Chapter IX: Charing Cross (2)

There is every reason to suppose from the researches of Mr. W. Moy Thomas, that Savage was an impostor. He claimed to be the illegitimate son of the Countess of Macclesfield by Lord Rivers. The lady had an illegitimate child born in Fox Court, Gray’s Inn Lane in 1697; but this child, there is reason to think, died in 1698.[393] Savage imposed on Dr. Johnson and other friends with stories of being placed at school and apprenticed to a shoemaker in Holborn by his countess mother, until among his nurse’s old letters he one day accidentally discovered the secret of his birth. There is no proof at all of his being persecuted by the countess, whose life he rendered miserable by insults, lampoons, abuse, slander, and begging letters.

Pope has embalmed Page in the _Dunciad_ just as a scorpion is preserved in a spirit-bottle:--

“Morality by her false guardians drawn,
Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn,
Gasps as they straighten at each end the cord,
And dies when Dulness gives her _Page_ the word.”[394]

And again, with equal bitterness and truth, in his _Imitations of Horace_:--

“Slander or poison dread from Delia’s rage,
Hard words or hanging if your judge be Page.”

This “hanging judge,” who enjoyed his ermine and his infamy till he was eighty, first obtained preferment by writing political pamphlets. He was made a Baron of the Exchequer in 1718, a Justice of the Common Pleas in 1726, and in 1727 transferred to the Court of King’s Bench. Page was so illiterate that he commenced one of his charges to the grand jury of Middlesex with this remarkable statement: “I dare venture to affirm, gentlemen, on my own knowledge, that England never was so happy, both _at home and abroad_, as it now is.” Horace Walpole mentions that when Crowle, the punning lawyer, was once entering an assize court, some one asked him if Judge Page was not “just behind.” Crowle replied, “I don’t know, but I am sure he never was just before.”[395]

The various mews, now stables, about London, derive their name from the enclosure where falcons in the Middle Ages were kept to mew (_mutare_, Minshew) their feathers. The King’s Mews stood on the site of the present Trafalgar Square. In the 13th Edward II. John de la Becke had the custody of the Mews “apud Charing, juxta Westminster.” In the 10th Edward III. John de St. Albans succeeded Becke. In Richard II.’s time the office of king’s falconer, a post of importance, was held by Sir Simon Burley, who was constable of the castles of Windsor, Wigmore, and Guilford, and also of the royal manor of Kennington. This Sir Simon had been selected by the Black Prince as guardian of Richard II., and he also negotiated his marriage. One of the complaints of Wat Tyler and his party was that he had thrown a burgher of Gravesend into Rochester Castle. The Duke of Gloucester had him executed in 1388, in spite of Richard’s queen praying upon her knees for his life. At the end of this reign or in the first year of Henry IV., the poet Chaucer was clerk of the king’s works and also of the Mews at Charing; and here, from his fluttering, angry little feathered subjects, he must have drawn many of those allusions to the brave sport of hawking to be found in the immortal _Canterbury Tales_.

The falconry continued at Charing till 1534 (26th Henry VIII.), when the king’s fine stabling, with many horses and a great store of hay, being destroyed by fire, the Mews was rebuilt and turned into royal stables, in the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary.[396]

M. St. Antoine, the riding-master, whose portrait Vandyke painted, performed his caracoles and demi-tours at the Mews. Here Cromwell imprisoned Lieut.-Colonel George Joyce, who, when plain cornet, had arrested the king at Holmby. An angry little Puritan pamphlet of four pages, published in 1659, gives an account of Cromwell’s troubles with the fractious Joyce, and how he had resolved to cashier him and destroy his estate.

The colonel was carried by musqueteers to the common Dutch prison at the Mews, and seems to have been much tormented by Cavalier vermin. There he remained ten days, and was then removed to another close room, where he fell sick from the “evil smells,” and remained so for ten weeks, refusing all the time to lay down his commission, declaring that he had been unworthily dealt with, and that all that had been sworn against him was false.

There was at the Mews gate a celebrated old book shop, opened in 1750 by Mr. Thomas Payne, who kept it alive for forty years. It was the rendezvous of all noblemen and scholars who sought rare books. It may be remarked, by the way, that booksellers’ shops have always been the haunts of wits and poets. Dodsley, the ex-footman, gathered round him the wisest men of his age, as Tonson had also done before him; while, as for John Murray’s back parlour, it was in Byron’s and Moore’s days a very temple of the Muses.

In Charles II.’s time the famous but ugly horse Rowley lived at the Mews, and gave a nickname to his swarthy royal master.

In 1732 that impudent charlatan, Kent, rebuilt the Mews, which was only remarkable after that for sheltering for a time Mr. Cross’s menagerie, when first removed from Exeter Change in 1829.

