The Town Part 26

"Away with the wicked before the king, And away with the wicked behind him; His throne it will bless With righteousness, And we shall know where to find him."

This must be what the reviewers call a "favourable specimen."

"Sometimes," says the 'Lounger's Common-Place Book,' "one of his old Bloomsbury friends caught the speaker's eye; on these occasions, he could not resist the temptation to gratify his vanity and resentment; after a short pause he would address the unfortunate interloper in words to the following effect: 'You see, sir, all mankind are not exactly of your opinion; there are, you perceive, a few sensible people in the world, who consider me as not wholly unqualified for the office I have undertaken.'

"His abashed and confounded adversaries, thus attacked in a public company, a most awkward species of distress, were glad to retire precipitately, and sometimes were pushed out of the room by Henley's partizans."[243]

It is probable that Henley's partizans were sometimes necessary to secure him from the results of his imprudence, though his boldness appears to have been on a par with it. He once attracted an audience of shoemakers by announcing that he could teach them a method of making shoes with wonderful celerity. The secret consisted in cutting off the tops of old boots. His motto to the advertis.e.m.e.nt (_omne majus continet in se minus_, the greater includes the less) had a pleasantry in it, which makes the disappointment of the poor shoemakers doubly ludicrous.

Henley, on one occasion, was for several days in the custody of the King's messenger, having incurred the displeasure of the House of Lords. "Lord Chesterfield, at that time secretary of state," says the 'Lounger,' "amused himself and his a.s.sociates in office by sporting with the hopes and fears of our restorer of ancient eloquence; during his examination before the privy council, he requested permission to sit, on account of a real, or, as it was supposed, pretended rheumatism. Occasioning considerable merriment by his eccentric answers, and sometimes by the oddity of his questions, he was observed to join heartily and loudly in the laugh he had himself created.

"The Earl having expostulated with him on the impropriety of ridiculing the exertions of his native country, at the moment rebellion raged in the heart of the kingdom, Henley replied, 'I thought there was no harm, my Lord, in _cracking a joke on a red-herring_:' alluding to the worthy primate of that name, who proposed, and, I believe, had actually commenced, arming and arraying the clergy.

"Many disrespectful and unwarrantable expressions he had applied to persons high in office, being mentioned to him, he answered, without embarra.s.sment, 'My Lords, I must live.'

"'I see no kind of reason for that,' said Lord Chesterfield, 'but many against it.' The council were pleased, and laughed at the retort; the prisoner, somewhat irritated, observed, 'That is a good thing, but it has been said before.'

"A few days after, being reprimanded for his improper conduct, and cautioned against repeating it, he was dismissed, as an impudent, but entertaining fellow."[244]

To complete the history of this man, he struck medals for his tickets, with a star rising to the meridian; over it the motto, _Ad summa_ (to the height), and below, _Inveniam viam aut faciam_ (I will find a way or make one). As might be expected, he found no way at last, but that of falling into contempt. He appears to have been too imprudent to make money by his vagaries; and his manners, probably in consequence, became gross and ferocious. He died in 1756. His person makes a princ.i.p.al figure in two humorous plates, attributed to Hogarth.

Duke Street and Little Wild Street have had an inhabitant, as ill.u.s.trious afterwards as he was then obscure, in the person of Benjamin Franklin, who, when he was first in England, worked in the printing office of Mr. Watts, in the latter street, and lodged in the former. When he came to England afterwards, as the agent of Ma.s.sachusetts, he went into this office, "and going up," says his biography, "to a particular press [now in America], thus addressed the two workmen: 'Come, my friends, we will drink together: it is now forty years since I worked like you at this press, as a journeyman printer.'" The same publication gives an account of him during this period, which, besides containing more than one curious local particular, is highly worth the attention of those who confound stimulus with vigour.

"After the completion," says the writer, "of twelve months at Palmer's" (in Bartholomew Close), "Franklin removed to the printing-office of Mr. Watts, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he continued during the whole of his subsequent stay in the British metropolis. He found a contiguous lodging with a widow lady in Duke Street, opposite the Catholic chapel, for which he paid at his old rate of three and sixpence weekly, and received no new impressions in favour of Christians from his occasional notices of the Romish superst.i.tions in this family and neighbourhood. His landlady was a clergyman's daughter, who, marrying a Catholic, had abjured Protestantism, and became acquainted with several distinguished families of that persuasion. She and Franklin found mutual pleasure in each other's society. He kept good hours, and she was too lame generally to leave her room; frugality was the habit of both; half an anchovy, a small slice of bread and b.u.t.ter each, with half a pint of ale between them, furnished commonly their supper. So well pleased was the widow with her inmate, that when Franklin talked of removing to another house, where he could obtain the same accommodation as with her for two shillings per week, she became generous in his favour, and abated her charge for his room to that sum. He never paid her more during the rest of his stay with her, which was the whole time he continued in London. In the attic, was a maiden Catholic lady, by choice and habit a nun. She had been sent early in life to the Continent to take the veil; but the climate disagreeing with her health, she returned home; devoted her small estate to charitable purposes, with the exception of about 12_l._ a-year; practised confession daily; and lived entirely on water gruel. Her presence was thought a blessing to the house, and several of its tenants in succession had charged her no rent. Her room contained a mattress, table, crucifix, and stool, as its only furniture. She admitted the occasional visits of Franklin and her landlady; was cheerful, he says, and healthful: and while her superst.i.tion moved his compa.s.sion, he felt confirmed in his frugality by her example, and exhibits it in his journal as another proof of the possibility of supporting life, health, and cheerfulness on very small means.

