reckoning."

FOOTNOTE:

[34] Subsequently "d.i.c.k's."

HOLE-IN-THE-WALL TAVERNS.

This odd sign exists in Chancery-lane, at a house on the east side, immediately opposite the old gate of Lincoln's-Inn; "and," says Mr.

Burn, "being supported by the dependants on legal functionaries, appears to have undergone fewer changes than the law, retaining all the vigour of a new establishment." There is another "Hole in the Wall" in St. Dunstan's-court, Fleet-street, much frequented by printers.

Mr. Akerman says:--"It was a popular sign, and several taverns bore the same designation, which probably originated in a certain tavern being situated in some umbrageous recess in the old City walls. Many of the most popular and most frequented taverns of the present day are located in twilight courts and alleys, into which Phoebus peeps at Midsummer-tide only when on the meridian. Such localities may have been selected on more than one account: they not only afforded good skulking 'holes' for those who loved drinking better than work; but beer and other liquors keep better in the shade. These haunts, like Lady Mary's farm, were--

'In summer shady, and in winter warm.'

Rawlins, the engraver of the fine and much coveted Oxford Crown, with a view of the city under the horse, dates a quaint supplicatory letter to John Evelyn, 'from the Hole in the Wall, in St. Martin's;' no misnomer, we will be sworn, in that aggregation of debt and dissipation, when debtors were imprisoned with a very remote chance of redemption. In the days of Rye-house and Meal-Tub plots, philanthropy overlooked such little matters; and Small Debts Bills were not dreamt of in the philosophy of speculative legislators. Among other places which bore the designation of the Hole in the Wall, there was one in Chandos-street, in which the famous Duval, the highwayman, was apprehended after an attack on--two bottles of wine, probably drugged by a 'friend' or mistress."

THE MITRE, IN FLEET-STREET.

This was the true Johnsonian Mitre, so often referred to in _Boswell's Life_; but it has earlier fame. Here, in 1640, Lilly met Old Will Poole, the astrologer, then living in Ram-alley. The Royal Society Club dined at the Mitre from 1743 to 1750, the Society then meeting in Crane-court, nearly opposite. The Society of Antiquaries met some time at the Mitre. Dr. Macmichael, in _The Gold-headed Cane_, makes Dr.

Radcliffe say:--"I never recollect to have spent a more delightful evening than that at the Mitre Tavern, in Fleet-street, where my good friend Billy Nutly, who was indeed the better half of me, had been prevailed upon to accept of a small temporary a.s.sistance, and joined our party, the Earl of Denbigh, Lords Colepeper and Stowel, and Mr.

Blackmore."

The house has a token:--WILLIAM PAGET AT THE. A mitre.--Rx. MITRE IN FLEET STREET. In the field, W. E. P.

Johnson's Mitre is commonly thought to be the tavern with that sign, which still exists in Mitre-court, over against Fetter-lane; where is shown a cast of Nollekens' bust of Johnson, in confirmation of this house being his resort. Such was not the case; Boswell distinctly states it to have been the Mitre Tavern _in_ _Fleet-street_; and the records by Lilly and the Royal Society, alike specify "in Fleet-street," which Mr. Burn, in his excellent account of the Beaufoy Tokens, explains was the house, No. 39, Fleet-street, that Macklin opened, in 1788, as the Poet's Gallery; and lastly, Saunders's auction-rooms. It was taken down to enlarge the site for Messrs.

h.o.a.res' new banking-house. The now Mitre Tavern, in Mitre-court, was originally called Joe's Coffee-house; and on the shutting up of the old Mitre, in Fleet-street, took its name; this being four years after Johnson's death.

The Mitre was Dr. Johnson's favourite supper-house, the parties including Goldsmith, Percy, Hawkesworth, and Boswell; there was planned the tour to the Hebrides. Johnson had a strange nervous feeling, which made him uneasy if he had not touched every post between the Mitre and his own lodgings. Johnson took Goldsmith to the Mitre, where Boswell and the Doctor had supped together in the previous month, when Boswell spoke of Goldsmith's "very loose, odd, scrambling kind of life," and Johnson defended him as one of our first men as an author, and a very worthy man;--adding, "he has been loose in his principles, but he is coming right." Boswell was impatient of Goldsmith from the first hour of their acquaintance. Chamberlain Clarke, who died in 1831, aged 92, was the last surviving of Dr.

Johnson's Mitre friends. Mr. William Scott, Lord Stowell, also frequented the Mitre.

Boswell has this remarkable pa.s.sage respecting the house:--"We had a good supper, and port-wine, of which he (Johnson) sometimes drank a bottle. The orthodox high-church sound of THE MITRE--the figure and manner of the celebrated SAMUEL JOHNSON--the extraordinary power and precision of his conversation, and the pride arising from finding myself admitted as his companion, produced a variety of sensations, and a pleasing elevation of mind, beyond what I had ever experienced."

SHIP TAVERN, TEMPLE BAR.

This noted Tavern, the site of which is now denoted by Ship-yard, is mentioned among the grants to Sir Christopher Hatton, 1571. There is, in the Beaufoy Collection, a Ship token, dated 1649, which is evidence that the inner tavern of that sign was then extant. It was also called the Drake, from the ship painted as the sign being that in which Sir Francis Drake voyaged round the world. Faithorne, the celebrated engraver, kept shop, next door to the Drake. "The Ship Tavern, in the Butcher-row, near Temple Bar," occurs in an advertis.e.m.e.nt so late as June, 1756.

The taverns about Temple Bar were formerly numerous; and the folly of disfiguring sign-boards was then, as at a later date, a street frolic.

"Sir John Denham, the poet, when a student at Lincoln's-Inn, in 1635, though generally temperate as a drinker, having stayed late at a tavern with some fellow-students, induced them to join him in 'a frolic,' to obtain a pot of ink and a plasterer's brush, and blot out all the signs between Temple Bar and Charing Cross. Aubrey relates that R. Estcourt, Esq., carried the ink-pot: and that next day it caused great confusion; but it happened Sir John and his comrades were discovered, and it cost them some moneys."

THE PALSGRAVE HEAD, TEMPLE BAR.

This once celebrated Tavern, opposite the Ship, occupied the site of Palsgrave-place, on the south side of the Strand, near Temple Bar. The Palsgrave Frederick, afterwards King of Bohemia, was affianced to the Princess Elizabeth (only daughter of James I.), in the old banqueting house at Whitehall, December 27, 1612, when the sign was, doubtless, set up in compliment to him. There is a token of the house in the Beaufoy Collection. (See _Burn's Catalogue_, p. 225.)

Here Prior and Montague, in _The Hind and Panther Transversed_, make the Country Mouse and the City Mouse bilk the Hackney Coachman:

"But now at Piccadilly they arrive, And taking coach, t'wards Temple Bar they drive, But at St. Clement's eat out the back; And slipping through the Palsgrave, bilkt poor hack."

HEYc.o.c.k'S, TEMPLE BAR,

Near the Palsgrave's Head tavern, was Heyc.o.c.k's Ordinary, much frequented by Parliament men and gallants. Andrew Marvell usually dined here: one day, having eaten heartily of boiled beef, with some roasted pigeons and asparagus, he drank his pint of port; and on the coming in of the reckoning, taking a piece of money out of his pocket, held it up, and addressing his a.s.sociates, certain members of Parliament, known to be in the pay of the Crown, said, "Gentlemen, who would lett himself out for hire, while he can have such a dinner for half-a-crown?"