Old and New London Part 22

Blackstone, then poring over the fourth volume of his precious "Commentaries," and the noise and dancing overhead nearly drove him mad, as it also did a Mr. Children, who succeeded him. What these noises arose from, Mr. Forster relates in his delightful biography of the poet.

An Irish merchant named Seguin "remembered dinners at which Johnson, Percy, Bickerstaff, Kelly, 'and a variety of authors of minor note,'

were guests. They talked of supper-parties with younger people, as well in the London chambers as in suburban lodgings; preceded by blind-man's buff, forfeits, or games of cards; and where Goldsmith, festively entertaining them all, would make frugal supper for himself off boiled milk. They related how he would sing all kinds of Irish songs; with what special enjoyment he gave the Scotch ballad of 'Johnny Armstrong' (his old nurse's favourite); how cheerfully he would put the front of his wig behind, or contribute in any other way to the general amus.e.m.e.nt; and to what accompaniment of uncontrolled laughter he once 'danced a minuet with Mrs. Seguin.'"

In 1768 appeared "The Deserted Village." It was about this time that one of Goldy's Grub Street acquaintances called upon him, whilst he was conversing with Topham Beauclerk, and General Oglethorpe, and the fellow, telling Goldsmith that he was sorry he could not pay the two guineas he owed him, offered him a quarter of a pound of tea and half a pound of sugar as an acknowledgment. "1769. Goldsmith fell in love with Mary Horneck known as the 'Jessamy Bride.' Unfortunately he obtained an advance of 500 for his 'Natural History,' and wholly expended it when only six chapters were written." In 1771 he published his "History of England." It was in this year that Reynolds, coming one day to Brick Court, perhaps about the portrait of Goldsmith he had painted the year before, found the mercurial poet kicking a bundle, which contained a masquerade dress, about the room, in disgust at his folly in wasting money in so foolish a way. In 1772, Mr. Forster mentions a very characteristic story of Goldsmith's warmth of heart. He one day found a poor Irish student (afterwards Dr. M'Veagh M'Donnell, a well-known physician) sitting and moping in despair on a bench in the Temple Gardens. Goldsmith soon talked and laughed him into hope and spirits, then taking him off to his chambers, employed him to translate some chapters of Buffon. In 1773 _She Stoops to Conquer_ made a great hit; but Noll was still writing at hack-work, and was deeper in debt than ever. In 1774, when Goldsmith was still grinding on at his hopeless drudge-work, as far from the goal of fortune as ever, and even resolving to abandon London life, with all its temptations, Mr. Forster relates that Johnson, dining with the poet, Reynolds, and some one else, silently reproved the extravagance of so expensive a dinner by sending away the whole second course untouched.

In March, 1774, Goldsmith returned from Edgware to the Temple chambers, which he was trying to sell, suffering from a low nervous fever, partly the result of vexation at his pecuniary embarra.s.sments. Mr. Hawes, an apothecary in the Strand (and one of the first founders of the Humane Society), was called in; but Goldsmith insisted on taking James's fever-powders, a valuable medicine, but dangerous under the circ.u.mstances. This was Friday, the 25th. He told the doctor then his mind was not at ease, and he died on Monday, April 4th, in his forty-fifth year. His debts amounted to over 2,000. "Was ever poet so trusted before?" writes Johnson to Boswell. The staircase of Brick Court was filled with poor outcasts, to whom Goldsmith had been kind and charitable. His coffin was opened by Miss Horneck, that a lock might be cut from his hair. Burke and Reynolds superintended the funeral, Reynolds' nephew (Palmer, afterwards Dean of Cashel) being chief mourner. Hugh Kelly, who had so often lampooned the poet, was present.

