Chapter I: Preface

This book deals less with the London of the ghost-stories, the scratching impostor in Cock Lane, or the apparition of Parson Ford at the Hummums, than with the London consecrated by manifold traditions--a city every street and alley of which teems with interesting associations, every paving-stone of which marks, as it were, the abiding-place of some ancient legend or biographical story; in short, this London of the present haunted by the memories of the past.

The slow changes of time, the swifter destructions of improvement, and the inevitable necessities of modern civilisation, are rapidly remodelling London.

It took centuries to turn the bright, swift little rivulet of the Fleet into a fœtid sewer, years to transform the palace at Bridewell into a prison; but events now move faster: the alliance of money with enterprise, and the absence of any organised resistance to needful though sometimes reckless improvements, all combine to hurry forward modern changes.

If an alderman of the last century could arise from his sleep, he would shudder to see the scars and wounds from which London is now suffering. Viaducts stalk over our chief roads; great square tubes of iron lie heavy as nightmares on the breast of Ludgate Hill. In Finsbury and Blackfriars there are now to be seen yawning chasms as large and ghastly as any that breaching cannon ever effected in the walls of a besieged city. On every hand legendary houses, great men’s birthplaces, the haunts of poets, the scenes of martyrdoms, and the battle-fields of old factions, heave and totter around us. The tombs of great men, in the chinks of which the nettles have grown undisturbed ever since the Great Fire, are now being uprooted. Milton’s house has become part of the _Punch_ office. A printing machine clanks where Chatterton was buried. Almost every moment some building worthy of record is shattered by the pickaxes of ruthless labourers. The noise of falling houses and uprooted streets even now in my ears tells me how busily Time, the Destroyer and the Improver, is working; erasing tombstones, blotting out names on street-doors, battering down narrow thoroughfares, and effacing one by one the memories of the good, the bad, the illustrious, and the infamous.

A sincere love of the subject, and a strong conviction of the importance of the preservation of such facts as I have dredged up from the Sea of Oblivion, have given me heart for my work. The gradual changes of Old London, and the progress of civilisation westward, are worth noting by all students of the social history of England. It will be found that many traits of character, many anecdotes of interest, as illustrating biography, are essentially connected with the habitations of the great men who have either been born in London, or have resorted to it as the centre of progress, art, commerce, government, learning, and culture. The fact of the residence of a poet, a painter, a lawyer, or even a rogue, at any definite date, will often serve to point out the social status he either aimed at or had acquired. It helps also to show the exact relative distinctions in fashion and popularity of different parts of London at particular epochs, and contributes to form an illustrated history of London, proceeding not by mere progression of time, and dealing with the abstract city--the whole entity of London--but marching through street after street, and detailing local history by districts at a time.

A century after the martyrs of the Covenant had shed their blood for the good old cause, an aged man, mounted on a little rough pony, used periodically to make the tour of their graves; with a humble and pious care he would scrape out the damp green moss that filled up the letters once so sharp and clear, cut away the thorny arches of the brambles, tread down the thick, prickly undergrowth of nettles, and leave the brave names of the dead men open to the sunlight. It is something like this that I have sought to do with London traditions.

I have especially avoided, in every case, mixing truth with fiction. I have never failed to give, where it was practicable, the actual words of my authorities, rather than run the risk of warping or distorting a quotation even by accident, or losing the flavour and charm of original testimony. Aware of the paramount value of sound and verified facts, I have not stopped to play with words and colours, nor to sketch imaginary groups and processions. Such pictures are often false and only mislead; but a fact proved, illustrated, and rendered accessible by index and heading, is, however unpretentious, a contribution to history, and has with certain inquirers a value that no time can lesson.

In a comprehensive work, dealing with so many thousand dates, and introducing on the stage so many human beings, it is almost impossible to have escaped errors. I can only plead for myself that I have spared no pains to discover the truth. I have had but one object in view, that of rendering a walk through London a journey of interest and of pilgrimage to many shrines.

In some cases I have intentionally passed over, or all but passed over, outlying streets that I thought belonged more especially to districts alien to my present plan. Maiden Lane, for example, with its memories of Voltaire, Marvell, and Turner, belongs rather to a chapter on Covent Garden, of which it is a palpable appanage; and Chancery Lane I have left till I come to Fleet Street.