The National Gallery, one of the poorest buildings in London (which is saying a good deal), was built between 1832 and 1838, from the designs of a certain unfortunate Mr. Wilkins, R.A. It is not often that Fortune is so malicious as to give an inferior artist such ample room to show his inability. The vote for founding the Gallery passed in Parliament in April 1824. The columns of the portico were part of the screen of Carlton House--interesting memorials of a debasing regency, and, if possible, of a worse reign. The site has been called “the finest in Europe:” it is, however, a fine site, which is more than can be said of the building that covers it. The front is 500 feet long. In the centre is a portico, on stilts, with eight Corinthian columns approached by a double flight of steps; a low squat dome not much larger than a washing basin; and two pepper-castor turrets that crown the eyesore of London. Though on high ground--very high ground for a rather flat city--the architect, pinched for money, contrived to make the building lower than the grand portico of St. Martin’s Church, and even than the houses of Suffolk Place.

One of the last occasions on which William IV. appeared in public was in 1837, before the opening of the first Academy Exhibition here in May. The good-natured king is said to have suggested calling the square “Trafalgar,” and erecting a Nelson monument. A subscription was opened, and the Duke of Buccleuch was appointed chairman.

The square was commenced in 1829, but was not completed till after 1849. The Nelson column was begun in 1837, and the statue set up in November 1843. Three premiums were offered for the three best designs, and Mr. Railton carried off the palm. Upwards of £20,480 were subscribed, and, £12,000 it was thought would be required to complete the monument.[397] It was originally intended to expend only £30,000 upon the whole.[398] Alas for estimates so sanguine, so fallacious! the granite work alone cost upwards of £10,000.

Mr. Railton chose a column, after mature reflection; although triumphal columns are bad art, and the invention of a barbarous people and a corrupt age.[399] He rejected a temple, as too expensive and too much in the way; a group of figures he condemned as not visible at a distance; he finally chose a Corinthian column as new, as harmonious, and as uniting the labours of sculptor and architect.

The column, with its base and pedestal, measures 193 feet. The fluted shaft has a torus of oak leaves. The capital is copied from the fine example of Mars Ultor at Rome; from it rises a circular pedestal wreathed with laurel, and surmounted by a statue of Nelson, eighteen feet high, and formed of two blocks of stone from the Granton quarry. The great pedestal is adorned with four bassi-relievi, eighteen feet square each, representing four of Nelson’s great victories. It is difficult to say which is tamest of the four. That of “Trafalgar” is by Mr. Carew; the “Nile,” by Mr. Woodington; “St. Vincent,” by Mr. Watson; and “Copenhagen,” by Mr. Ternouth.

The pedestal is raised on a flight of fifteen steps, at the angles of which are placed couchant lions from the designs of Sir Edwin Landseer. They are forged out of French cannon. The capital is of the same costly material, which, considering the brave English blood it has cost, should have been painted crimson. Many years passed by after the commission was given to Sir Edwin Landseer before they were placed _in situ_.

The cocked hat on Mr. Baily’s statue has been somewhat unjustly ridiculed, and so has the coil of rope or pigtail supporting the hero.

The bronze equestrian statue of George IV., at the north-east end of the square, is by Chantrey. It was ordered by the king in 1829. The price was to be 9000 guineas, but the worthy monarch never paid the sculptor more than a third of that sum; the rest was given by the Woods and Forests out of the national taxes, and the third instalment in 1843, after Chantrey’s death, by the Lords of the Treasury. It is a sprightly and clever statue, but of no great merit. It should have been paid for by William IV., just as the Nelson statue should have been erected by Parliament, the honour being one due to Nelson from an ungrateful nation. This statue of George IV. was originally intended to crown the arch in front of Buckingham Palace--an arch that cost £80,000, and that was hung with gates that cost 3000 guineas. The so-called Chartist riots of 1848 were commenced by boys destroying the hoarding round the base of the Nelson monument.

The fountains in the centre of the Square are of Peterhead granite, and were made at Aberdeen. They are mean, despicable, and unworthy of the noble position which they occupy. Some years ago there was a fuss about an Artesian well that was to feed these stone punch-bowls with inexhaustible gushes of silvery water. This supply has dwindled down to a sort of overflow of a ginger-beer bottle once a day. I blush when I take a foreigner to see Trafalgar Square, with its squat domes, its mean statues, its tame bassi-relievi, and its disgraceful fountains.

I will not trust myself to criticise the statues of Napier and Havelock. The figures are poor, and unworthy of the fiery soldier and the Christian hero they misrepresent. They should be in the Abbey. Why has the Abbey grown, like the Court, less receptive than ever? What passport is there into the Abbey, where such strange people sleep, if the conquest of Scinde and the relief of Lucknow will not take a body there.