At five o'clock on Sat.u.r.day, the 9th of April, Goldsmith was buried in the Temple churchyard. In 1837, a slab of white marble, to the kindly poet's memory, was placed in the Temple Church, and afterwards transferred to a recess of the vestry chamber. Of the poet, Mr. Forster says, "no memorial indicates the grave to the pilgrim or the stranger, nor is it possible any longer to identify the spot which received all that was mortal of the delightful writer." The present site is entirely conjectural; but it appears from the following note, communicated to us by T.C. n.o.ble, the well-known City antiquary, that the real site was remembered as late as 1830. Mr. n.o.ble says:--

"In 1842, after some consideration, the benchers of the Temple deciding that no more burials should take place in the churchyard, resolved to pave it over. For about fifteen years the burial-place of Dr. Goldsmith continued in obscurity; for while some would have it that the interment took place to the east of the choir, others clung to an opinion, handed down by Mr. Broome, the gardener, who stated that when he commenced his duties, about 1830, a Mr. Collett, s.e.xton, a very old man, and a penurious one, too, employed him to prune an elder-tree which, he stated, he venerated, because it marked the site of Goldsmith's grave.

The stone which has been placed in the yard, 'to mark the spot' where the poet was buried, is not the site of this tree. The tomb was erected in 1860, but the exact position of the grave has never been discovered."

The engraving on page 169 shows the spot as it appeared in the autumn of that year. The old houses at the back were pulled down soon after.

Mr. Forster, alluding to Goldsmith's love for the rooks, the former denizens of the Temple Gardens, says: "He saw the rookery (in the winter deserted, or guarded only by some five or six, 'like old soldiers in a garrison') resume its activity and bustle in the spring; and he moralised, like a great reformer, on the legal const.i.tution established, the social laws enforced, and the particular castigations endured for the good of the community, by those black-dressed and black-eyed chatterers. 'I have often amused myself,' Goldsmith remarks, 'with observing their plans of policy from my window in the Temple, that looks upon a grove where they have made a colony, in the midst of the city.'"

CHAPTER XVI.

THE TEMPLE (_continued_).

Fountain Court and the Temple Fountain--Ruth Pinch--L.E.L.'s Poem--Fig-tree Court--The Inner Temple Library--Paper Buildings--The Temple Gate--Guildford North and Jeffreys--Cowper, the Poet: his Melancholy and Attempted Suicide--A Tragedy in Tanfield Court--Lord Mansfield--"Mr. Murray" and his Client--Lamb's Pictures of the Temple--The Sun-dials--Porson and his Eccentricities--Rules of the Temple--c.o.ke and his Labours--Temple Riots--Scuffles with the Alsatians--Temple Dinners--"Calling" to the Bar--The Temple Gardens--The Chrysanthemums--Sir Matthew Hale's Tree--Revenues of the Temple--Temple Celebrities.

Lives there a man with soul so dead as to write about the Temple without mentioning the little fountain in Fountain Court?--that pet and plaything of the Temple, that, like a little fairy, sings to beguile the cares of men oppressed with legal duties. It used to look like a wagoner's silver whip--now a modern writer cruelly calls it "a pert squirt." In Queen Anne's time Hatton describes it as forcing its stream "to a vast and almost incredible alt.i.tude"--it is now only ten feet high, no higher than a giant lord chancellor. Then it was fenced with palisades--now it is caged in iron; then it stood in a square--now it is in a round. But it still sparkles and glitters, and sprinkles and playfully splashes the jaunty sparrows that come to wash off the London dust in its variegated spray. It is quite careless now, however, of notice, for has it not been immortalised by the pen of d.i.c.kens, who has made it the centre of one of his most charming love scenes? It was in Fountain Court, our readers will like to remember, that Ruth Pinch--gentle, loving Ruth--met her lover, by the merest accident of course.

"There was," says Mr. d.i.c.kens, "a little plot between them that Tom should always come out of the Temple by one way, and that was past the fountain. Coming through Fountain Court, he was just to glance down the steps leading into Garden Court, and to look once all round him; and if Ruth had come to meet him, there he would see her--not sauntering, you understand (on account of the clerks), but coming briskly up, with the best little laugh upon her face that ever played in opposition to the fountain and beat it all to nothing. For, fifty to one, Tom had been looking for her in the wrong direction, and had quite given her up, while she had been tripping towards him from the first, jingling that little reticule of hers (with all the keys in it) to attract his wondering observation.

