RICHARD BURBAGE, FROM THE ORIGINAL PORTRAIT IN DULWICH COLLEG
"They that kept themselves close to the walls, or remained by the windows, or held by the rafters, or settled themselves by the stayres, or were driven away by fear and suspition, sauved themselves without further hurt; but such as seemed more devoute, and thronged neere the preacher, perished in a moment with himselfe and other priests and Jesuites; and this was the summe of that unhappy disaster."
In earlier days Blackfriars had been a locality much inhabited by fashionable people, especially about the time of Queen Elizabeth. Pennant quotes from theSydney Papersa curious accountof a grand festivity at the house of Lord Herbert, which the Queen honoured by her attendance. The account is worth inserting, if only for the sake of a characteristic bit of temper which the Queen exhibited on the occasion.
"Lord Herbert, son of William, fourth Earl of Worcester," says Pennant, "had a house in Blackfriars, which Queen Elizabeth, in 1600, honoured with her presence, on occasion of his nuptials with the daughter and heiress of John, Lord Russell, son of Francis, Earl of Bedford. The queen was met at the waterside by the bride, and carried to her house in alecticaby six knights. Her majesty dined there, and supped in the same neighbourhood with Lord Cobham, where there was 'a memorable maske of eight ladies, and a strange dawnce new invented. Their attire is this: each hath a skirt of cloth of silver, a mantell of coruscian taffete, cast under the arme, and their haire loose about their shoulders, curiously knotted and interlaced. Mrs. Fitton leade. These eight ladys maskers choose eightladies more to dawnce the measures. Mrs. Fitton went to the queen and woed her dawnce. Her majesty (the love of Essex rankling in her heart) asked what she was? "Affection," she said. "Affection!" said the queen; "affectionis false"; yet her majestie rose up and dawnced. At this time the queen was sixty. Surely, as Mr. Walpole observed, it was at that period as natural for her as to be in love! I must not forget that in her passage from the bride's to Lord Cobham's she went through the house of Dr. Puddin, and was presented by the doctor with a fan."
LAYING THE FOUNDATION-STONE OF BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE, 1760, FROM A CONTEMPORARY PRINT
Old Blackfriars Bridge, pulled down a few years since, was begun in 1760, and first opened onSunday, November 19, 1769. It was built from the design of Robert Mylne, a clever young Scotch engineer, whose family had been master masons to the kings of Scotland for five hundred years. Mylne had just returned from a professional tour in Italy, where he had followed in the footsteps of Vitruvius, and gained the first prize at the Academy of St. Luke. He arrived in London friendless and unknown, and at once entered into competition with twenty other architects for the new bridge. Among these rivals was Smeaton, the great engineer (aprotégéof Lord Bute's), and Dr. Johnson's friend, Gwynn, well known for his admirable work on London improvements. The committee were, however, just enough to be unanimous in favouring the young unknown Scotchman, and he carried off the prize. Directly it was known that Mylne's arches were to be elliptical, every one unacquainted with the subject began to write in favour of the semi-circular arch. Among the champions Dr. Johnson was, if not the most ignorant, the most rash. He wrote three letters to the printer of theGazetteer, praising Gwynn's plans and denouncing the Scotch conqueror. Gwynn had "coached" the learned Doctor in a very unsatisfactory way. In his early days the giant of Bolt Court had been accustomed to get up subjects rapidly, but the science of architecture was not so easily digested. The Doctor contended "that the first excellence of a bridge built for commerce over a large river is strength." So far so good; but he then went on to try and show that the pointed arch is necessarily weak, and here he himself broke down. He allowed that there was an elliptical bridge at Florence, but he said carts were not allowed to go over it, which proved its fragility. He also condemned a proposed cast-iron parapet, in imitation of one at Rome, as too poor and trifling for a great design. He allowed that a certain arch of Perault's was elliptical, but then he contended that it had to be held together by iron clamps. He allowed that Mr. Mylne had gained the prize at Rome, but the competitors, the arrogant despot of London clubs asserted, were only boys; and, moreover, architecture had sunk so low at Rome, that even the Pantheon had been deformed by petty decorations. In his third letter the Doctor grew more scientific, and even more confused. He was very angry with Mr. Mylne's friends for asserting that though a semi-ellipse might be weaker than a semicircle, it had quite strength enough to support a bridge. "I again venture to declare," he wrote—"I again venture to declare, in defiance of all this contemptuous superiority" (how arrogant men hate other people's arrogance!), "that a straight line will bear no weight. Not even the science of Vasari will make that form strong which the laws of nature have condemned to weakness. By the position that a straight line will bear nothing is meant that it receives no strength from straightness; for that many bodies laid in straight lines will support weight by the cohesion of their parts, every one has found who has seen dishes on a shelf, or a thief upon the gallows. It is not denied that stones may be so crushed together by enormous pressure on each side, that a heavy mass may be safely laid upon them; but the strength must be derived merely from the lateral resistance, and the line soloaded will be itself part of the load. The semi-elliptical arch has one recommendation yet unexamined. We are told that it is difficult of execution."