But to return to the National Gallery. Mr. G. Agar-Ellis, afterwards Lord Dover, first proposed a National Gallery in Parliament in 1824; Government having previously purchased thirty-eight pictures from Mr. Angerstein for £57,000. This collection included “The Raising of Lazarus,” by Del Piombo. It is supposed that Michael Angelo, jealous of Raphael’s “Transfiguration,” helped Sebastian in the drawing of his cartoon, which was to be a companion picture for Narbonne Cathedral. It was purchased from the Orleans Gallery for 3500 guineas.[400]

In 1825 some pictures were purchased for the Gallery from Mr. Hamlet. These included the “Bacchus and Ariadne” of Titian, for £5000. This golden picture (extolled by Vasari) was painted about 1514 for the Duke of Ferrara. Titian was then in the full vigour of his thirty-seventh year.[401]

In the same year “La Vierge au Panier” of Correggio was purchased from Mr. Nieuwenhuy, a picture-dealer, for £3800. It is a late picture, and hurt in cleaning. It was one of the gems of the Madrid Gallery.

In 1826, Sir George Beaumont presented sixteen pictures, valued at 7500 guineas. These included one of the finest landscapes of Rubens, “The Chateau,” which originally cost £1500, and Wilkie’s _chef-d’œuvre_, that fine Raphaelesque composition, “The Blind Fiddler.”

In 1834 the Rev. William Holwell Carr left the nation thirty-five pictures, including fine specimens of the Caracci, Titian, Luini, Garofalo, Claude, Poussin, and Rubens.

Another important donation was that of the great “Peace and War,” bought for £3000 by the Marquis of Stafford, and given to the nation. It was originally presented to Charles I., by Rubens, who gave unto the king not as a painter but as almost a king.

The British Institution also gave three esteemed pictures by Reynolds, Gainsborough, and West, and a fine Parmigiano.

But the greatest addition to the collection was made in 1834, when £11,500[402] were given for the two great Correggios, the “Ecce Homo” and the “Education of Cupid,” from the Marquis of Londonderry’s collection. To the “Ecce Homo” Pungileoni assigns the date 1520, when the great master was only twenty-six. It once belonged to Murat. The “Education of Cupid,” which once belonged to Charles I., has been a good deal retouched.[403]

In 1836 King William IV. presented to the gallery six pictures; in 1837 Colonel Harvey Ollney gave seventeen; in 1838 Lord Farnborough bequeathed fifteen, and R. Simmons, Esq., fourteen. The last pictures were chiefly of the Netherlands school. In 1854 the nation possessed two hundred and sixteen pictures, and of these seventy only had been purchased.

In 1857 that greatest of all landscape-painters, Joseph M. W. Turner, left the nation 362 oil-paintings, and about 19,000 sketches (including 1757 water-colour drawings of value). In his will this eccentric man particularly desired that two of his pictures--a Dutch coast-scene and “Dido Building Carthage”--should be hung between Claude’s “Sea-Port” and “Mill.”

The will was disputed, and the engravings and the money, all but £20,000, went to the next of kin.

The diploma pictures (that formerly were annually exhibited to the public) are of great interest. They were given by various members of the Royal Academy at their elections. That of the parsimonious Wilkie--“Boys digging for Rats” (fine as Teniers)--is remarkably small. There is a very fine graceful portrait of Sir William Chambers, the architect, by Reynolds, and one still more robust and glowing of Sir Joshua by himself. He is in his doctor’s robes. There is a splendid but rather pale Etty--“A Satyr surprising a Nymph;” and a fine vigorous picture by Briggs, of “Blood stealing the Crown.”

In 1849, Robert Vernon, Esq., nobly left the nation one hundred and sixty-two fine examples of the English school. These are now removed to the Kensington Museum.

Of the pictures given by Turner to the nation, the masterpieces are the “Téméraire” and the “Escape of Ulysses,”--both triumphs of colour and imagination. The one is a scene from the _Odyssey_; the other represents an old man-of-war being towed to its last berth--a scene witnessed by the artist himself while boating near Greenwich. The works of Turner may be divided very fairly into three eras: those in which he imitated the Dutch landscape-painters, the period when he copied idealised Nature, and the time when he resorted from eccentricity or indifference to reckless experiments in colour and effect--most of them quite unworthy of his genius. Not in drawing the figure, but in aërial perspective, did Turner excel. The great portfolios of drawings that he left the nation show with what untiring and laborious industry he toiled. In habits sordid and mean, in tastes low and debased, this great genius, the son of a humble hairdresser in Maiden Lane, succeeded in attaining an excellence in landscape, fitful and unequal it is true, but often rising to poetic regions unknown to Claude, Ruysdael, Vandervelde, Salvator, or Backhuysen.