"During the first weeks of his engagement with Mr. Watts, he worked as a pressman, drinking only water, while his companions had their five pints of porter each, per day; and his strength was superior to theirs. He ridiculed the verbal logic of strong beer being necessary for strong work; contending that the strength yielded by malt liquor could only be in proportion to the quant.i.ty of flour or actual grain dissolved in the liquor, and that a pennyworth of bread must have more of this than a pot of porter. The Water-American, as he was called, had some converts to his system; his example, in this case, being clearly better than his philosophy.[245]

"Franklin was born to be a revolutionist, in many good senses of the word. He now proposed and carried several alterations in the so-called _chapel_-laws of the printing office; resisted what he thought the impositions, while he conciliated the respect of his fellow-workmen; and always had cash and credit in the neighbourhood at command, to which the sottish part of his brethren were occasionally, and sometimes largely indebted.

He thus depicts this part of his prosperous life:--'On my entrance, I worked at first as a pressman, conceiving that I had need of bodily exercise, to which I had been accustomed in America, where the printers work alternately, as compositors and at the press. I drank nothing but water. The other workmen, to the number of about fifty, were great drinkers of beer. I carried occasionally a large form of letters in each hand, up and down stairs, while the rest employed both hands to carry one. They were surprised to see by this and many other examples, that the _American aquatic_, as they used to call me, was stronger than those that drank porter. The beer-boy had sufficient employment during the whole day in serving that house alone. My fellow-pressman drank every day a pint of beer before breakfast, a pint with bread and cheese for breakfast, one between breakfast and dinner, one at dinner, one again about six o'clock in the afternoon, and another after he had finished his day's work. This custom appeared to me abominable; but he had need, he said, of all this beer, in order to acquire strength to work.

"'I endeavoured to convince him, that the bodily strength furnished by the beer could only be in proportion to the solid part of the barley dissolved in the water of which the beer was composed; that there was a larger portion of flour in a penny-loaf, and that, consequently, if he ate this loaf, and drank a pint of water, he would derive more strength from it than from a pint of beer. This reasoning, however, did not prevent him from drinking his accustomed quant.i.ty of beer, and paying every Sat.u.r.day night a score of four or five shillings a-week for this cursed beverage; an expense from which I was wholly exempt. Thus do these poor devils continue all their lives in a state of voluntary wretchedness and poverty.

"'My example prevailed with several of them to renounce their abominable practice of bread and cheese with beer; and they procured, like me, from a neighbouring house, a good basin of warm gruel, in which was a small slice of b.u.t.ter, with toasted bread and nutmeg. This was a much better breakfast, which did not cost more than a pint of beer, namely, three halfpence, and at the same time preserved the head clearer. Those who continued to gorge themselves with beer, often lost their credit with the publican, from neglecting to pay their score.

They had then recourse to me to become security for them, _their light_, as they used to call it, _being out_. I attended at the table every Sat.u.r.day evening to take up the little sums which I had made myself answerable for, and which sometimes amounted to near thirty shillings a-week.

"'This circ.u.mstance, added to the reputation of my being a tolerable good _gabber_, or, in other words, skilful in the art of burlesque, kept up my importance in the chapel. I had, besides, recommended myself to the esteem of my master by my a.s.siduous application to business, never observing Saint Monday. My extraordinary quickness in composing always procured me such work as was most urgent, and which is commonly best paid; and thus my time pa.s.sed away in a very pleasant manner.'"[246]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PRINTING PRESS AT WHICH FRANKLIN WORKED.]

FOOTNOTES:

[215] Anecdotes of Painting, in his Works, 4to. vol. iii., p. 364.

[216] Walpole's Works, _ut supra_, vol iii., p. 364.

[217] Life of Edward Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, in the Autobiography p. 145. It is an honour to Grotius, who wrote a book, De Veritate, on the other side of the question, that he encouraged so renowned an antagonist to publish: though, perhaps, he saw less danger in it than singularity. At all events, he could antic.i.p.ate no harm from the close.

[218] Malcolm's Customs and Manners of London, from the Roman Invasion to the Year 1700, vol. i., p. 318.

[219] Poems on Affairs of State, from the Time of Oliver Cromwell to the Abdication of King James the Second, vol. i., p. 147.

[220] It is still a phrase with the vulgar to say, a man "shams Abram."

[221] Manners and Customs, vol. i., p. 322.

[222] Historical Account of the English Stage, p. 320.

[223] It has recently been pulled down to make room for the enlargement of the museum of the College of Surgeons.

[224] See Malone, pp. 135, 136.

[225] Malone, p. 135.

[226] Ibid., p. 136.

[227] Malone, p. 136.

[228] Memoirs, _ut supra_, vol. i., p. 167.

[229] Memoirs of the English Court in the Reign of Charles II., &c., by the Countess of Dunois, part ii., p. 71.

[230] Memoirs of Count Grammont, 8vo. 1811, vol. ii. p. 142.

[231] With whom Charles II. was in love--afterwards d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond.

[232] The famous wit and debauchee.

[233] Pepys' Memoirs, vol. iii., p. 136.

[234] Pepys' Memoirs, vol. iv., p. 99.

[235] Id. p. 222.

[236] Pepys' Memoirs, vol. iv., p. 2.

[237] Cibber's Apology, chap. v., &c.

[238] See Tatler, No. 167.

[239] Cibber's Apology, 2d edit. p. 138.

[240] "Lounger's Common Place Book," vol. ii., p. 137.

[241] Malcolm's Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century, vol. i., p. 417.

[242] Malcolm, _et seq._, p. 421.

[243] Lounger's Common-Place Book, vol. ii., p. 139.