In the face of this noisy newspaper thunder, Mylne went on, and produced one of the most beautiful bridges in England for £152,640 3s. 10d., actually £163 less than the original estimate—an admirable example for all architects, present and to come. The bridge, which had eight arches, and was 995 yards from wharf to wharf, was erected in ten years and three quarters. Mylne received £500 a year and ten per cent. on the expenditure. His claims, however, were disputed, and not allowed by the grateful City till 1776. The bridge-tolls were bought by Government in 1785, and the passage then became free. It was afterwards lowered, and the open parapet, condemned by Johnson, removed. It was supposed that Mylne's mode of centreing was a secret, but in contempt of all quackery he deposited exact models of his system in the British Museum. He was afterwards made surveyor of St. Paul's Cathedral, and in 1811 was interred near the tomb of Wren. He was a despot amongst his workmen, and ruled them with a rod of iron. However, the foundations of this bridge were never safely built, and latterly the piers began visibly to subside. The semi-circular arches would have been far stronger.
The foundation-stone of Blackfriars Bridge was laid by Sir Thomas Chitty, Lord Mayor, on the 31st of October, 1760. Horace Walpole, always Whiggish, describing the event, says:—"The Lord Mayor laid the first stone of the new bridge yesterday. There is an inscription on it in honour of Mr. Pitt, which has a very Roman air, though very unclassically expressed. They talk of the contagion of his public spirit; I believe they had not got rid of their panic about mad dogs." Several gold, silver, and copper coins of the reign of George II. (just dead) were placed under the stone, with a silver medal presented to Mr. Mylne by the Academy of St. Luke's, and upon two plates of tin—Bonnel Thornton said they should have been lead—was engraved a very shaky Latin inscription, thus rendered into English:—
On the last day of October, in the year 1760,And in the beginning of the most auspicious reign ofGeorgethe Third,SirThomas Chitty, Knight, Lord Mayor,laid the first stone of this Bridge,undertaken by the Common Council of London(amidst the rage of an extensive war)for the public accommodationand ornament of the City;Robert Mylnebeing the architect.And that there might remain to posteritya monument of this city's affection to the manwho, by the strength of his genius,the steadiness of his mind,and a certain kind of happy contagion of hisProbity and Spirit(under the Divine favourand fortunate auspices ofGeorgethe Second)recovered, augmented, and securedthe British Empirein Asia, Africa, and America,and restored the ancient reputationand influence of his countryamongst the nations of Europe;the citizens of London have unanimously voted thisBridge to be inscribed with the name ofWilliam Pitt.
On this pretentious and unlucky inscription, that reckless wit, Bonnel Thornton, instantly wrote a squib, under the obvious pseudonym of the "Rev. Busby Birch." In these critical and political remarks (which he entitled "City Latin") the gay scoffer professed in his preface to prove "almost every word and every letter to be erroneous and contrary to the practice of both ancients and moderns in this kind of writing," and appended a plan or pattern for a new inscription. The clever little lampoon soon ran to three editions. The ordinary of Newgate, my lord's chaplain, or the masters of Merchant Taylors', Paul's, or Charterhouse schools, who produced the wonderful pontine inscription, must have winced under the blows of this jester's bladderful of peas. Thornton laughed most at the awkward phrase implying that Mr. Pitt had caught the happy contagion of his own probity and spirit. He said that "Gulielmi Pitt" should have been "Gulielmi Fossæ." Lastly, he proposed, for a more curt and suitable inscription, the simple words—
"Guil. Fossæ,Patri Patriæ D.D.D. (i.e., Datur, Dicatur, Dedicatur)."
Party feeling, as usual at those times, was rife. Mylne was a friend of Paterson, the City solicitor, an apt scribbler and a friend of Lord Bute, who no doubt favoured his young countryman. For, being a Scotchman, Johnson no doubt took pleasure in opposing him, and for the same reason Churchill, in his bitter poem on the Cock Lane ghost, after ridiculing Johnson's credulity, goes out of his way to sneer at Mylne:—
"What of that bridge which, void of sense,But well supplied with impudence,Englishmen, knowing not the Guild,Thought they might have the claim to build;Till Paterson, as white as milk,As smooth as oil, as soft as silk,In solemn manner had decreedThat, on the other side the Tweed,Art, born and bred and fully grown,Was with one Mylne, a man unknown?But grace, preferment, and renownDeserving, just arrived in town;One Mylne, an artist, perfect quite,Both in his own and country's right,As fit to make a bridge as he,With glorious Patavinity,To build inscriptions, worthy foundTo lie for ever underground."