Ever since the modern pictures were removed to South Kensington, there has been a constant effort to transfer the ancient pictures and to abandon the National Gallery to the Royal Academy--a rich society, making £5000 or £6000 a year, which its members cannot spend, and which tenants the national building only by permission. To remove the pictures from the centre of London is to remove them from those who cannot go far to see them, to the neighbourhood of rich people who do not need their teaching, and who have picture-galleries of their own.

In 1859, twenty pictures were bequeathed to the gallery by Mr. Jacob Bell, and a few years later twenty-two others were added as a gift by Her Majesty. The last great addition is the presentation of ninety-four pictures by Mr. Wynn Ellis. But in spite of all these treasures, acquired by purchase or by bequest, the nation cannot boast that its gallery does justice to our taste or national wealth. It is still lamentably deficient in more than one department; and there are not wanting those who assert that the Royal Academy stifles art rather than promotes it. It is regarded by the outside world as a close-borough, in which the interests of the public and of students are postponed to those of its Associates and Members, the A.R.A.’s and R.A.’s of the age.

The building in which the collection is deposited was erected at the national expense, from the designs of Mr. William Wilkins, R.A., and opened to the public in 1838. It was considerably altered and enlarged in 1860, and in 1869 five other rooms were added by the surrender to the Trustees of those hitherto appropriated by the Royal Academy. In 1876 a new wing was added, after a design by Mr. E. M. Barry, R.A., and the whole collection is now under one roof.

The Royal College of Physicians is a large classic building at the north-west corner of Trafalgar Square. It was built in 1823 from the designs of Sir Robert Smirke. The college was founded in 1518 by Dr. Linacre, the successor to Shakspeare’s Dr. Butts, and physician to Henry VII. From Knightrider Street the doctors moved to Amen Corner, and thence to Warwick Lane, between Newgate Street and Paternoster Row. The number of fellows, originally thirty, is now as unlimited as the “dira cohors” of diseases that the college has to encounter.

In the gallery above the library there are seven preparations made by the celebrated Harvey when at Padua--“learned Padua.” There are also some excellent portraits--Harvey, by Jansen; Sir Thomas Browne, the author of _Religio Medici_; Sir Theodore Mayerne, the physician of James I.; Sir Edmund King, who, on his own responsibility, bled Charles II. during a fit; Dr. Sydenham, by Mary Beale; Doctor Radcliffe, William III.’s doctor, by Kneller; Sir Hans Sloane, the founder of the British Museum, by Richardson, whom Hogarth rather unjustly ridiculed; honest Garth (of the “Dispensary”), by Kneller; Dr. Freind, Dr. Mead, Dr. Warren (by Gainsborough); William Hunter, and Dr. Heberden.

There are also some valuable and interesting busts--George IV., by Chantrey (a _chef-d’œuvre_); Dr. Mead, by the vivacious Roubilliac; Dr. Sydenham, by Wilton; Harvey, by Scheemakers; Dr. Baillie, by Chantrey, from a model by Nollekens; Dr. Babington, by poor Behnes. One of the treasures of the place is Dr. Radcliffe’s gold-headed cane, which was successively carried by Drs. Mead, Askew, Pitcairn, and Baillie. There is also a portrait-picture by Zoffany of Hunter delivering a lecture on anatomy to the Royal Academy. Any fellow can give an order to see this hoarded collection, which should be thrown open to the public on certain days. It is selfish and utterly wanting in public spirit to keep such treasures in the dark.

The wits buzzed about Charing Cross between 1680 and 1730 as thick as bees round May flowers. In this district, between those years, stood “The Elephant,” “The Sugarloaf,” “The Old Man’s Coffee-house,” “The Old Vine,” “The Three Flower de Luces,” “The British Coffee-house,” “The Young Man’s Coffee-house,” and “The Three Queens.”

There is an erroneous tradition that Cromwell had a house on the site of Drummond’s bank. He really lived farther south, in King Street. When the bank was built, the houses were set back full forty yards more to the west, upon an open square place called “Cromwell’s Yard.”[405]

Drummond’s is said to have gained its fame by advancing money secretly to the Pretender. Upon this being known, the Court withdrew all their deposits. The result was that the Scotch Tory noblemen rallied round the house and brought in so much money that the firm soon became leading bankers, dividing the West End custom with Messrs. Coutts.

