Old and New London Part 8

Mr. John Scott, a man of great promise, the editor of the _London_ for the first publishers--Messrs. Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy--met with a very tragic death in 1821. The duel in which he fell arose from a quarrel between the men on the _London_ and the clever but bitter and unscrupulous writers in _Blackwood_, started in 1817. Lockhart, who had cruelly maligned Leigh Hunt and his set (the "c.o.c.kney School," as the Scotch Tories chose to call them), was sharply attacked in the _London_.

Fiery and vindictive Lockhart flew at once up to town, and angrily demanded from Mr. Scott, the editor, an explanation, an apology, or a meeting. Mr. Scott declined giving an apology unless Mr. Lockhart would first deny that he was editor of _Blackwood_. Lockhart refused to give this denial, and retorted by expressing a mean opinion of Mr. Scott's courage. Lockhart and Scott both printed contradictory versions of the quarrel, which worked up till at last Mr. Christie, a friend of Lockhart's, challenged Scott; and they met at Chalk Farm by moonlight on February 16th, at nine o'clock at night, attended by their seconds and surgeons, in the old business-like, bloodthirsty way. The first time Mr.

Christie did not fire at Mr. Scott, a fact of which Mr. Patmore, the author, Scott's second, with most blamable indiscretion, did not inform his princ.i.p.al. At the second fire Christie's ball struck Scott just above the right hip, and he fell. He lingered till the 27th. It was said at the time that Hazlitt, perhaps unintentionally, had driven Scott to fight by indirect taunts. "I don't pretend," Hazlitt is reported to have said, "to hold the principles of honour which you hold. I would neither give nor accept a challenge. You hold the opinions of the world; with you it is different. As for me, it would be nothing. I do not think as you and the world think," and so on. Poor Scott, not yet forty, had married the pretty daughter of Colnaghi, the printseller in Pall Mall, and left two children.

For the five years it lasted, perhaps no magazine--not even the mighty _Maga_ itself--ever drew talent towards it with such magnetic attraction. In Mr. Barry Cornwall's delightful memoir of his old friend Lamb, written when the writer was in his seventy-third year, he has summarised the writers on the _London_, and shown how deep and varied was the intellect brought to bear on its production. First of all he mentions poor Scott, a shrewd, critical, rather hasty man, who wrote essays on Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, G.o.dwin, Byron, Keats, Sh.e.l.ley, Leigh Hunt, and Hazlitt, his wonderful contemporaries, in a fruitful age. Hazlitt, glowing and capricious, produced the twelve essays of his "Table Talk," many dramatic articles, and papers on Beckford's Fonthill, the Angerstein pictures, and the Elgin marbles--pages wealthy with thought. Lamb contributed in three years all the matchless essays of "Elia." Mr. Thomas Carlyle, then only a promising young Scotch philosopher, wrote several articles on the "Life and Writings of Schiller." Mr. de Quincey, that subtle thinker and bitter Tory, contributed his wonderful "Confessions of an Opium-Eater." That learned and amiable man, the Rev. H.F. Cary, the translator of Dante, wrote several interesting notices of early French poets. Allan Cunningham, the vigorous Scottish bard, sent the romantic "Tales of Lyddal Cross" and a series of papers styled "Traditional Literature." Mr. John Poole--recently deceased, 1872--(the author of _Paul Pry_ and that humorous novel, "Little Pedlington," which is supposed to have furnished Mr. Charles d.i.c.kens with some suggestions for "Pickwick") wrote burlesque imitations of contemporaneous dramatic writers--Morton, Dibdin, Reynolds, Moncrieff, &c. Mr. J.H. Reynolds wrote, under the name of Henry Herbert, notices of contemporaneous events, such as a scene at the c.o.c.kpit, the trial of Thurtell (a very powerful article), &c. That delightful punster and humorist, with pen or pencil, Tom Hood, sent to the _London_ his first poems of any ambition or length--"Lycus the Centaur," and "The Two Peac.o.c.ks of Bedfont." Keats, "that sleepless soul that perished in its pride," and Montgomery, both contributed poems. Sir John Bowring, the accomplished linguist, wrote on Spanish poetry. Mr.