"Whether there was life enough left in the slow vegetation of Fountain Court for the smoky shrubs to have any consciousness of the brightest and purest-hearted little woman in the world, is a question for gardeners and those who are learned in the loves of plants. But that it was a good thing for that same paved yard to have such a delicate little figure flitting through it, that it pa.s.sed like a smile from the grimy old houses and the worn flagstones, and left them duller, darker, sterner than before, there is no sort of doubt. The Temple fountain might have leaped up twenty feet to greet the spring of hopeful maidenhood that in her person stole on, sparkling, through the dry and dusty channels of the law; the chirping sparrows, bred in Temple c.h.i.n.ks and crannies, might have held their peace to listen to imaginary skylarks as so fresh a little creature pa.s.sed; the dingy boughs, unused to droop, otherwise than in their puny growth, might have bent down in a kindred gracefulness to shed their benedictions on her graceful head; old love-letters, shut up in iron boxes in the neighbouring offices, and made of no account among the heaps of family papers into which they had strayed, and of which in their degeneracy they formed a part, might have stirred and fluttered with a moment's recollection of their ancient tenderness, as she went lightly by. Anything might have happened that did not happen, and never will, for the love of Ruth....

"Merrily the tiny fountain played, and merrily the dimples sparkled on its sunny face. John Westlock hurried after her. Softly the whispering water broke and fell, and roguishly the dimples twinkled as he stole upon her footsteps.

"Oh, foolish, panting, timid little heart! why did she feign to be unconscious of his coming?...

"Merrily the fountain leaped and danced, and merrily the smiling dimples twinkled and expanded more and more, until they broke into a laugh against the basin's rim and vanished."

"L.E.L." (Miss Landon) has left a graceful poem on this much-petted fountain, which begins,--

"The fountain's low singing is heard on the wind, Like a melody, bringing sweet fancies to mind-- Some to grieve, some to gladden; around them they cast The hopes of the morrow, the dreams of the past.

Away in the distance is heard the vast sound From the streets of the city that compa.s.s it round, Like the echo of fountains or ocean's deep call; Yet that fountain's low singing is heard over all."

Fig-tree Court derived its name from obvious sources. Next to the plane, that has the strange power of sloughing off its sooty bark, the fig seems the tree that best endures London's corrupted atmosphere.

Thomas Fairchild, a Hoxton gardener, who wrote in 1722 (quoted by Mr.

Peter Cunningham), alludes to figs ripening well in the Rolls Gardens, Chancery Lane, and to the tree thriving in close places about Bridewell.

Who can say that some Templar pilgrim did not bring from the banks of "Abana or Pharpar, rivers of Damascus," the first leafy inhabitant of inky and dusty Fig-tree Court? Lord Thurlow was living here in 1758, the year he was called to the bar, and when, it was said, he had not money enough even to hire a horse to attend the circuit.

The Inner Temple Library stands on the terrace facing the river. The Parliament Chambers and Hall, in the Tudor style, were the work of Sidney Smirke, R.A., in 1835. The library, designed by Mr. Abrahams, is 96 feet long, 42 feet wide, and 63 feet high; it has a hammer-beam roof.

One of the stained gla.s.s windows is blazoned with the arms of the Templars. Below the library are chambers. The cost of the whole was about 13,000. The north window is thought to too much resemble the great window at Westminster.

Paper Buildings, a name more suitable for the offices of some City companies, were first built in the reign of James I., by a Mr. Edward Hayward and others; and the learned Dugdale describes them as eighty-eight feet long, twenty feet broad, and four storeys high. This Hayward was Selden's chamber-fellow, and to him Selden dedicated his "t.i.tles of Honour." Selden, according to Aubrey, had chambers in these pleasant river-side buildings, looking towards the gardens, and in the uppermost storey he had a little gallery, to pace in and meditate. The Great Fire swept away Selden's chambers, and their successors were destroyed by the fire which broke out in Mr. Maule's chambers. Coming home at night from a dinner-party, that gentleman, it is said, put the lighted candle under his bed by mistake. The stately new buildings were designed by Mr. Sidney Smirke, A.R.A., in 1848. The red brick and stone harmonise pleasantly, and the overhanging oriels and angle turrets (Continental Tudor) are by no means ineffective.