Craig’s Court, on the east side of Charing Cross, was built in 1702. It is generally supposed to have been named after the father of Mr. Secretary Craggs, the friend of Pope and Addison: Mr. Cunningham, an excellent and reliable authority, says that as early as the year 1658 there was a James Cragg living on the “water side,” in the Charing Cross division of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields. The Sun Fire-office was established in this court in 1726; and here is Cox and Greenwood’s, the largest army agency office in Great Britain.

Locket’s, the famous ordinary, so called from Adam Locket, the landlord in 1674, stood on the site of Drummond’s bank. An Edward Locket succeeded to him in 1688, and remained till 1702.[406] In 1693 the second Locket took the Bowling-green House at Putney Heath. That fair, slender, genteel Sir George Etherege, whom Rochester praises for “fancy, sense, judgment, and wit,” frequented Locket’s, and displayed there his courtly foppery, which served as a model for his own Dorimant, and that prince and patriarch of fops Sir Fopling Flutter. Sir George was always gentle and courtly, and was compared in this to Sedley.

He once got into a violent passion at the ordinary, and abused the “drawers” for some neglect. This brought in Mrs. Locket, hot and fuming. “We are so provoked,” said Sir George, “that even I could find it in my heart to pull the nosegay out of your bosom, and fling the flowers in your face.” This mild and courteous threat turned his friends’ anger into a general laugh.

Sir George having run up a long score at Locket’s, added to the injury by ceasing to frequent the house. Mrs. Locket began to dun and threaten him. He sent word back by the messenger that he would kiss her if she stirred a step in it. When Mrs. Locket heard this, she bridled up, called for her hood and scarf, and told her anxious husband that she’d see if there was any fellow alive who had the impudence! “Prythee, my dear, don’t be so rash,” said her milder husband; “you don’t know what a man may do in his passion.”[407]

Wycherly, that favourite of Charles II. till he married his titled wife, writes in one of his plays (1675), “Why, thou art as shy of my kindness as a Lombard Street alderman of a courtier’s civility at Locket’s.”[408] Shadwell too, Dryden’s surly and clever foe, says (1691), “I’ll answer you in a couple of brimmers of claret at Locket’s at dinner, where I have bespoke an admirable good one.”[409]

A poet of 1697 describes the sparks, dressed by noon hurrying to the Mall, and from thence to Locket’s.[410] Prior proposes to dine at a crown a head on ragouts washed down with champagne; then to go to court; and lastly he says[411]--

“With evening wheels we’ll drive about the Park,
Finish at Locket’s, and reel home i’ the dark.”

In 1708, Vanbrugh makes Lord Foppington doubtful whether he shall return to dinner, as the noble peer says--“As Gad shall judge me I can’t tell, for ’tis possible I may dine with some of our House at Lacket’s.”[412]

And in the same play the very energetic nobleman remarks--“From thence (the Park) I go to dinner at Lacket’s, where you are so nicely and delicately served that, stap my vitals! they shall compose you a dish no bigger than a saucer shall come to fifty shillings. Between eating my dinner and washing my mouth, ladies, I spend my time till I go to the play.”

In 1709 the epicurean and ill-fated Dr. King, talking of the changes in St. James’s Park, says--

“For Locket’s stands where gardens once did spring,
And wild ducks quack where grasshoppers did sing.”[413]

Tom Brown also mentions Locket’s, for he writes--“We as naturally went from Mann’s Coffee-house to the Parade as a coachman drives from Locket’s to the play-house.”

Prior, the poet, when his father the joiner died, was taken care of by his uncle, who kept the Rummer Tavern at the back of No. 14 Charing Cross, two doors from Locket’s. It was a well-frequented house, and in 1685 the annual feast of the nobility and gentry of St. Martin’s parish was held there. Prior was sent by the honest vintner to study under the great Dr. Busby at Westminster: and in a window-seat at the Rummer the future poet and diplomatist was found reading Horace, according to Bishop Burnet, by the witty Earl of Dorset, who is said to have educated him. Prior, in the dedication of his poems to the earl’s son, proves his patron to have been a paragon. Waller and Sprat consulted Dorset about their writings. Dryden, Congreve, and Addison praised him. He made the court read _Hudibras_, the town praise Wycherly’s “Plain Dealer,” and Buckingham delay his “Rehearsal” till he knew his opinion. Pope imitated his “Dorinda,” and King Charles took his advice upon Lely’s portraits.

One of Prior’s gayest and pleasantest poems seems to prove, however, that Fleetwood Shepherd was a more essential patron than even the earl. The poet writes--

“Now, as you took me up when little,
Gave me my learning and my vittle,
Asked for me from my lord things fitting,
Kind as I’d been your own begetting,
Confirm what formerly you’ve given,
Nor leave me now at six and seven,
As Sunderland has left Mun Stephen.”