Henry Southern, the editor of that excellent work the _Retrospective Review_, contributed "The Conversations of Lord Byron." Mr. Walter Savage Landor, that very original and eccentric thinker, published in the extraordinary magazine one of his admirable "Imaginary Conversations." Mr. Julius (afterwards Archdeacon) Hare reviewed the robust works of Landor. Mr. Elton contributed graceful translations from Catullus, Propertius, &c. Even among the lesser contributors there were very eminent writers, not forgetting Barry Cornwall, Hartley Coleridge, John Clare, the Northamptons.h.i.+re peasant poet; and Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet. Nor must we omit that strange contrast to these pure-hearted and wise men, "Ja.n.u.s Weatherc.o.c.k" (Wainwright), the polished villain who murdered his young niece and most probably several other friends and relations, for the money insured upon their lives.

This gay and evil being, by no means a dull writer upon art and the drama, was much liked by Lamb and the Russell Street set. The news of his cold-blooded crimes (transpiring in 1837) seem to have struck a deep horror among all the scoundrel's fas.h.i.+onable a.s.sociates. Although when arrested in France it was discovered that Wainwright habitually carried strychnine about with him, he was only tried for forgery, and for that offence transported for life.

A fine old citizen of the last century, Joseph Brasbridge, who published his memoirs, kept a silversmith's shop at No. 98, several doors from Alderman Waithman's. At one time Brasbridge confesses he divided his time between the tavern club, the card party, the hunt, and the fight, and left his shop to be looked after by others, whilst he decided on the respective merits of Humphries and Mendoza, Cribb and Big Ben. Among Brasbridge's early customers were the Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Argyle, and other men of rank, and he glories in having once paid an elaborate compliment to Lady Hamilton. The most curious story in Brasbridge's "Fruits of Experience" is the following, various versions of which have been paraphrased by modern writers. A surgeon in Gough Square had purchased for dissection the body of a man who had been hanged at Tyburn. The servant girl, wis.h.i.+ng to look at the corpse, stole upstairs in the doctor's absence, and, to her horror, found the body sitting up on the board, wondering where it was. The girl almost threw herself down the stairs in her fright. The surgeon, on learning of the resuscitation of his subject, humanely concealed the man in the house till he could fit him out for America. The fellow proved as clever and industrious as he was grateful, and having ama.s.sed a fortune, he eventually left it all to his benefactor. The sequel is still more curious. The surgeon dying some years after, his heirs were advertised for. A shoemaker at Islington eventually established a claim and inherited the money. Mean in prosperity, the _ci-devant_ shoemaker then refused to pay the lawyer's bill, and, moreover, called him a rogue. The enraged lawyer replied, "I have put you into possession of this property by my exertions, now I will spend 100 out of my own pocket to take it away again, for you are not deserving of it." The lawyer accordingly advertised again for the surgeon's nearest of kin; Mr. Willc.o.c.ks, a bookseller in the Strand, then came forward, and deposed that his wife and her mother, he remembered, used to visit the surgeon in Gough Square. On inquiry Mrs. Willc.o.c.ks was proved the next of kin, and the base shoemaker returned to his last. The lucky Mr. Willc.o.c.ks was the good-natured bookseller who lent Johnson and Garrick, when they first came up to London to seek their fortunes, 5 on their joint note.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALDERMAN WAITHMAN, FROM AN AUTHENTIC PORTRAIT (_see page 68_).]

