Old and New London Part 16

"Says the lady, says she, 'I've changed my state.'

'Why, you don't mean,' says Jack, 'that you've got a mate?

You know you promised me.' Says she, 'I couldn't wait, For no tidings could I gain of you, Jack Robinson.

And somebody one day came to me and said That somebody else had somewhere read, In some newspaper, that you was somewhere dead.'-- 'I've not been dead at all,' says Jack Robinson."

Another song, "The Spider and the Fly," is still often sung; and "Going to Coronation" is by no means forgotten in Yorkshire. "There was a Man in the West Countrie" figures in most current collections of songs.

Hudson particularly excelled in stage-Irishman songs, which were then popular; and some of these, particularly one that ends with the refrain, "My brogue and my blarney and bothering ways," have real humour in them. Many of these Irish songs were written for and sung by the late Mr. Fitzwilliam, the comedian, as others of Hudson's songs were by Mr.

Rayner. Collectors of comic ditties will not readily forget "Walker, the Twopenny Postman," or "The Dogs'-meat Man"--rough caricatures of low life, unstained by the vulgarity of many of the modern music-hall ditties. In the motto to one of his collections of poems, Hudson borrows from Churchill an excuse for the rough, humorous effusions that he scattered broadcast over the town,--

"When the mad fit comes on, I seize the pen, Rough as they run, the rapid thoughts set down; Rough as they run, discharge them on the town.

Hence rude, unfinished brats, before their time, Are born into this idle world of rhyme; And the poor slattern muse is brought to bed, With all her imperfections on her head."

We subjoin a very good specimen of Hudson's songs, from his once very popular "Coronation of William and Adelaide" (1830), which, we think, will be allowed to fully justify our praise of the author:--

"And when we got to town, quite tired, The bells all rung, the guns they fired, The people looking all bemired, In one conglomeration.

Soldiers red, policemen blue, Horse-guards, foot-guards, and blackguards too, Beef-eaters, dukes, and Lord knows who, To see the coronation.

While Dolly bridled up, so proud, At us the people laughed aloud; Dobbin stood in thickest crowd, Wi' quiet resignation.

To move again he warn't inclined; 'Here's a chap!' says one behind, 'He's brought an old horse, lame and blind, To see the coronation.'

Dolly cried, 'Oh! dear, oh! dear, I wish I never had come here, To suffer every jibe and jeer, In such a situation.'

While so busy, she and I To get a little ease did try, By goles! the king and queen went by, And all the coronation.

I struggled hard, and Dolly cried; And tho' to help myself I tried, We both were carried with the tide, Against our inclination.

'The reign's begun!' folks cried; ''tis true;'

'Sure,' said Dolly, 'I think so too; The rain's begun, for I'm wet thro', All through the coronation.'

We bade good-bye to Lunnun town; The king and queen they gain'd a crown; Dolly spoilt her bran-new gown, To her mortification.

I'll drink our king and queen wi' glee, In home-brewed ale, and so will she; But Doll and I ne'er want to see Another coronation."

Our English bishops, who had not the same taste as the Cistercians in selecting pleasant places for their habitations, seem during the Middle Ages to have much affected the neighbourhood of Fleet Street. Ely Place still marks the residence of one rich prelate. In Chichester Rents we have already met with the humble successors of the netmaker of Galilee.