And again, still more gaily--

“My uncle, rest his soul! when living,
Might have contrived me ways of thriving,
Taught me with cider to replenish
My vats or ebbing tide of Rhenish;
So when for hock I drew pricked white-wine,
Swear’t had the flavour, and was right wine;
Or sent me with ten pounds to Furni-
val’s Inn, to some good rogue attorney,
Where now, by forging deeds and cheating,
I’d found some handsome ways of getting.
All this you made me quit to follow
That sneaking, whey-faced god, Apollo;
Sent me among a fiddling crew
Of folks I’d neither seen nor knew,
Calliope and God knows who,
I add no more invectives to it:
You spoiled the youth to make a poet.”

That rascally housebreaker, Jack Sheppard, made his first step towards the gallows by the robbery of two silver spoons at the Rummer Tavern. This young rogue, whose deeds Mr. Ainsworth has so mischievously recorded, was born in 1701, and ended his short career at Tyburn in 1724.[414] The Rummer Tavern is introduced by Hogarth into his engraving of “Night.” The business was removed to the water side of Charing Cross in 1710, and the new house burnt down in 1750. In 1688, Samuel Prior offered ten guineas reward for the discovery of some persons who had accused him of clipping coin.[415]

Mrs. Centlivre, whom Pope pilloried in the _Dunciad_[416] was the daughter of a Lincolnshire gentleman, who, being a Nonconformist, fled to Ireland at the Restoration to escape persecution. Being left an orphan at the age of twelve, she travelled to London on foot to seek her fortune. In her sixteenth year she married a nephew of Sir Stephen Fox, who, however, did not live more than a twelvemonth after. She afterwards wedded an officer named Carrol, who was killed in a duel soon after their marriage. Left a second time a widow, she then took to dramatic writing for a subsistence, and from 1700 to 1705 produced six comedies, to one of which--“The Gamester”--the poet Rowe contributed a prologue. She next tried the stage; and while performing Alexander the Great, at Windsor, won the heart of Mr. Centlivre, “a Yeoman of the Mouth,” or principal cook to Queen Anne, who married her. She lived happily with her husband for eighteen years, and wrote some good, bustling, but licentious plays. “The Busybody,” and “Wonder; a Woman keeps a Secret,” act well.

In May, 1716, Mrs. Centlivre visited her native town of Holbeach for her health, and on King George’s birthday[417] invited all the pauper widows of the place to a tavern supper. The windows were illuminated, the church-bells were set ringing, there were musicians playing in the room, the old women danced, and most probably got drunk, the enthusiastic loyalist making them all fall on their knees and drink the healths of the royal family, the Duke of Marlborough, Mr. Walpole, the Duke of Argyle, General Cadogan, etc. etc. She ended the feast by sending the ringers a copy of stirring verses denouncing the Jacobites;--

“Disdain the artifice they use
To bring in mass and wooden shoes
With transubstantiation:
Remember James the Second’s reign,
When glorious William broke the chain
Rome had put on this nation.”

This clever but not too virtuous woman died at her house in Buckingham Court, Spring Gardens, December 1, 1723.[418]

Pope’s dislike to Mrs. Centlivre is best explained by one of his own notes to the _Dunciad_:--“She (Mrs. C.) wrote many plays and a song before she was seven years old: she also wrote a ballad against Mr. Pope’s _Homer_ before he began it.” And why should not an authoress have expressed her opinion of Mr. Pope’s inability to translate Homer?

Mrs. Centlivre is rather bitterly treated by Leigh Hunt, who says that she, “without doubt, wrote the most entertaining dramas of intrigue, with a genius infinitely greater, and a modesty infinitely less, than that of her sex in general; and she delighted, whenever she could not be obscene, to be improbable.”[419]

Milton lodged at one Thomson’s, next door to the Bull-head Tavern at Charing Cross, close to the opening to the Spring Gardens, during the time he was writing his book _Joannis Philippi Angli Defensio_.[420]

The Golden Cross ran up beside the King’s Mews a little east of its present site; it was the “Bull and Mouth” of the West End till railways drew travellers from the old roads; it then became a railway parcel office. Poor reckless Dr. Maginn wrote a ballad lamenting the change, in which he mourned the Mews Gate public-house, Tom Bish and his lotteries, and the barrack-yard. He curses Nash and Wyatville, and then bursts forth--

“No more I’ll eat the juicy steak
Within its boxes pent,
When in the mail my place I take,
For Bath or Brighton bent.

“No more the coaches I shall see
Come trundling from the yard,
Nor hear the horn blown cheerily
By brandy-sipping guard.
King Charles, I think, must sorrow sore,
E’en were he made of stone,
When left by all his friends of yore
(Like Tom Moore’s rose) alone.