Nos. 103 (now the _Sunday Times_ office) and 104 were the shop of that bustling politician Alderman Waithman; and to his memory was erected the obelisk on the site of his first shop, formerly the north-west end of Fleet Market. Waithman, according to Mr. Timbs, had a genius for the stage, and especially shone as Macbeth. He was uncle to John Reeve, the comic actor. Cobbett, who hated Waithman, has left a portrait of the alderman, written in his usual racy English. "Among these persons," he says, talking of the Princess Caroline agitation, in 1813, "there was a common councilman named Robert Waithman, a man who for many years had taken a conspicuous part in the politics of the City; a man not dest.i.tute of the powers of utterance, and a man of sound principles also. But a man so enveloped, so completely swallowed up by self-conceit, who, though perfectly illiterate, though unable to give to three consecutive sentences a grammatical construction, seemed to look upon himself as the first orator, the first writer, and the first statesman of the whole world. He had long been the c.o.c.k of the Democratic party in the City; he was a great speech-maker; could make very free with facts, and when it suited his purpose could resort to as foul play as most men." According to Cobbett, who grows more than usually virulent on the occasion, Waithman, vexed that Alderman Wood had been the first to propose an address of condolence to the Princess at the Common Council, opposed it, and was defeated. As Cobbett says, "He then checked himself, endeavoured to recover his ground, floundered about got some applause by talking about rotten boroughs and parliamentary reform. But all in vain. Then rose cries of 'No, no! the address--the address!' which appear to have stung him to the quick. His face, which was none of the whitest, a.s.sumed a ten times darker die. His look was furious, while he uttered the words, 'I am sorry that my well-weighed opinions are in opposition to the general sentiment so hastily adopted; but I hope the Livery will consider the necessity of preserving its character for purity and wisdom.'" On the appointed day the Princess was presented with the address, to the delight of the more zealous Radicals. The procession of more than one hundred carriages came back past Carlton House on their return from Kensington, the people groaning and hissing to torment the Regent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GROUP AT HARDHAM'S TOBACCO SHOP (_see page 69_).]

Brasbridge, the Tory silversmith of Fleet Street, writes very contemptuously in his autobiography of Waithman. Sneering at his boast of reading, he says: "I own my curiosity was a little excited to know when and where he began his studies. It could not be in his shop in Fleet Market, for there he was too busily employed in attending to the fishwomen and other ladies connected with the business of the market.

Nor could it be at the corner of Fleet Street, where he was always no less a.s.siduously engaged in ticketing his super-super calicoes at two and two pence, and cutting them off for two and twenty pence." According to Brasbridge, Waithman made his first speech in 1792, in Founder's Hall, Lothbury, "called by some at that time the cauldron of sedition."

Waithman was Lord Mayor in 1823-24, and was returned to Parliament five times for the City. The portrait of Waithman on page 66, and the view of his shop, page 61, are taken from pictures in Mr. Gardiner's magnificent collection.

A short biography of this civic orator will not be uninteresting:--Robert Waithman was born of humble parentage, at Wrexham, in North Wales. Becoming an orphan when only four months old, he was placed at the school of a Mr. Moore by his uncle, on whose death, about 1778, he obtained a situation at Reading, whence he proceeded to London, and entered into the service of a respectable linendraper, with whom he continued till he became of age. He then entered into business at the south end of Fleet Market, whence, some years afterwards, he removed to the corner of New Bridge Street. He appears to have commenced his political career about 1792, at the oratorical displays made in admiration and imitation of the proceedings of the French revolutionists, at Founder's Hall, in Lothbury. In 1794 he brought forward a series of resolutions, at a common hall, animadverting upon the war with revolutionised France, and enforcing the necessity of a reform in Parliament. In 1796 he was first elected a member of the Common Council for the Ward of Farringdon Without, and became a very frequent speaker in that public body. It was supposed that Mr. Fox intended to have rewarded his political exertions by the place of Receiver-General of the Land Tax. In 1818, after having been defeated on several previous occasions, he was elected as one of the representatives in Parliament of the City of London, defeating the old member, Sir William Curtis.

Very shortly after, on the 4th of August, he was elected Alderman of his ward, on the death of Sir Charles Price, Bart. On the 25th of January, 1819, he made his maiden speech in Parliament, on the presentation of a pet.i.tion praying for a revision of the criminal code, the existing state of which he severely censured. At the ensuing election of 1820 the friends of Sir William Curtis turned the tables upon him, Waithman being defeated. In this year, however, he attained the honour of the shrievalty; and in October, 1823, he was chosen Lord Mayor. In 1826 he stood another contest for the City, with better success. In 1830, 1831, and 1832 he obtained his re-election with difficulty; but in 1831 he suffered a severe disappointment in losing the chamberlains.h.i.+p, in the compet.i.tion for which Sir James Shaw obtained a large majority of votes.

We subjoin the remarks made on his death by the editor of the _Times_ newspaper:--"The magistracy of London has been deprived of one of its most respectable members, and the City of one of its most upright representatives. Everybody knows that Mr. Alderman Waithman has filled a large s.p.a.ce in City politics; and most people who were acquainted with him will be ready to admit that, had his early education been better directed, or his early circ.u.mstances more favourable to his ambition, he might have become an important man in a wider and higher sphere. His natural parts, his political integrity, his consistency of conduct, and the energy and perseverance with which he performed his duties, placed him far above the common run of persons whose reputation is gained by their oratorical displays at meetings of the Common Council. In looking back at City proceedings for the last thirty-five or forty years, we find him always rising above his rivals as the steady and consistent advocate of the rights of his countrymen and the liberties and privileges of his fellow-citizens."