The entrance to the Middle Temple from Fleet Street is a gatehouse of red brick pointed with stone, and is the work of Wren. It was erected in 1684, after the Great Fire, and is in the style of Inigo Jones--"not inelegant," says Ralph. It probably occupies the site of the gatehouse erected by order of Wolsey, at the expense of his prisoner, Sir Amyas Paulet. The frightened man covered the front with the cardinal's hat and arms, hoping to appease Wolsey's anger by gratifying his pride. The Inner Temple gateway was built in the fifth year of James I.

Elm Court was built in the sixth year of Charles I. Up one pair of stairs that successful courtier, Guildford North, whom Jeffreys so tormented by the rumour that he had been seen riding on a rhinoceros, then exhibiting in London, commenced the practice that soon won him such high honours.

In 1752 the poet Cowper, on leaving a solicitor's office, had chambers in the Middle Temple, and in that solitude the horror of his future malady began to darken over him. He gave up the cla.s.sics, which had been his previous delight, and read George Herbert's poems all day long. In 1759, after his father's death, he purchased another set of rooms for 250, in an airy situation in the Inner Temple. He belonged, at this time, to the "Nonsense Club," of which Bonnell Thornton, Colman junior, and Lloyd were members. Thurlow also was his friend. In 1763 his despondency deepened into insanity. An approaching appointment to the clerks.h.i.+p of the Journals of the House of Lords overwhelmed him with nervous fears. Dreading to appear in public, he resolved to destroy himself. He purchased laudanum, then threw it away. He packed up his portmanteau to go to France and enter a monastery. He went down to the Custom House Quay, to throw himself into the river. He tried to stab himself. At last the poor fellow actually hung himself, and was only saved by an accident. The following is his own relation:--

"Not one hesitating thought now remained, but I fell greedily to the execution of my purpose. My garter was made of a broad piece of scarlet binding, with a sliding buckle, being sewn together at the ends. By the help of the buckle I formed a noose, and fixed it about my neck, straining it so tight that I hardly left a pa.s.sage for my breath, or for the blood to circulate. The tongue of the buckle held it fast. At each corner of the bed was placed a wreath of carved work fastened by an iron pin, which pa.s.sed up through the midst of it; the other part of the garter, which made a loop, I slipped over one of them, and hung by it some seconds, drawing up my feet under me, that they might not touch the floor; but the iron bent, and the carved work slipped off, and the garter with it. I then fastened it to the frame of the tester, winding it round and tying it in a strong knot. The frame broke short, and let me down again.

"The third effort was more likely to succeed. I set the door open, which reached to within a foot of the ceiling. By the help of a chair I could command the top of it, and the loop being large enough to admit a large angle of the door, was easily fixed, so as not to slip off again.

I pushed away the chair with my feet; and hung at my whole length. While I hung there I distinctly heard a voice say three times, 'Tis over!'

Though I am sure of the fact, and was so at the time, yet it did not at all alarm me or affect my resolution. I hung so long that I lost all sense, all consciousness of existence.

"When I came to myself again I thought I was in h.e.l.l; the sound of my own dreadful groans was all that I heard, and a feeling like that produced by a flash of lightning just beginning to seize upon me, pa.s.sed over my whole body. In a few seconds I found myself fallen on my face to the floor. In about half a minute I recovered my feet, and reeling and struggling, stumbled into bed again.

"By the blessed providence of G.o.d, the garter which had held me till the bitterness of temporal death was past broke just before eternal death had taken place upon me. The stagnation of the blood under one eye in a broad crimson spot, and a red circle round my neck, showed plainly that I had been on the brink of eternity. The latter, indeed, might have been occasioned by the pressure of the garter, but the former was certainly the effect of strangulation, for it was not attended with the sensation of a bruise, as it must have been had I in my fall received one in so tender a part; and I rather think the circle round my neck was owing to the same cause, for the part was not excoriated, nor at all in pain.

"Soon after I got into bed I was surprised to hear a voice in the dining-room, where the laundress was lighting a fire. She had found the door unbolted, notwithstanding my design to fasten it, and must have pa.s.sed the bed-chamber door while I was hanging on it, and yet never perceived me. She heard me fall, and presently came to ask me if I was well, adding, she feared I had been in a fit.