In 1766 it was opened for foot passengers, the completed portion being connected with the shore by a temporary wooden structure; two years later it was made passable for horses, and in 1769 it was fully opened. An unpopular toll of one halfpenny on week-days for every person, and of one penny on Sundays, was exacted. The result of this was that while the Gordon Riots were raging, in 1780, the too zealous Protestants, forgetting for a time the poor tormented Papists, attacked and burned down the toll-gates, stole the money, and destroyed all the account-books. Several rascals' lives were lost, and one rioter, being struck with a bullet, ran howling for thirty or forty yards, and then dropped down dead. Nevertheless, the iniquitous toll continued until 1785, when it was redeemed by Government.
The bridge, according to the order of Common Council, was first named Pitt Bridge, and the adjacent streets (in honour of the great earl) Chatham Place, William Street, and Earl Street. But the first name of the bridge soon dropped off, and the monastic locality asserted its prior right. This is the more remarkable (as Mr. Timbs judiciously observes), because with another Thames bridge the reverse change took place. Waterloo Bridge was first called Strand Bridge, but it was soon dedicated by the people to the memory of the most famous of British victories.
The £152,640 that the bridge cost does not include the £5,830 spent in altering and filling up the Fleet Ditch, or the £2,167 the cost of the temporary wooden bridge. The piers, of bad Portland stone, were decorated by some columns of unequal sizes, and the line of parapet was low and curved. The approaches to the bridge were also designed by Mylne, who built himself a house at the corner of Little Bridge Street. The walls of the rooms were adorned with classical medallions, and on the exterior was the date (1780), with Mylne's crest, and the initials "R.M." Dr. Johnson became a friend of Mylne's, and dined with him at this residence at least on one occasion. The house afterwards became the "York Hotel," and, according to Mr. Timbs, was taken down in 1863.
The Bridge repairs (between 1833 and 1840), byWalker and Burgess, engineers, at an expense of £74,000, produced a loss to the contractors; and the removal of the cornice and balustrade spoiled the bridge, from whence old Richard Wilson, the landscape-painter, used to come and admire the grand view of St. Paul's. The bridge seemed to be as unlucky as if it had incurred Dr. Johnson's curse. In 1843 the Chamberlain reported to the Common Council that the sum of £100,960 had been already expended in repairing Mylne's faulty work, besides the £800 spent in procuring a local Act (4 William IV.). According to a subsequent report, £10,200 had been spent in six years in repairing one arch alone. From 1851 to 1859 the expenditure had been at the rate of £600 a year. Boswell, indeed, with all his zealous partiality for the Scotch architect, had allowed that the best Portland stone belonged to Government quarries, and from this Parliamentary interest had debarred Mylne.
The tardy Common Council was at last forced, in common decency, to build a new bridge. The architect began by building a temporary structure of great strength. It consisted of two storeys—the lower for carriages, the upper for pedestrians—and stretching 990 feet from wharf to wharf. The lower piles were driven ten feet into the bed of the river, and braced with horizontal and diagonal bracings. The demolition began with vigour in 1864. In four months only, the navigators' brawny arms had removed twenty thousand tons of earth, stone, and rubble above the turning of the arches, and the pulling down those enemies of Dr. Johnson commenced by the removal of the keystone of the second arch on the Surrey side. The masonry of the arches proved to be rather thinner than it appeared to be, and was stuffed with river ballast, mixed with bones and small old-fashioned pipes. The bridge had taken nearly ten years to build; it was entirely demolished in less than a year, and rebuilt in two. In some cases the work of removal and re-construction went on harmoniously and simultaneously side by side. Ingenious steam cranes travelled upon rails laid on the upper scaffold beams, and lifted the blocks of stone with playful ease and speed. In December, 1864, the men worked in the evenings, by the aid of naphtha lamps.
According to a report printed in theTimes, Blackfriars Bridge had suffered from the removal of London Bridge, which served as a mill-dam, to restrain the speed and scour of the river.
Twelve designs had been sent in at the competition, and, singularly enough, among the competitors was a Mr. Mylne, grandson of Johnson's foe. The design of Mr. Page was first selected, as the handsomest and cheapest. It consisted of only three arches. Ultimately Mr. Joseph Cubitt won the prize. Cubitt's bridge has five arches, the centre one eighty-nine feet span; the style, Venetian Gothic; the cost, £265,000. The piers are grey, the columns red, granite; the bases and capitals are of carved Portland stone; the bases, balustrades, and roads of somewhat over-ornamented iron.
TheQuarterly Review, of April, 1872, contains the following bitter criticisms of the new double bridge:—"With Blackfriars Bridge," says the writer, "we find the public thoroughly well pleased, though the design is really a wonder of depravity. Polished granite columns of amazing thickness, with carved capitals of stupendous weight, all made to give shop-room for an apple-woman, or a convenient platform for a suicide. The parapet is a fiddle-faddle of pretty cast-iron arcading, out of scale with the columns, incongruous with the capitals, and quite unsuited for a work that should be simply grand in its usefulness; and at each corner of the bridge is a huge block of masonry,àproposof nothing, a well-known evidence of desperate imbecility."