There is a curious story told of the Fleet Street crossing, opposite Waithman's corner. It was swept for years by an old black man named Charles M'Ghee, whose father had died in Jamaica at the age of 108.

According to Mr. n.o.ble, when he laid down his broom he sold his professional right for 1,000 (100?). Retiring into private life much respected, he was always to be seen on Sundays at Rowland Hill's chapel.

When in his seventy-third year his portrait was taken and hung in the parlour of the "Twelve Bells," Bride Lane. To Miss Waithman, who used to send him out soup and bread, he is, untruly, said to have left 7,000.

Mr. Diprose, in his "History of St. Clement," tells us more of this black sweeper. "Brutus Billy," or "Tim-buc-too," as he was generally called, lived in a pa.s.sage leading from Stanhope Street into Drury Lane.

He was a short, thick-set man, with his white-grey hair carefully brushed up into a toupee, the fas.h.i.+on of his youth. He was found in his shop, as he called his crossing, in all weathers, and was invariably civil. At night, after he had shut up shop (swept mud over his crossing), he carried round a basket of nuts and fruit to places of public entertainment, so that in time he laid by a considerable amount of money. Brutus Billy was brimful of story and anecdote. He died in Chapel Court in 1854, in his eighty-seventh year. This worthy man was perhaps the model for Billy Waters, the negro beggar in _Tom and Jerry_, who is so indignant at the beggars' supper on seeing "a turkey without sa.s.senges."

In Garrick's time John Hardham, the well-known tobacconist, opened a shop at No. 106. There, at the sign of the "Red Lion," Hardham's Highlander kept steady guard at a doorway through which half the celebrities of the day made their exits and entrances. His celebrated "No. 37" snuff was said, like the French millefleur, to be composed of a great number of ingredients, and Garrick in his kind way helped it into fas.h.i.+on by mentioning it favourably on the stage. Hardham, a native of Chichester, began life as a servant, wrote a comedy, acted, and at last became Garrick's "numberer," having a general's quick _coup d'oeil_ at gauging an audience, and so checking the money-takers. Garrick once became his security for a hundred pounds, but eventually Hardham grew rich, and died in 1772, bequeathing 22,289 to Chichester, 10 guineas to Garrick, and merely setting apart 10 for his funeral, only vain fools, as he said, spending more. We can fancy the great actors of that day seated on Hardham's tobacco-chests discussing the drollery of Foote or the vivacity of Clive.

"It has long been a source of inquiry," says a writer in the _City Press_, "whence the origin of the cognomen, 'No. 37,' to the celebrated snuff compounded still under the name of John Hardham, in Fleet Street.

There is a tradition that Lord Townsend, on being applied to by Hardham, whom he patronised, to name the snuff, suggested the cabalistic number of 37, it being the exact number of a majority obtained in some proceedings in the Irish Parliament during the time he was Lord Lieutenant there, and which was considered a triumph for his Government.

The dates, however, do not serve this theory, as Lord Townsend was not viceroy till the years 1767-72, when the snuff must have been well established in public fame and Hardham in the last years of his life. It has already been printed elsewhere that, on the famed snuff coming out in the first instance, David Garrick, hearing of it, called in Fleet Street, as he was wont frequently to do, and offered to bring it under the public notice in the most effectual manner, by introducing an incident in a new comedy then about to be produced by him, where he would, in his part in the play, offer another character a pinch of snuff, who would extol its excellence, whereupon Garrick arranged to continue the conversation by naming the snuff as the renowned '37 of John Hardham.' But the enigma, even now, is not solved; so we will, for what it may be worth, venture our own explanation. It is well known that in most of the celebrated snuffs before the public a great variety of qualities and descriptions of tobacco, and of various ages, are introduced. Hardham, like the rest, never told his secret how the snuff was made, but left it as a heritage to his successors. It is very probable, therefore, that the mystic figures, 37, we have quoted represented the number of qualities, growths, and description of the 'fragrant weed' introduced by him into his snuff, and may be regarded as a sort of appellative rebus, or conceit, founded thereon."[3]