In a siding on the north-west side of Shoe Lane the Bishops of Bangor lived, with their spluttering and choleric Welsh retinue, as early as 1378. Recent improvements have laid open the miserable "close" called Bangor Court, that once glowed with the reflections of scarlet hoods and jewelled copes; and a schoolhouse of b.a.s.t.a.r.d Tudor architecture, with sham turrets and flimsy mullioned windows, now occupies the site of the proud Christian prelate's palace. Bishop Dolben, who died in 1633 (Charles I.), was the last Welsh bishop who deigned to reside in a neighbourhood from which wealth and fashion was fast ebbing. Brayley says that a part of the old episcopal garden, where the ecclesiastical subjects of centuries had been discussed by shaven men and frocked scholars, still existed in 1759 (George II.); and, indeed, as Mr. Jesse records, even as late as 1828 (George IV.) a portion of the old mansion, once redolent with the stupefying incense of the semi-pagan Church, still lingered. Bangor House, according to Mr. J.T. Smith, is mentioned in the patent rolls as early as Edward III. The lawyers' barbarous dog-Latin of the old-deed describe, "unum messuag, unum placeam terrae, ac unam gardniam, c.u.m aliis edificis," in Shoe Lane, London. In 1647 (Charles I.) Sir John Birkstead purchased of the Parliamentary trustees the bishop's lands, that had probably been confiscated, to build streets upon the site. But Sir John went on paving the old place, and never built at all. Cromwell's Act of 1657, to check the increase of London, entailed a special exemption in his favour. At the Restoration, the land returned to its Welsh bishop; but it had degenerated--the palace was divided into several residences, and mean buildings sprang up like fungi around it. A drawing of Malcolm's, early in the century, shows us its two Tudor windows. Latterly it became divided into wretched rooms, and two as three hundred poor people, chiefly Irish, herded in them. The house was entirely pulled down in the autumn of 1828.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BANGOR HOUSE, 1818 (_see page 131_).]

Mr. Grant, that veteran of the press, tells a capital story, in his "History of the Newspaper Press," of one of the early vendors of unstamped newspapers in Shoe Lane:--

"_Cleaves Police Gazette_," says Mr. Grant, "consisted chiefly of reports of police cases. It certainly was a newspaper to all intents and purposes, and was ultimately so declared to be in a court of law by a jury. But in the meantime, while the action was pending, the police had instructions to arrest Mr. John Cleave, the proprietor, and seize all the copies of the paper as they came out of his office in Shoe Lane. He contrived for a time to elude their vigilance; and in order to prevent the seizure of his paper, he resorted to an expedient which was equally ingenious and laughable. Close by his little shop in Shoe Lane there was an undertaker, whose business, as might be inferred from the neighbourhood, as well as from his personal appearance and the homeliness of his shop, was exclusively among the lower and poorer cla.s.ses of the community. With him Mr. Cleave made an arrangement to construct several coffins of the plainest and cheapest kind, for purposes which were fully explained. The 'undertaker,' whose ultra-republican principles were in perfect unison with those of Mr.

Cleave, not only heartily undertook the work, but did so on terms so moderate that he would not ask for nor accept any profit. He, indeed, could imagine no higher nor holier duty than that of a.s.sisting in the dissemination of a paper which boldly and energetically preached the extinction of the aristocracy and the perfect equality in social position, and in property too, of all cla.s.ses of the community.

Accordingly the coffins, with a rudeness in make and material which were in perfect keeping with the purpose to which they were to be applied, were got ready; and Mr. Cleave, in the dead of night, got them filled with thousands of his _Gazettes_. It had been arranged beforehand that particular houses in various parts of the town should be in readiness to receive them with blinds down, as if some relative had been dead, and was about to be borne away to the house appointed for all living. The deal coffin was opened, and the contents were taken out, tied up in a parcel so as to conceal from the prying curiosity of any chance person that they were _Cleave's Police Gazettes_, and then sent off to the railway stations most convenient for their transmission to the provinces. The coffins after this were returned in the middle of next night to the 'undertaker's' in Shoe Lane, there to be in readiness to render a similar service to Mr. Cleave and the cause of red Republicanism when the next _Gazette_ appeared."

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD ST. DUNSTAN'S CHURCH (_see page 135_).]

"In this way Mr. Cleave contrived for some time to elude the vigilance of the police and to sell about 50,000 copies weekly of each impression of his paper. But the expedient, ingenious and eminently successful as it was for a time, failed at last. The people in Shoe Lane and the neighbourhood began to be surprised and alarmed at the number of funerals, as they believed them to be, which the departure of so many coffins from the 'undertaker's' necessarily implied. The very natural conclusion to which they came was, that this supposed sudden and extensive number of deaths could only be accounted for on the a.s.sumption that some fatal epidemic had visited the neighbourhood, and there made itself a local habitation. The parochial authorities, responding to the prevailing alarm, questioned the 'undertaker' friend and fellow-labourer of Mr. Cleave as to the causes of his sudden and extensive accession of business in the coffin-making way; and the result of the close questions put to him was the discovery of the whole affair. It need hardly be added that an immediate and complete collapse took place in Mr.