Bridge Street is too new for many traditions. Its chief hero is that active-minded and somewhat shallow speculator, Sir Richard Phillips, the bookseller and projector. An interesting memoir by Mr. Timbs, his intimate friend, furnishes us with many curious facts, and shows how the publisher of Bridge Street impinged on many of the most illustrious of his contemporaries, and how in a way he pushed forward the good work which afterwards owed so much to Mr. Charles Knight. Phillips, born in London in 1767, was educated in Soho Square, and afterwards at Chiswick, where he remembered often seeing Hogarth's widow and Dr. Griffith, of theMonthly Review(Goldsmith's tyrant), attending church. He was brought up to be a brewer, but in 1788 settled as a schoolmaster, first at Chester and afterwards at Leicester. At Leicester he opened a bookseller's shop, started a newspaper (theLeicester Herald), and established a philosophical society. Obnoxious as a Radical, he was at last entrapped for selling Tom Paine's "Rights of Man," and was sent to gaol for eighteen months, where he was visited by Lord Moira, the Duke of Norfolk, and other advanced men of the day. His house being burned down, he removed to London, and projected a Sunday newspaper, but eventually Mr. Bell stole the idea and started theMessenger. In 1795 this restless and energetic man commenced theMonthly Magazine. Before this he had already been a hosier, a tutor, and a speculator in canals. The politico-literary magazinewas advertised by circulars sent to eminent men of the opposition in commercial parcels, to save the enormous postage of those unregenerate days. Dr. Aiken, the literary editor, afterwards started a rival magazine, called theAthenæum. TheGentleman's Magazinenever rose to a circulation above 10,000, which soon sank to 3,000. Phillips's magazine sold about 3,750. With all these multifarious pursuits, Phillips was an antiquary—purchasing Wolsey's skull for a shilling, a portion of his stone coffin, that had been turned into a horse-trough at the "White Horse" inn, Leicester; and Rufus's stirrup, from a descendant of the charcoal-burner who drove the body of the slain king to Winchester.
As a pushing publisher Phillips soon distinguished himself, for the Liberals came to him, and he had quite enough sense to discover if a book was good. He produced many capital volumes of Ana, on the French system, and memoirs of Foote, Monk, Lewes, Wilkes, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. He published Holcroft's "Travels," Godwin's best novels, and Miss Owenson's (Lady Morgan's) first work, "The Novice of St. Dominick." In 1807, when he removed to New Bridge Street, he served the office of sheriff; was knighted on presenting an address, and effected many reforms in the prisons and lock-up houses. In his useful "Letter to the Livery of London" he computes the number of writs then annually issued at 24,000; the sheriffs' expenses at £2,000. He also did his best to repress the cruelties of the mob to poor wretches in the pillory. He was a steady friend of Alderman Waithman, and was with him in the carriage at the funeral of Queen Caroline, in 1821, when a bullet from a soldier's carbine passed through the carriage window near Hyde Park. In 1809 Phillips had some reverses, and breaking up his publishing-office in Bridge Street, devoted himself to the profitable reform of school-books, publishing them under the names of Goldsmith, Mavor, and Blair.
This active-minded man was the first to assert that Dr. Wilmot wrote "Junius," and to start the celebrated scandal about George III. and the young Quakeress, Hannah Lightfoot, daughter of a linendraper, at the corner of Market Street, St. James's. She afterwards, it is said, married a grocer, named Axford, on Ludgate Hill, was then carried off by the prince, and bore him three sons, who in time became generals. The story is perhaps traceable to Dr. Wilmot, whose daughter married the Duke of Cumberland. Phillips found time to attack the Newtonian theory of gravitation, to advocate a memorial to Shakespeare, to compile a book containing a million of facts, to write onDivine philosophy, and to suggest (as he asserted) to Mr. Brougham, in 1825, the first idea of the Society for Useful Knowledge. Almost ruined by the failures during the panic in 1826, he retired to Brighton, and there pushed forward his books and his interrogative system of education. Sir Richard's greatest mistakes, he used to say, had been the rejection of Byron's early poems, of "Waverley," of Bloomfield's "Farmer's Boy," and O'Meara's "Napoleon in Exile." He always stoutly maintained his claim to the suggestion of the "Percy Anecdotes." Phillips died in 1840. Superficial as he was, and commercial as were his literary aims, we nevertheless cannot refuse him the praise awarded in his epitaph:—"He advocated civil liberty, general benevolence, ascendancy of justice, and the improvement of the human race."