But Hardham occupied himself in other ways than in the making of snuff and of money--for the Chichester youth had now grown wealthy--and in extending his circle of acquaintances amongst dramatists and players; he was abundantly distinguished for Christian charity, for, in the language of a contemporary writer, we find that "his deeds in that respect were extensive," and his bounty "was conveyed to many of the objects of it in the most delicate manner." From the same authority we find that Hardham once failed in business (we presume, as a lapidary) more creditably than he could have made a fortune by it. This spirit of integrity, which remained a remarkable feature in his character throughout life, induced him to be often resorted to by his wealthy patrons as trustee for the payment of their bounties to deserving objects; in many cases the patrons died before the recipients of their relief. With Hardham, however, this made no difference; the annuities once granted, although stopped by the decease of the donors, were paid ever after by Hardham so long as he lived; and his delicacy of feeling induced him even to persuade the recipients into the belief that they were still derived from the same source.

No. 102 (south) was opened as a shop, in 1719, by one Lockyer, who called it "Mount Pleasant." It then became a "saloop-house," where the poor purchased a beverage made out of sa.s.safras chips. The proprietor, who began life, as Mr. n.o.ble says, with half-a-crown, died in March, 1739, worth 1,000. Thomas Read was a later tenant. Charles Lamb mentions "saloop" in one of his essays, and says, "Palates otherwise not uninstructed in dietetical elegancies sup it up with avidity."

Chimney-sweeps, beloved by Lamb, approved it, and eventually stalls were set up in the streets, as at present to reach even humbler customers.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] An intelligent compositor (Mr. J.P.S. Bicknell), who has been a noter of curious pa.s.sages in his time, informs me that Bell was the first printer who confined the small letter "s" to its present shape, and rejected altogether the older form "s." [Transcriber's Note: "s."

refers to the long s of Early English]

[3] The real fact is, the famous snuff was merely called from the number of the drawer that held it.

CHAPTER VI.

FLEET STREET (NORTHERN TRIBUTARIES--SHOE LANE AND BELL YARD).

The Kit-Kat Club--The Toast for the Year--Little Lady Mary--Drunken John Sly--Garth's Patients--Club removed to Barn Elms--Steele at the "Trumpet"--Rogues' Lane--Murder--Beggars' Haunts--Thieves'

Dens--Coiners--Theodore Hook in Hemp's Sponging-house--Pope in Bell Yard--Minor Celebrities--Apollo Court.

Opposite Child's Bank, and almost within sound of the jingle of its gold, once stood s.h.i.+re Lane, afterwards known as Lower Serle's Place. It latterly became a dingy, disreputable defile, where lawyers' clerks and the hangers-on of the law-courts were often allured and sometimes robbed; yet it had been in its day a place of great repute. In this lane the Kit-Kat, the great club of Queen Anne's reign, held its sittings, at the "Cat and Fiddle," the shop of a pastrycook named Christopher Kat.

The house, according to local antiquaries, afterwards became the "Trumpet," a tavern mentioned by Steele in the _Tatler_, and latterly known as the "Duke of York." The Kit-Kats were originally Whig patriots, who, at the end of King William's reign, met in this out-of-the-way place to devise measures to secure the Protestant succession and keep out the pestilent Stuarts. Latterly they a.s.sembled for simple enjoyment; and there have been grave disputes as to whether the club took its name from the punning sign, the "Cat and Kit," or from the favourite pies which Christopher Kat had christened; and as this question will probably last the antiquaries another two centuries, we leave it alone. According to some verses by Arbuthnot, the chosen friend of Pope and Swift, the question was mooted even in his time, as if the very founders of the club had forgotten. Some think that the club really began with a weekly dinner given by Jacob Tonson, the great bookseller of Gray's Inn Lane, to his chief authors and patrons. This Tonson, one of the patriarchs of English booksellers, who published Dryden's "Virgil," purchased a share of Milton's works, and first made Shakespeare's works cheap enough to be accessible to the many, was secretary to the club from the commencement.