Cleave's business, so far as his _Police Gazette_ was concerned. Not another number of the publication ever made its appearance, while the coffin-trade of the 'undertaker' all at once returned to its normal proportions."

This stratagem of Cleave's was rivalled a few years ago by M. Herzen's clever plan of sending great numbers of his treasonable and forbidden paper, the _Kolokol_, to Russia, soldered up in sardine-boxes. No Government, in fact, can ever baffle determined and ingenious smugglers.

One especially sad a.s.sociation attaches to Shoe Lane, and that is the burial in the workhouse graveyard (the site of the late Farringdon Market) of that unhappy child of genius, Chatterton the poet. In August, 1770, the poor lad, who had come from Bristol full of hope and ambition to make his fortune in London by his pen, broken-hearted and maddened by disappointment, destroyed himself in his mean garret-lodging in Brooke Street, Holborn, by swallowing a.r.s.enic. Mr. John Dix, his very unscrupulous biographer, has noted down a curious legend about the possible removal of the poet's corpse from London to Bristol, which, doubtful as it is, is at least interesting as a possibility:--

"I found," says Mr. Dix, "that Mrs. Stockwell, of Peter Street, wife of Mr. Stockwell, a basket-maker, was the person who had communicated to Sir R. Wilmot her grounds for believing Chatterton to have been so interred; and on my requesting her to repeat to me what she knew of that affair, she commenced by informing me that at ten years of age she was a scholar of Mrs. Chatterton, his mother, where she was taught plain work, and remained with her until she was near twenty years of age; that she slept with her, and found her kind and motherly, insomuch that there were many things which in moments of affliction Mrs. C. communicated to her, that she would not have wished to have been generally known; and among others, she often repeated how happy she was that her unfortunate son lay buried in Redcliff, through the kind attention of a friend or relation in London, who, after the body had been cased in a parish sh.e.l.l, had it properly secured and sent to her by the waggon; that when it arrived it was opened, and the corpse found to be black and half putrid (having been burst with the motion of the carriage, or from some other cause), so that it became necessary to inter it speedily; and that it was early interred by Phillips, the s.e.xton, who was of her family.

That the effect of the loss of her son was a nervous disorder, which never quitted her, and she was often seen weeping at the bitter remembrance of her misfortune. She described the poet as having been sharp-tempered, but that it was soon over; and she often said he had cost her many uneasy hours, from the apprehension she entertained of his going mad, as he was accustomed to remain fixed for above an hour at a time quite motionless, and then he would s.n.a.t.c.h up a pen and write incessantly; but he was always, she added, affectionate....

"In addition to this, Mrs. Stockwell told the writer that the grave was on the right-hand side of the lime-tree, middle paved walk, in Redcliff Churchyard, about twenty feet from the father's grave, which is, she says, in the paved walk, and where now Mrs. Chatterton and Mrs. Newton, her daughter, also lie. Also, that Mrs. Chatterton gave a person leave to bury his child over her son's coffin, and was much vexed to find that he afterwards put the stone over it, which, when Chatterton was buried, had been taken up for the purpose of digging the grave, and set against the church-wall; that afterwards, when Mr. Hutchinson's or Mr. Taylor's wife died, they buried her also in the same grave, and put this stone over with a new inscription. (Query, did he erase the first, or turn the stone?--as this might lead to a discovery of the spot.)....

"Being referred to Mrs. Jane Phillips, of Rolls Alley, Rolls Lane, Great Gardens, Temple Parish (who is sister to that Richard Phillips who was s.e.xton at Redcliff Church in the year 1772), she informed me that his widow and a daughter were living in Cathay; the widow is s.e.xton, a Mr.