The old monastic ground of the Black Friars seems to have been beloved by painters, for, as we have seen, Vandyke lived luxuriously here, and was frequently visited by Charles I. and his Court. Cornelius Jansen, the great portrait-painter of James's Court, arranged his black draperies and ground his fine carnations in the same locality; and at the same time Isaac Oliver, the exquisite Court miniature-painter, dwelt in the same place. It was to him Lady Ayres, to the rage of her jealous husband, came for a portrait of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, an imprudence that very nearly led to the assassination of the poet-lord, who believed himself so specially favoured of Heaven.
The king's printing-office for proclamations, &c., used to be in Printing-house Square, but was removed in 1770; and we must not forget that where a Norman fortress once rose to oppress the weak, to guard the spoils of robbers, and to protect the oppressor, theTimesprinting-office now stands, to diffuse its ceaseless floods of knowledge, to spread its resistless ægis over the poor and the oppressed, and ever to use its vast power to extend liberty and crush injustice, whatever shape the Proteus assumes, whether it sits upon a throne or lurks in a swindler's office.
PRINTING HOUSE SQUARE AND THE "TIMES" OFFICE
This great paper was started in the year 1785, by Mr. John Walter, under the name of theDaily Universal Register. It was first called theTimes, January 1, 1788, when the following prospectus appeared:—
"TheUniversal Registerhas been a name as injurious to the logographic newspaper as Tristram was to Mr. Shandy's son; but old Shandy forgot he might have rectified by confirmation the mistake of the parson at baptism, and with the touch of a bishop changed Tristram into Trismegistus. TheUniversal Register, from the day of its firstappearance to the day of its confirmation, had, like Tristram, suffered from innumerable casualties, both laughable and serious, arising from its name, which in its introduction was immediately curtailed of its fair proportions by all who called for it, the word 'Universal' being universally omitted, and the word 'Register' only retained. 'Boy, bring me theRegister.' The waiter answers, 'Sir, we have no library; but you may see it in the "New Exchange" coffee-house.' 'Then I will see it there,' answers the disappointed politician; and he goes to the 'New Exchange' coffee-house, and calls for theRegister, upon which the waiter tells him he cannot have it, as he is not a subscriber, or presentshim with theCourt and City Register, theOld Annual Register, or theNew Annual Register, or, if the house be within the purlieus of Covent Garden or the hundreds of Drury, slips into the politician's handHarris's Register of Ladies.
"For these and other reasons the printer of theUniversal Registerhas added to its original name that of theTimes, which, being a monosyllable, bids defiance to the corruptions and mutilations of the language.
BLACKFRIARS OLD BRIDGE DURING ITS CONSTRUCTION, SHOWING THE TEMPORARY FOOT BRIDGE, FROM A PRINT OF 1775
"TheTimes!what a monstrous name! Granted—for the Times is a many-headed monster, that speaks with a hundred tongues, and displays a thousand characters; and in the course of itstransitions in life, assumes innumerable shapes and humours.
"The critical reader will observe, we personify our new name; but as we give it no distinction of sex, and though it will be active in its vocation, yet we apply to it the neuter gender.
"TheTimes, being formed of and possessing qualities of opposite and heterogeneous natures, cannot be classed either in the animal or vegetable genus, but, like the polypus, is doubtful; and in the discussion, description, and illustration, will employ the pens of the most celebratedliterati.
"The heads of theTimes, as has already been said, are many; these will, however, not always appear at the same time, but casually, as public or private affairs may call them forth.
"The principal or leading heads are—the literary, political, commercial, philosophical, critical, theatrical, fashionable, humorous, witty, &c., each of which is supplied with a competent share of intellect for the pursuit of their several functions, an endowment which is not in all cases to be found, even in the heads of the State, the heads of the Church, the heads of the law, the heads of the navy, the heads of the army, and, though last not least, the great heads of the universities.
"The political head of theTimes—like that of Janus, the Roman deity—is double-faced. With one countenance it will smile continually on the friends of Old England, and with the other will frown incessantly on her enemies.
"The alteration we have made in our paper is not without precedents. TheWorldhas parted with half itscaput mortuumand a moiety of its brains; theHeraldhas cutoff one half of its head and has lost its original humour; thePost, it is true, retains its whole head and its old features; and as to the other public prints, they appear as having neither heads nor tails.
"On the Parliamentary head, every communication that ability and industry can produce may be expected. To this great national object theTimeswill be most sedulously attentive, most accurately correct, and strictly impartial in its reports."
Both theTimesand its predecessor were printed "logographically," Mr. Walter having obtained a patent for his peculiar system. The plan consisted in abridging the compositors' labour by casting all the more frequently recurring words in metal. It was, in fact, a system of partial stereotyping. The English language, said the sanguine inventor, contained above 90,000 words. This number Walter had reduced to about 5,000. The projector was assailed by the wits, who declared that his orders to the typefounders ran,—"Send me ahundredweight, in separate pounds, ofheat,cold,wet,dry,murder,fire,dreadful robbery,atrocious outrage,fearful calamity, andalarming explosion." But nothing could daunt or stop Walter. One eccentricity of theDaily Registerwas that on red-letter days the title was printed in red ink, and the character of the day stated under the date-line. For instance, on Friday, August 11, 1786, there is a red heading, and underneath the words—
"Princess of Brunswick born.Holiday at the Bank, Excise offices, and the Exchequer."