I should be ungrateful indeed if, in conclusion, I did not thank Mr. Fairholt warmly for his careful and valuable drawings on wood. To that accomplished antiquary I am indebted, as my readers will see, for several original sketches of bygone places, and for many curious illustrations which I should certainly not have obtained without the aid of his learning and research.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION pp. 1-3

CHAPTER II. TEMPLE BAR.

The Devil Tavern--London Bankers and Goldsmiths--A Whim
of John Bushnell, the Sculptor--Irritating Processions--
The Bonfire at Inner Temple Gate--A Barbarous Custom--
Called to the Bar--A Curious Old Print of 1746--The
White Cockades--An Execution on Kennington Common--
Shenstone’s “Jemmy Dawson”--Counsellor Layer--Dr.
Johnson in the Abbey--The Proclamation of the Peace of
Amiens--The Dispersion of the Armada--City Pageants and
Festivities--The Guildhall--The Guildhall Twin Giants--
Proclamation of War--A Reflection pp. 4-24

CHAPTER III. THE STRAND (SOUTH SIDE).

Essex Street--Beheading a Bishop--Exeter Place--The
Gipsy Earl--Running a-muck--Lettice Knollys--A Portrait
of Essex--Robert, Earl of Essex, the Parliamentary
General--The Poisoning of Overbury--An Epicurean
Doctor--Clubable Men--The Grecian--The Templar’s
Lounge--Tom’s Coffee-house--A Princely Collector--“The
Long Strand”--“Honest Shippen”--Boswell’s Enthusiasm--
Sale and the Koran--The Infamous Lord Mohun--A fine
Rebuke--Jacob Tonson pp. 25-55

CHAPTER IV. SOMERSET HOUSE.

The Protector Somerset--Denmark House--The Queen’s
French Servants--The Lying-in-State of Cromwell--Scenes
at Somerset House--Sir Edmondbury Godfrey--Old Somerset
House--Erection of the Modern Building--Carlini’s
Grandeur--A Hive of Red Tapists--Expensive Auditing--The
Royal Society--The Geological and the Antiquarian
Societies--A Legend of Somerset House--St. Martin’s Lane
Academy--An Insult to Engravers--Rebecca’s Practical
Jokes--A Fashionable Man actually Surprised--Lying in
State pp. 56-81

CHAPTER V. THE STRAND (SOUTH SIDE, CONTINUED).

The Folly--Fountain Court and Tavern--The Coal-hole--The
Kit-cat Club--Coutts’s Bank--The Eccentric Philosopher--
Old Salisbury House--Robert the Devil--Little Salisbury
House--Toby Matthew--Ivy Bridge--The Strand Exchange--
Durham House--Poor Lady Jane--The Parochial Mind--A
Strange Coalition--Garrick’s Haunt--Shipley’s School of
Art--Barry’s Temper--The Celestial Bed--Sir William
Curtis pp. 82-105

CHAPTER VI. THE SAVOY.

The Earl of Savoy--John Wickliffe--A French King
Prisoner--The Kentish Rebellion--John of Gaunt--The
Hospital of St. John--Cowley’s Regrets--Secret
Marriages--Conference between Church of England and
Presbyterian Divines--An Illegal Sanctuary--A Lampooned
General--A Fat Adonis--John Rennie--Waterloo Bridge--The
Duchy of Lancaster pp. 106-125

CHAPTER VII. FROM THE SAVOY TO CHARING CROSS.

York House--Lord Bacon--“To the Man with an Orchard give
an Apple”--“Steenie”--Buckingham Street--Zimri--York
Stairs--Pepys and Etty--Scenery on the Banks of the
Thames--The London Lodging of Peter the Great--The Czar
and the Quakers--The Hungerford Family--The Suspension
Bridge--Grinling Gibbons--The Two Smiths--Cross
Readings--Northumberland Street--Armed Clergymen pp. 126-145

CHAPTER VIII. THE NORTH SIDE OF THE STRAND (FROM TEMPLE BAR TO CHARING
CROSS).

Faithorne, the Engraver--The Stupendous Arch--The Murder
of Miss Ray--One of Wren’s Churches--Thomas Rymer--Dr.
Johnson at Church--Shallow’s Revelry--Low Comedy
Preachers--New Inn--Alas! poor Yorick!--The first
Hackney Coaches--Doyley--The Beef-steak Club--Beef and
Liberty--Madame Vestris--Old Thomson--Irene in a
Garret--Mathews at the Adelphi--The Bad Points of
Mathew’s Acting--The Old Adelphi--A Riot in a Theatre--
Dr. Johnson’s Eccentricities pp. 146-189

CHAPTER IX. CHARING CROSS.