Perrin, of Colston's Parade, acting for her. She remembers Chatterton having been at his father's school, and that he always called Richard Phillips, her brother, 'uncle,' and was much liked by him. He liked him for his spirit, and there can be no doubt he would have risked the privately burying him on that account. When she heard he was gone to London she was sorry to hear it, for all loved him, and thought he could get no good there.

"Soon after his death her brother, R. Phillips, told her that poor Chatterton had killed himself; on which she said she would go to Madame Chatterton's, to know the rights of it; but that he forbade her, and said, if she did so he should be sorry he had told her. She, however, did go, and asking if it was true that he was dead, Mrs. Chatterton began to weep bitterly, saying, 'My son indeed is dead!' and when she asked her where he was buried, she replied, 'Ask me nothing; he is dead and buried.'"

Poppin's Court (No. 109) marks the site of the ancient hostel (hotel) of the Abbots of Cirencester--though what they did there, when they ought to have been on their knees in their own far-away Gloucestershire abbey, history does not choose to record. The sign of their inn was the "Poppingaye" (popinjay, parrot), and in 1602 (last year of Elizabeth) the alley was called Poppingay Alley. That excellent man Van Mildert (then a poor curate, living in Ely Place, afterwards Bishop of Durham--a prelate remarkable for this above all his many other Christian virtues, that he was not proud) was once driven into this alley with a young barrister friend by a noisy illumination-night crowd. The street boys began firing a volley of squibs at the young curate, who found all hope of escape barred, and dreaded the pickpockets, who take rapid advantage of such temporary embarra.s.sments; but his good-natured exclamation, "Ah!

here you are, popping away in Poppin's Court!" so pleased the crowd that they at once laughingly opened a pa.s.sage for him. "Sic me servavit, Apollo," he used afterwards to add when telling the story.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] "This Scott lived in Pudding Lane, and had some time been a page (or such-like) to the Lord Norris."

[5] "Davy Ramsay brought a half-quartern sack to put the treasure in."

CHAPTER XII.

FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIES SOUTH.

Worthy Mr. Fisher--Lamb's Wednesday Evenings--Persons one would wish to have seen--Ram Alley--Serjeants' Inn--The _Daily News_--"Memory"

Woodfall--A Mug-House Riot--Richardson's Printing Office--Fielding and Richardson--Johnson's Estimate of Richardson--Hogarth and Richardson's Guest--An Egotist Rebuked--The King's "Housewife"--Caleb Colton: his Life, Works, and Sentiments.

Falcon Court, Fleet Street, took its name from an inn which bore the sign of the "Falcon." This pa.s.sage formerly belonged to a gentleman named Fisher, who, out of grat.i.tude to the Cordwainers' Company, bequeathed it to them by will. His grat.i.tude is commonly said to have arisen from the number of good dinners that the Company had given him.

However this may be, the Cordwainers are the present owners of the estate, and are under the obligation of having a sermon preached annually at the neighbouring church of St. Dunstan, on the 10th of July, when certain sums are given to the poor. Formerly it was the custom to drink sack in the church to the pious memory of Mr. Fisher, but this appears to have been discontinued for a considerable period. This Fisher was a jolly fellow, if all the tales are true which are related of him, as, besides the sack drinking, he stipulated that the Cordwainers should give a grand feast on the same day yearly to all their tenants. What a quaint picture might be made of the churchwardens in the old church drinking to the memory of Mr. Fisher! Wynkyn de Worde, the father of printing in England, lived in Fleet Street, at his messuage or inn known by the sign of the Falcon. Whether it was the inn that stood on the site of Falcon Court is not known with certainty, but most probably it was.

Charles Lamb came to 16, Mitre Court Buildings in 1800, after leaving Southampton Buildings, and remained in that quiet harbour out of Fleet Street till 1809, when he removed to Inner Temple Lane.