“No wonder the triumphant Turk
O’er Missolonghi treads,
Roasts bishops, and in bloody work
Snips off some thousand heads!
No wonder that the Crescent gains,
When we the fact can’t gloss,
That we ourselves are at such pains
To trample down the Cross!

“Oh! London won’t be London long,
For ’twill be all pulled down,
And I shall sing a funeral song
O’er that time-honoured town.
One parting curse I here shall make,
And then lay down my quill,
Hoping Old Nick himself may take
Both Nash and Wyatville.”[421]

Till late in the last century a lofty straddling sign-post and a long water-trough, just such as still adorn country towns, stood before this inn.[422]

Charing Cross Hospital, one of those great charities that atone for so many of the sins of London, relieved, in the year 1878, 15,854 necessitous persons, including more than 1000 cases of severe accident, while above 1500 persons were admitted on the recommendation of governors and subscribers.[423] Surely, if anything can redeem our national vices, our selfishness, our commercial dishonesty, our unjust wars, and our unrighteous conquests, it must be such vast charities as these.

One authority represents that great scholar and divine, Dr. Isaac Barrow, the friend of Newton, as having died “in mean lodgings at a saddler’s near Charing Cross, an old, low, ill-built house, which he had used for many years.” Barrow was then Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Roger North, however, says that he died of an overdose of opium, and “ended his days in London in a prebendary’s house that had a little stair to it out of the cloisters, which made him call it a _man’s nest_.”[424] Barrow died in 1677, and was buried in the Abbey. Rhodes, the bookseller and actor, lived at the Ship at Charing Cross. He had been wardrobe-keeper at the Blackfriars Theatre; and in 1659 he reopened the Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane.

On September 7, 1650, as that dull, learned man, Bulstrode Whitelock, one of the Commissioners for the Great Seal, was going in his coach towards Chelsea, a messenger from Scotland stopped him about Charing Cross, and cried, “Oh, my lord, God hath appeared gloriously to us in Scotland; a glorious day, my lord, at Dunbar in Scotland.” “I asked him,” says Whitelock, “how it was. He said that the General had routed all the Scots army, but that he could not stay to tell me the particulars, being in haste to go to the House.”[425]

Lord Dartmouth relates a story in Burnet of Sir Edward Seymour the Speaker’s coach breaking down at Charing Cross, in Charles II.’s time. He instantly, with proud coolness, ordered the beadles to stop the next gentleman’s coach that passed and bring it to him. The expelled gentleman was naturally both surprised and angry; but Sir Edward gravely assured him that it was far more proper for him than for the Speaker of the House of Commons to walk the streets, and accordingly left him to do so without any further apology.[426]

Horace Walpole was a diligent attender at the State Trials of 1746. The day “poor brave old” Balmerino retracted his plea, asked pardon, and desired the Peers to intercede for mercy, Walpole tells us that his lordship stopped the coach at Charing Cross as he returned to the Tower, carelessly to buy “honey-blobs,” as the Scotch call gooseberries.

But we must not leave Charing Cross without specially remembering that when Boswell dared to praise Fleet Street as crowded and cheerful, Dr. Johnson replied in a voice of thunder, “Why, sir, Fleet Street _has_ a very animated appearance; but I think the full tide of existence is at Charing Cross.”[427]

Nearly where the Post Office at Charing Cross now stands, there was once (of all things in the world) a hermitage. Even Prince George of Denmark might have been pardoned by James II., his sour father-in-law, for making his invariable reply, “Est-il possible?” to this statement. Yet the patent rolls of the 47th Henry III. grant permission to William de Radnor, Bishop of Llandaff, to lodge, with all his retainers, within the precinct of the Hermitage at Charing, whenever he came to London.[428]

Opposite this stood the ancient Hospital of St. Mary Roncevalles. It was founded by William Marechal, Earl of Pembroke, a son, I believe, of the early English conqueror of Ireland. It was suppressed by Henry V. as an alien priory, restored by Edward IV., and finally suppressed by Edward VI., who granted it to Sir Thomas Carwarden, to be held in free soccage of the honour of Westminster.