An average of thirty-nine poets, wits, n.o.blemen, and gentlemen formed the staple of the a.s.sociation. The n.o.blemen were perhaps rather too numerous for that republican equality that should prevail in the best intellectual society; yet above all the dukes s.h.i.+ne out Steele and Addison, the two great luminaries of the club. Among the Kit-Kat dukes was the great Marlborough; among the earls the poetic Dorset, the patron of Dryden and Prior; among the lords the wise Halifax; among the baronets bluff Sir Robert Walpole. Of the poets and wits there were Congreve, the most courtly of dramatists; Garth, the poetical physician--"well-natured Garth," as Pope somewhat awkwardly calls him; and Vanbrugh, the writer of admirable comedies. Dryden could hardly have seriously belonged to a Whig club; Pope was inadmissible as a Catholic, and Prior as a renegade. Latterly objectionable men pushed in, worst of all, Lord Mohun, a disreputable debauchee and duellist, afterwards run through by the Duke of Hamilton in Hyde Park, the duke himself peris.h.i.+ng in the encounter. When Mohun, in a drunken pet, broke a gilded emblem off a club chair, respectable old Tonson predicted the downfall of the society, and said with a sigh, "The man who would do that would cut a man's throat." Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller, the great Court painter of the reigns of William and Anne, was a member; and he painted for his friend Tonson the portraits of forty-two gentlemen of the Kit-Kat, including Dryden, who died a year after it started. The forty-two portraits, painted three-quarter size (hence called Kit-Kat), to suit the walls of Tonson's villa at Barn Elms, still exist, and are treasured by Mr. R.W.

Baker, a representative of the Tonson family, at Hertingfordbury, in Hertfords.h.i.+re. Among the lesser men of this distinguished club we must include Pope's friends, the "knowing Walsh" and "Granville the polite."

As at the "Devil," "the tribe of Ben" must have often discussed the downfall of Lord Bacon, the poisoning of Overbury, the war in the Palatinate, and the murder of Buckingham; so in s.h.i.+re Lane, opposite, the talk must have run on Marlborough's victories, Jacobite plots, and the South-Sea Bubble; Addison must have discussed Swift, and Steele condemned the littleness of Pope. It was the custom of this aristocratic club every year to elect some reigning beauty as a toast. To the queen of the year the gallant members wrote epigrammatic verses, which were etched with a diamond on the club gla.s.ses. The most celebrated of these toasts were the four daughters of the Duke of Marlborough--Lady G.o.dolphin, Lady Sunderland (generally known as "the Little Whig"), Lady Bridgewater, and Lady Monthermer. Swift's friend, Mrs. Long, was another; and so was a niece of Sir Isaac Newton. The verses seem flat and dead now, like flowers found between the leaves of an old book; but in their time no doubt they had their special bloom and fragrance. The most tolerable are those written by Lord Halifax on "the Little Whig":--

"All nature's charms in Sunderland appear, Bright as her eyes and as her reason clear; Yet still their force, to man not safely known, Seems undiscovered to herself alone."

Yet how poor after all is this laboured compliment in comparison to a sentence of Steele's on some lady of rank whose virtues he honoured,--"that even to have known her was in itself a liberal education."

But few stories connected with the Kit-Kat meetings are to be dug out of books, though no doubt many s.n.a.t.c.hes of the best conversation are embalmed in the _Spectator_ and the _Tatler_. Yet Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whom Pope first admired and then reviled, tells one pleasant incident of her childhood that connects her with the great club.

One evening when toasts were being chosen, her father, Evelyn Pierpoint, Duke of Kingston, took it into his head to nominate Lady Mary, then a child only eight years of age. She was prettier, he vowed, than any beauty on the list. "You shall see her," cried the duke, and instantly sent a chaise for her. Presently she came ushered in, dressed in her best, and was elected by acclamation. The Whig gentlemen drank the little lady's health up-standing and, feasting her with sweetmeats and pa.s.sing her round with kisses, at once inscribed her name with a diamond on a drinking-gla.s.s. "Pleasure," she says, "was too poor a word to express my sensations. They amounted to ecstasy. Never again throughout my whole life did I pa.s.s so happy an evening."