It was whilst Lamb was residing in Mitre Court Buildings that those Wednesday evenings of his were in their glory. In two of Mr. Hazlitt's papers are graphic pictures of these delightful Wednesdays and the Wednesday men, and admirable notes of several choice conversations.

There is a curious sketch in one of a little tilt between Coleridge and Holcroft, which must not be omitted. "Coleridge was riding the high German horse, and demonstrating the 'Categories of the Transcendental Philosophy' to the author of _The Road to Ruin_, who insisted on his knowledge of German and German metaphysics, having read the 'Critique of Pure Reason' in the original. 'My dear Mr. Holcroft,' said Coleridge, in a tone of infinitely provoking conciliation, 'you really put me in mind of a sweet pretty German girl of about fifteen, in the Hartz Forest, in Germany, and who one day, as I was reading "The Limits of the Knowable and the Unknowable," the profoundest of all his works, with great attention, came behind my chair, and leaning over, said, "What! you read Kant? Why, I, that am a German born, don't understand him!"' This was too much to bear, and Holcroft, starting up, called out, in no measured tone, 'Mr. Coleridge, you are the most eloquent man I ever met with, and the most troublesome with your eloquence.' Phillips held the cribbage-peg, that was to mark him game, suspended in his hand, and the whist-table was silent for a moment. I saw Holcroft downstairs, and on coming to the landing-place in Mitre Court he stopped me to observe that he thought Mr. Coleridge a very clever man, with a great command of language, but that he feared he did not always affix very proper ideas to the words he used. After he was gone we had our laugh out, and went on with the argument on 'The Nature of Reason, the Imagination, and the Will.' ... It would make a supplement to the 'Biographia Literaria,' in a volume and a half, octavo."

It was at one of these Wednesdays that Lamb started his famous question as to persons "one would wish to have seen." It was a suggestive topic, and proved a fruitful one. Mr. Hazlitt, who was there, has left an account behind him of the kind of talk which arose out of this hint, so lightly thrown out by the author of "Elia," and it is worth giving in his own words:--

"On the question being started, Ayrton said, 'I suppose the two first persons you would choose to see would be the two greatest names in English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Locke?' In this Ayrton, as usual, reckoned without his host. Everyone burst out a laughing at the expression of Lamb's face, in which impatience was restrained by courtesy. 'Y--yes, the greatest names,' he stammered out hastily; 'but they were not persons--not persons.' 'Not persons?' said Ayrton, looking wise and foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might be premature. 'That is,' rejoined Lamb, 'not characters, you know. By Mr.

Locke and Sir Isaac Newton you mean the "Essay on the Human Understanding" and "Principia," which we have to this day. Beyond their contents, there is nothing personally interesting in the men. But what we want to see anyone _bodily_ for is when there is something peculiar, striking in the individuals, more than we can learn from their writings and yet are curious to know. I dare say Locke and Newton were very like Kneller's portraits of them; but who could paint Shakespeare?' 'Ay,'

retorted Ayrton, 'there it is. Then I suppose you would prefer seeing him and Milton instead?' 'No,' said Lamb, 'neither; I have seen so much of Shakespeare on the stage.' ... 'I shall guess no more,' said Ayrton.

'Who is it, then, you would like to see "in his habit as he lived," if you had your choice of the whole range of English literature?' Lamb then named Sir Thomas Brown and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir Philip Sydney, as the two worthies whom he should feel the greatest pleasure to encounter on the floor of his apartment in their night-gowns and slippers, and to exchange friendly greeting with them. At this Ayrton laughed outright, and conceived Lamb was jesting with him; but as no one followed his example he thought there might be something in it, and waited for an explanation in a state of whimsical suspense....

"When Lamb had given his explanation, some one inquired of him if he could not see from the window the Temple walk in which Chaucer used to take his exercise, and on his name being put to the vote I was pleased to find there was a general sensation in his favour in all but Ayrton, who said something about the ruggedness of the metre, and even objected to the quaintness of the orthography....

"Captain Burney muttered something about Columbus, and Martin Burney hinted at the Wandering Jew; but the last was set aside as spurious, and the first made over to the New World.