The first number of theTimesis not so large as theMorning HeraldorMorning Chronicleof the same date, but larger than theLondon Chronicle, and of the same size as thePublic Advertiser. (Knight Hunt.)
The first Walter lived in rough times, and suffered from the political storms that then prevailed. He was several times imprisoned for articles against great people, and it has been asserted that he stood in the pillory in 1790 for a libel against the Duke of York. This is not, however, true; but it is a fact that he was sentenced to such a punishment, and remained sixteen months in Newgate, till released at the intercession of the Prince of Wales. The first Walter died in 1812. The second Mr. Walter, who came to the helm in 1803, was the real founder of the future greatness of theTimes; and he, too, had his rubs. In 1804 he offended the Government by denouncing the foolish Catamaran expedition. For this the Government meanly deprived his family of the printing for the Customs, and also withdrew their advertisements. During the war of 1805 the Government stopped all the foreign papers sent to theTimes. Walter, stopped by no obstacle, at once contrived other means to secure early news, and had the triumph of announcing the capitulation of Flushing forty-eight hours before the intelligence had arrived through any other channel.
There were no reviews of books in theTimestill long after it was started, but it paid great attention to the drama from its commencement. There were no leading articles for several years, yet in the very first year theTimesdisplays threefold as many advertisements as its contemporaries. For many years Mr. Walter, with his usual sagacity and energy, endeavoured to mature some plan for printing theTimesby steam. As early as 1804 a compositor named Martyn had invented a machine for the purpose of superseding the hand-press, which took hours struggling over the three or four thousand copies of theTimes. The pressmen threatened destruction to the new machine, and ithad to be smuggled piecemeal into the premises, while Martyn sheltered himself under various disguises to escape the vengeance of the workmen. On the eve of success, however, Walter's father lost courage, stopped the supplies, and the project was for the time abandoned. In 1814 Walter, however, returned to the charge. Kœnig and Barnes put their machinery in premises adjoining theTimesoffice, to avoid the violence of the pressmen. At one time the two inventors are said to have abandoned their machinery in despair, but a clerical friend of Walter examined the difficulty and removed it. The night came at last when the great experiment was to be made. The unconscious pressmen were kept waiting in the next office for news from the Continent. At six o'clock in the morning Mr. Walter entered the press-room, with a wet paper in his hand, and astonished the men by telling them that theTimeshad just been printed by steam. If they attempted violence, he said, there was a force ready to suppress it; but if they were peaceable their wages should be continued until employment was found for them. He could now print 1,100 sheets an hour. By-and-by Kœnig's machine proved too complicated, and Messrs. Applegarth and Cowper invented a cylindrical one, that printed 8,000 an hour. Then came Hoe's process, which is now said to print at the rate of from 18,000 to 22,000 copies an hour (Grant). The various improvements in steam-printing have altogether cost theTimes, according to general report, not less than £80,000.
About 1813 Dr. Stoddart, the brother-in-law of Hazlitt (afterwards Sir John Stoddart, a judge in Malta), edited theTimeswith ability, till his almost insane hatred of Bonaparte, "the Corsican fiend," as he called him, led to his secession in 1815 or 1816. Stoddart was the "Doctor Slop" whom Tom Moore derided in his gay little Whig lampoons. The next editor was Thomas Barnes, a better scholar and a far abler man. He had been a contemporary of Lamb at Christ's Hospital, and a rival of Blomfield, afterwards Bishop of London. While a student in the Temple he wrote theTimesa series of political letters in the manner of "Junius," and was at once placed as a reporter in the gallery of the House. Under his editorship Walter secured some of his ablest contributors, including that Captain Stirling, "The Thunderer," whom Carlyle has sketched so happily. Stirling was an Irishman, who had fought with the Royal troops at Vinegar Hill, then joined the line, and afterwards turned gentleman farmer in the Isle of Bute. He began writing for theTimesabout 1815, and, it is said, eventually received £2,000 a year as a writer of dashing and effective leaders.Lord Brougham also, it is said, wrote occasional articles. Tom Moore was even offered £100 a month if he would contribute, and Southey declined an offer of £2,000 a year for editing theTimes. Macaulay in his day wrote many brilliant squibs in theTimes; amongst them one containing the line:
"Ye diners out, from whom we guard our spoons,"
and another on the subject of Wat Banks's candidateship for Cambridge. Barnes died in 1841. Horace Twiss, the biographer of Lord Eldon and nephew of Mrs. Siddons, also helped theTimesforward by his admirable Parliamentary summaries, the first theTimeshad attempted. This able man died suddenly in 1848, while speaking at a meeting of the Rock Assurance Society at Radley's Hotel, Bridge Street.