It used to be said that it took so much wine to raise Addison to his best mood, that Steele generally got drunk before that golden hour arrived. Steele, that warm-hearted careless fellow in whom Thackeray so delighted, certainly shone at the Kit-Kat; and an anecdote still extant shows him to us with all his amiable weaknesses. On the night of that great Whig festival--the celebration of King William's anniversary--Steele and Addison brought Dr. Hoadley, the Bishop of Bangor, with them, and solemnly drank "the immortal memory." Presently John Sly, an eccentric hatter and enthusiastic politician, crawled into the room on his knees, in the old Cavalier fas.h.i.+on, and drank the Orange toast in a tankard of foaming October. No one laughed at the tipsy hatter; but Steele, kindly even when in liquor, kept whispering to the rather shocked prelate, "Do laugh; it is humanity to laugh." The bishop soon put on his hat and withdrew, and Steele by and by subsided under the table. Picked up and crammed into a sedan-chair, he insisted, late as it was, in going to the Bishop of Bangor's to apologise. Eventually he was coaxed home and got upstairs, but then, in a gush of politeness, he insisted on seeing the chairmen out; after which he retired with self-complacency to bed. The next morning, in spite of headache the most racking, Steele sent the tolerant bishop the following exquisite couplet, which covered a mult.i.tude of such sins:--

"Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, All faults he pardons, though he none commits."

One night when amiable Garth lingered over the Kit-Kat wine, though patients were pining for him, Steele reproved the epicurean doctor.

"Nay, nay, d.i.c.k," said Garth, pulling out a list of fifteen, "it's no great matter after all, for nine of them have such bad const.i.tutions that not all the physicians in the world could save them; and the other six have such good const.i.tutions that all the physicians in the world could not kill them."

Three o'clock in the morning seems to have been no uncommon hour for the Kit-Kat to break up, and a Tory lampooner says that at this club the youth of Anne's reign learned

"To sleep away the days and drink away the nights."

The club latterly held its meetings at Tonson's villa at Barn Elms (previously the residence of Cowley), or at the "Upper Flask" tavern, on Hampstead Heath. The club died out before 1727 (George II.); for Vanbrugh, writing to Tonson, says,--"Both Lord Carlisle and Cobham expressed a great desire of having one meeting next winter, not as a club, but as old friends that have been of a club--and the best club that ever met." In 1709 we find the Kit-Kat subscribing 400 guineas for the encouragement of good comedies. Altogether such a body of men must have had great influence on the literature of the age, for, in spite of the bitterness of party, there was some generous _esprit de corps_ then, and the Whig wits and poets were a power, and were backed by rank and wealth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU AND THE KIT-KATS (_see page 71_).]

Whether the "Trumpet" (formerly half-way up on the left-hand side ascending from Temple Bar) was the citadel of the Kit-Kats or not, Steele introduces it as the scene of two of the best of his _Tatler_ papers. It was there, in October, 1709, that he received his deputation of Staffords.h.i.+re county gentlemen, delightful old fogies, standing much on form and precedence. There he prepares tea for Sir Harry Quickset, Bart.; Sir Giles Wheelbarrow; Thomas Rentfree, Esq., J.P.; Andrew Windmill, Esq., the steward, with boots and whip; and Mr.

Nicholas Doubt, of the Inner Temple, Sir Harry's mischievous young nephew. After much dispute about precedence, the st.u.r.dy old fellows are taken by Steele to "d.i.c.k's" Coffee-house for a morning draught; and safely, after some danger, effect the pa.s.sage of Fleet Street, Steele rallying them at the Temple Gate. In Sir Harry we fancy we see a faint sketch of the more dignified Sir Roger de Coverley, which Addison afterwards so exquisitely elaborated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BISHOP BUTLER (_see page 77_).]

At the "Trumpet" Steele also introduces us to a delightful club of old citizens that met every evening precisely at six. The humours of the fifteen Trumpeters are painted with the breadth and vigour of Hogarth's best manner. With a delightful humour Steele sketches Sir Geoffrey Notch, the president, who had spent all his money on horses, dogs, and gamec.o.c.ks, and who looked on all thriving persons as pitiful upstarts.

Then comes Major Matchlock, who thought nothing of any battle since Marston Moor, and who usually began his story of Naseby at three-quarters past six. d.i.c.k Reptile was a silent man, with a nephew whom he often reproved. The wit of the club, an old Temple bencher, never left the room till he had quoted ten distiches from "Hudibras" and told long stories of a certain extinct man about town named Jack Ogle.