"I sent her to a friend, to whom I related the whole affair, and dispatched him to my kinsman at the coffee-house. As soon as the latter arrived I pointed to the broken garter which lay in the middle of the room, and apprised him also of the attempt I had been making. His words were, 'My dear Mr. Cowper, you terrify me! To be sure you cannot hold the office at this rate. Where is the deputation?' I gave him the key of the drawer where it was deposited, and his business requiring his immediate attendance, he took it away with him; and thus ended all my connection with the Parliament office."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TEMPLE FOUNTAIN, FROM AN OLD PRINT (_see page 171_).]

In February, 1732, Tanfield Court, a quiet, dull nook on the east side of the Temple, to the south of that sombre Grecian temple where the Master resides, was the scene of a very horrible crime. Sarah Malcolm, a laundress, aged twenty-two, employed by a young barrister named Kerrol in the same court, gaining access to the rooms of an old lady named Duncomb, whom she knew to have money, strangled her and an old servant, and cut the throat of a young girl, whose bed she had probably shared.

Some of her blood-stained linen, and a silver tankard of Mrs. Duncomb's, stained with blood, were found by Mr. Kerrol concealed in his chambers.

Fifty-three pounds of the money were discovered at Newgate hidden in the prisoner's hair. She confessed to a share in the robbery, but laid the murder to two lads with whom she was acquainted. She was, however, found guilty, and hung opposite Mitre Court, Fleet Street. The crowd was so great that one woman crossed from near Serjeants' Inn to the other side of the way on the shoulders of the mob. Sarah Malcolm went to execution neatly dressed in a c.r.a.pe gown, held up her head in the cart with an air, and seemed to be painted. A copy of her confession was sold for twenty guineas. Two days before her execution she dressed in scarlet, and sat to Hogarth for a sketch, which Horace Walpole bought for 5. The portrait represents a cruel, thin-lipped woman, not uncomely, sitting at a table. The Duke of Roxburghe purchased a perfect impression of this print, Mr. Timbs says, for 8 5s. Its original price was sixpence. After her execution the corpse was taken to an undertaker's on Snow Hill, and there exhibited for money. Among the rest, a gentleman in deep mourning--perhaps her late master, Mr. Kerrol--stooped and kissed it, and gave the attendant half-a-crown. She was, by special favour (for superiority even in wickedness has its admirers), buried in St.

Sepulchre's Churchyard, from which criminals had been excluded for a century and a half. The corpse of the murderess was disinterred, and her skeleton, in a gla.s.s case, is still to be seen at the Botanic Garden, Cambridge.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SCUFFLE BETWEEN TEMPLARS AND ALSATIANS (_see page 179_).]

Not many recorded crimes have taken place in the Temple, for youth, however poor, is hopeful. It takes time to make a man despair, and when he despairs, the devil is soon at his elbow. Nevertheless, greed and madness have upset some Templars' brains. In October, 1573, a crazed, fanatical man of the Middle Temple, named Peter Burchet, mistaking John Hawkins (afterwards the naval hero) for Sir Christopher Hatton, flew at him in the Strand, and dangerously wounded him with a dagger. The queen was so furious that at first she wanted Burchet tried by camp law; but, being found to hold heretical opinions, he was committed to the Lollards' Tower (south front of St. Paul's), and afterwards sent to the Tower. Growing still madder there, Burchet slew one of his keepers with a billet from his fire, and was then condemned to death and hung in the Strand, close by where he had stabbed Hawkins, his right hand being first stricken off and nailed to the gibbet.

In 1685 John Ayloff, a barrister of the Inner Temple, was hung for high treason opposite the Temple Gate.

In 1738 Thomas Carr, an attorney, of Elm Court, and Elizabeth Adams, his accomplice, were executed for robbing a Mr. Quarrington in s.h.i.+re Lane (see page 74); and in 1752 Henry Justice, of the Middle Temple, in spite of his well-omened name, was cruelly sentenced to death for stealing books from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, but eventually he was only transported for life.

The celebrated Earl of Mansfield, when Mr. Murray, had chambers at No.

5, King's Bench Walk, _apropos_ of which Pope wrote--

"To Number Five direct your doves, There spread round Murray all your blooming loves."

(Pope "to Venus," from "Horace.")

A second compliment by Pope to this great man occasioned a famous parody:--

"Graced as thou art by all the power of words, So known, so honoured at the House of Lords"

(Pope, of Lord Mansfield);