The mesh and labyrinth of obscure alleys and lanes running between the bottom of St. Martin’s Lane and Bedford Street, towards Bedfordbury, with old Round Court, so called in mockery, for its centre, were swept away by the besom of improvement in 1829, when Trafalgar Square was begun, never to be finished. In Elizabeth’s or James’s time, gallants who had cruised in search of Spanish galleons wittily nicknamed these Straits “the Bermudas,” from their narrow and intricate channels. Here the valorous Captain Bobadill must have lived in Barmecidal splendour, and have taught his dupes the true conduct of the weapon. Justice Overdo mentions the Bermudas with a righteous indignation. “Look,” says that great legal functionary, “into any angle of the town, the Streights or the Bermudas, where the quarrelling lesson is read, and how do they entertain the time but with bottled ale and tobacco?”[429] How natural for Drake’s men to give such a name to a labyrinth of devious alleys! At a subsequent period the cluster of avenues exchanged the title of _Bermudas_ for that of the _C’ribbee Islands_, the learned possessors corrupting the name into a happy allusion to the arts cultivated there.[430]

Gay, writing in 1715, describes the small streets branching from Charing Cross as resounding with the shoeblacks’ cry, “Clean your honour’s shoes?” Great improvements were made in 1829-30, when the present arcade leading from West Strand to St. Martin’s Church, and inhabited chiefly by German toymen, was built and named after Lord Lowther then Chief Commissioner of the Woods and Forests.[431] The Strand was also widened, and many old tottering houses were removed.

Porridge Island was the cant name for a paved alley near St. Martin’s Church, originally a congeries of cookshops erected for the workmen at the new church, and destroyed when the great rookery there was pulled down in 1829. It was a part of Bedfordbury, and derived its name from being full of cookshops, or “slap-bangs,” as street boys called such odorous places. A writer in _The World_, in 1753, describes a man like Beau Tibbs, who had his dinner in a pewter plate from a cookshop in Porridge Island, and with only £100 a year was foolish enough to wear a laced suit, go every evening in a chair to a rout, and return to his bedroom on foot, shivering and supperless, vain enough to glory in having rubbed elbows with the quality of Brentford.[432]

It was in Round Court, in the centre of the key shops, herb shops, and furniture warehouses of Bedfordbury that, in 1836, Robson the actor was apprenticed to a Mr. Smellie, a copperplate engraver, and the printer of the humorous caricatures of Mr. George Cruikshank.[433]

The Swan at Charing Cross, over against the Mews, flourished in 1665, when Marke Rider was the landlord. The token of the house bore the figure of a swan holding a sprig in its mouth. Its memory is embalmed in a curious extempore grace once said by Ben Jonson before King James. These are the verses:--

“Our king and queen the Lord God bless,
The Palsgrave and the Lady Besse;
And God bless every living thing
That lives and breathes, and loves the king;
God bless the Council of Estate,
And Buckingham the fortunate;
God bless them all, and keep them safe,
And God bless me, and God bless Ralph.”

The schoolmaster king being mighty inquisitive to know who this Ralph was, Ben told him it was the drawer at the Swan Tavern, who drew him good canary. For this drollery the king gave Ben a hundred pounds.[434] The story is probably true, for it is confirmed by Powell the actor.[435]

The street signs of London were condemned in the second year of George III.’s reign; but the sweeping Act for their final removal was not passed till nine years later. In 1762, Bonnel Thornton (aided by Hogarth) opened an exhibition of street signs in Bow Street[436] in ridicule of the Spring Gardens exhibition. But as early as 1761 the street signs seem to have been partially removed as dangerous obstructions. A writer in a contemporary paper says,[437] “My master yesterday sent me to take a place in the Canterbury stage; he said that when I came to Charing Cross I should see which was the proper inn by the words on the sign. I rambled about, but could see no sign at all. At last I was told that there used to be such a sign under a little golden cross which I saw at a two pair of stairs window. I entered and found the waiter swearing about innovations. He said that the members of Parliament were unaccountable enemies to signs which used to show trades; that, for his master’s part, he might put on sackcloth, for nobody came to buy sack. ‘If,’ said he, ‘any of the signs were too large, could they not have limited their size without pulling down the sign-posts and destroying the painted ornaments of the Strand?’ On my return I saw some men pulling with ropes at a curious sign-iron, which seemed to have cost some pounds: along with the iron down came the leaden cover to the pent-house, which will cost at least some pounds to repair.”

This was written the year of the first Act (2d George III.), and was probably a groan from some one interested in the existence of the abuse. The inferior artists gained much money from this source. Mr. Wale, one of the first Academicians, painted a Shakspere five feet high[438] for a public-house at the north-west corner of Little Russell Street, Covent Garden. The picture was enclosed in a sumptuous carved gilt frame, and was suspended by rich foliated ironwork. A London street a hundred years ago must have been one long grotesque picture-gallery.

When the meat is all good it is difficult to know where to insert the knife. In travelling, how hard it is to turn back almost in sight of some Promised Land of which one has often dreamed! Like that traveller I feel, when I find it necessary in this chapter to confine myself strictly to the legends, traditions, and history of Charing Cross proper, leaving for other opportunities Spring Gardens, the story of the greater part of which belongs more to St. James’s Park, Whitehall, and Scotland Yard.