One of the longest wars theTimesever carried on was that against Alderman Harmer. It was Harmer's turn, in due order of rotation, to become Lord Mayor. A strong feeling had arisen against Harmer because, as the avowed proprietor of theWeekly Dispatch, he inserted certain letters of the late Mr. Williams ("Publicola"), which were said to have had the effect of preventing Mr. Walter's return for Southwark (see page 59). TheTimesupon this wrote twelve powerful leaders against Harmer, which at once decided the question. This was a great assertion of power, and raised theTimesin the estimation of all England. For these twelve articles, originally intended for letters, the writer (says Mr. Grant) received £200. But in 1841 the extraordinary social influence of this giant paper was even still more shown. Mr. O'Reilly, their Paris correspondent, obtained a clue to a vast scheme of fraud concocting in Paris by a gang of fourteen accomplished swindlers, who had already netted £10,700 of the million for which they had planned. At the risk of assassination, O'Reilly exposed the scheme in theTimes, dating theexposéBrussels, in order to throw the swindlers on the wrong scent.
At a public meeting of merchants, bankers, and others held in the Egyptian Hall, Mansion House, October 1, 1841, the Lord Mayor (Thomas Johnson) in the chair, it was unanimously resolved to thank the proprietors of theTimesfor the services they had rendered in having exposed the most remarkable and extensively fraudulent conspiracy (the famous "Bogle" swindle) ever brought to light in the mercantile world, and to record in some substantial manner the sense of obligation conferred by the proprietors of theTimeson the commercial world.
The proprietors of theTimesdeclining to receive the £2,625 subscribed by the London merchantsto recompense them for doing their duty, it was resolved, in 1842, to set apart the funds for the endowment of two scholarships, one at Christ's Hospital, and one at the City of London School. In both schools a commemorative tablet was put up, as well as one at the Royal Exchange and theTimesprinting-office.
At various periods theTimeshas had to endure violent attacks in the House of Commons, and many strenuous efforts to restrain its vast powers. In 1819 John Payne Collier, one of their Parliamentary reporters, and better known as one of the greatest of Shakesperian critics, was committed into the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms for a report in which he had attacked Canning. TheTimes, however, had some powerful friends in the House; and in 1821 we find Mr. Hume complaining that the Government advertisements were systematically withheld from theTimes. In 1831 Sir R.H. Inglis complained that theTimeshad been guilty of a breach of privilege, in asserting that there were borough nominees and lackeys in the House. Sir Charles Wetherell, that titled, incomparable old Tory, joined in the attack, which Burdett chivalrously cantered forward to repel. Sir Henry Hardinge wanted the paper prosecuted, but Lord John Russell, Orator Hunt, and O'Connell, however, moved the previous question, and the great debate on the Reform Bill then proceeded. The same year the House of Lords flew at the great paper. The Earl of Limerick had been called "an absentee, and a thing with human pretensions." The Marquis of Londonderry joined in the attack. The next day Mr. Lawson, printer of theTimes, was examined and worried by the House; and Lord Wynford moved that Mr. Lawson, as printer of a scandalous libel, should be fined £100, and committed to Newgate till the fine be paid. The next day Mr. Lawson handed in an apology, but Lord Brougham generously rose and denied the power of the House to imprison and fine without a trial by jury. The Tory lords spoke angrily; the Earl of Limerick called the press a tyrant that ruled all things, and crushed everything under its feet; and the Marquis of Londonderry complained of the coarse and virulent libels against Queen Adelaide, for her supposed opposition to Reform.
In 1833 O'Connell attributed dishonest motives to the London reporter who had suppressed his speeches, and the reporters in theTimesexpressed their resolution not to report any more of his speeches unless he retracted. O'Connell then moved in the House that the printer of theTimesbe summoned to the bar for printing their resolution, but his motion was rejected. In 1838 Mr. Lawsonwas fined £200 for accusing Sir John Conroy, treasurer of the household of the Duchess of Kent, of peculation. In 1840 an angry member brought a breach of privilege motion against theTimes, and advised every one who was attacked in that paper to horsewhip the editor.
In January, 1829, theTimescame out with a double sheet, consisting of eight pages, or forty-eight columns. In 1830 it paid £70,000 advertisement duty. In 1800 its sale had been below that of theMorning Chronicle,Post,Herald, andAdvertiser.