The Gunpowder Plot--Lord Herbert’s Chivalry--A Schoolboy
Legend--Goldsmith’s Audience--Dobson Buried in a
Garret--Charing--Queen Eleanor--A Brave Ending--
Great-hearted Colonel Jones--King Charles at Charing
Cross--A Turncoat--A Trick of Curll’s--The Cock Lane
Ghost--Savage the Poet--The Mews--The Nelson Column--The
Trafalgar Square Fountains--Want of Pictures of the
English School--Turner’s Pictures--Mrs. Centlivre of
Spring Gardens--Maginn’s Verses--The Hermitage at
Charing Cross--Ben Jonson’s Grace--The Promised Land pp. 190-238

CHAPTER X. ST. MARTIN’S LANE.

A Certain Proof of Insanity--An Eccentric Character--
Experimentum Crucis--St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields--Gibb’s
Opportunity--St. Martin’s Church--Good Company--The
Thames Watermen--Copper Holmes--Old Slaughter’s--
Gardelle the Murderer--Hogarth’s Quack--St. Martin’s
Lane Academy--Hayman’s Jokes--The Old Watch-house and
Stocks--Garrick’s Tricks--An Encourager of Art--John
Wilkes--The Royal Society of Literature--The Artist
Quarter pp. 239-261

CHAPTER XI. LONG ACRE AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.

The Plague--Great Queen Street--Burning Panama--Lord
Herbert’s Poetry--Kneller’s Vanity--Conway House--
Winchester House--Ryan the Actor--An Eminent Scholar and
Antiquary--Miss Pope--The Freemasons’ Hall--Gentleman
Lewis--Franklin’s Self-denial--The Gordon Riots--Colonel
Cromwell--An Eccentric Poetaster--Black Will’s Rough
Repartee--Ned Ward--Prior’s Humble Cell--Stothard--The
Mug-houses--Charles Lamb pp. 262-286

CHAPTER XII. DRURY LANE.

Drury House--Donne’s Vision--Donne in his Shroud--The
Queen of Bohemia--Brave Lord Craven--An Anecdote of
Gondomar--Drury Lane Poets--Nell Gwynn--Zoffany--The
King’s Company--Memoranda by Pepys--Anecdotes of Joe
Haines--Mrs. Oldfield’s Good Sense--The Wonder of the
Town--Quin and Garrick--Barry and Garrick--The Bellamy--
The Siddons--Dicky Suett--Liston’s Hypochondria--The
First Play--Elliston’s Tears--The End of a Man about
Town--Edmund Kean--Grimaldi--Kelly and Malibran--Keeley
and Harley--Scenes at Drury Lane--“Wicked Will
Whiston”--Henley’s Butchers--“Il faut vivre”--Henley’s
Sermons--The Leaden Seals pp. 287-348

CHAPTER XIII. ST. GILES’S.

The Lollards--Cobham’s Death--The Lazar House--Holborn
First Paved--The Mud Deluge--French Protestants--The
Plague Cart--The Plague Time--Brought to his Knees--The
New Church--The Grave of Flaxman--The Thorntons--Hog
Lane--The Tyburn Bowl--The Swan on the Hop--The Irish
Deluge--Sham Abraham--Simon and his Dog--Hiring Babies--
Pavement Chalkers--Monmouth Street pp. 349-386

CHAPTER XIV. LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.

The Earl of Lincoln’s Garden--The Headless Chancellor--
Spelman a late Ripener--Denham and Wither--Lord
Lyndhurst--Warburton and Heber--Ben Jonson the
Bricklayer--A Murder in Whetstone Park--The Dangers of
Lincoln’s Inn Fields--Shelter in St. John’s Wood--Lord
William Russell--A Brave Wife--Pelham--The Caricature of
a Duke--Wilde and Best--Lindsey House--The Dukes of
Ancaster--Skeletons--Lady Fanshawe--Lord Kenyon’s
Latin--The Belzoni Sarcophagus--Sir John Soane--Worthy
Mrs. Chapone--The Duke’s House--Betterton--Mrs.
Bracegirdle--A Riot--Rich’s Pantomime--The Jump pp. 387-442