TheTimes, according to Mr. Grant, in one day of 1870, received no less than £1,500 for advertisements. On June 22, 1862, it produced a paper containing no less than twenty-four pages, or 144 columns. In 1854 theTimeshad a circulation of 51,000 copies; in 1860, 60,000. For special numbers its sale is enormous. The biography of Prince Albert sold 90,000 copies; the marriage of the Prince of Wales, 110,000 copies. The income of theTimesfrom advertisements alone has been calculated at £260,000. A writer in a Philadelphia paper of 1867 estimates the paper consumed weekly by theTimesat seventy tons; the ink at two tons. There are employed in the office ten stereotypers, sixteen firemen and engineers, ninety machine-men, six men who prepare the paper for printing, and seven to transfer the papers to the news-agents. The new Walter press prints 22,000 to 24,000 impressions an hour, or 12,000 perfect sheets printed on both sides. It prints from a roll of paper three-quarters of a mile long, and cuts the sheets and piles them without help. It is a self-feeder, and requires only a man and two boys to guide its operations. A copy of theTimeshas been known to contain 4,000 advertisements; and for every daily copy it is computed that the compositors mass together not less than 2,500,000 separate types.
The number of persons engaged in daily working for theTimesis put at nearly 350.
In the annals of this paper we must not forget the energy that, in 1834, established a system of home expresses, that enabled them to give the earliest intelligence before any other paper; and at an expense of £200 brought a report of Lord Durham's speech at Glasgow to London at the then unprecedented rate of fifteen miles an hour; nor should we forget their noble disinterestedness during the railway mania of 1845, when, although they were receiving more than £3,000 a week for railway advertisements, they warned the country unceasingly of the misery and ruin that must inevitably follow. TheTimesproprietors are known to pay the highest sums for articles, and to beuniformly generous in pensioning men who have spent their lives in its service.
The late Mr. Walter, even when M.P. for Berkshire and Nottingham, never forgot Printing-house Square when the debate, however late, had closed. One afternoon, says Mr. Grant, he came to the office and found the compositors gone to dinner. Just at that moment a parcel, marked "immediate and important," arrived. It was news of vast importance. He at once slipped off his coat, and set up the news with his own hands; a pressman was at his post, and by the time the men returned a second edition was actually printed and published. But his foresight and energy was most conspicuously shown in 1845, when the jealousy of the French Government had thrown obstacles in the way of theTimes'couriers, who brought their Indian despatches from Marseilles. What were seas and deserts to Walter? He at once took counsel with Lieutenant Waghorn, who had opened up the overland route to India, and proposed to try a new route by Trieste. The result was that Waghorn reached London two days before the regular mail—the usual mail aided by the French Government. TheMorning Heraldwas at first forty-eight hours before theTimes, but after that theTimesgot a fortnight ahead; and although the Trieste route was abandoned, theTimes, eventually, was left alone as a troublesome and invincible adversary.
Apothecaries' Hall, the grave stone and brick building, in Water Lane, Blackfriars, was erected in 1670 (Charles II.), as the dispensary and hall of the Company of Apothecaries, incorporated by a charter of James I., at the suit of Gideon Delaune, the king's own apothecary. Drugs in the Middle Ages were sold by grocers and pepperers, or by the doctors themselves, who, early in James's reign, formed one company with the apothecaries; but the ill-assorted union lasted only eleven years, for the apothecaries were then fast becoming doctors themselves.
Garth, in his "Dispensary," describes, in the Hogarthian manner, the topographical position of Apothecaries' Hall:—
"Nigh where Fleet Ditch descends in sable streams,To wash the sooty Naiads in the Thames,There stands a structure on a rising hill,Where tyros take their freedom out to kill."
Gradually the apothecaries, refusing to be merely "the doctors' tools," began to encroach more and more on the doctors' province, and to prescribe for and even cure the poor. In 1687 (James II.) open war broke out. First Dryden, then Pope, fought on the side of the doctors against the humbler men, whom they were taught to consider as mere greedymechanics and empirics. Dryden first let fly his mighty shaft:—
"The apothecary tribe is wholly blind;From files a random recipe they take,And many deaths from one prescription make.Garth, generous as his muse, prescribes and gives;The shopman sells, and by destruction lives."
Pope followed with a smaller but keener arrow:—
"So modern 'pothecaries, taught the artBy doctors' bills to play the doctor's part,Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools."
The origin of the memorable affray between the College of Physicians and the Company of Apothecaries is admirably told by Mr. Jeaffreson, in his "Book of Doctors." The younger physicians, impatient at beholding the increasing prosperity and influence of the apothecaries, and the older ones indignant at seeing a class of men they had despised creeping into their quarters, and craftily laying hold of a portion of their monopoly, concocted a scheme to reinstate themselves in public favour. Without a doubt, many of the physicians who countenanced this scheme gave it their support from purely charitable motives; but it cannot be questioned that, as a body, the dispensarians were only actuated in their humanitarian exertions by a desire to lower the apothecaries and raise themselves in the eyes of the world. In 1687 the physicians, at a college meeting, voted "that all members of the college, whether fellows, candidates, or licentiates, should give their advice gratis to all their sick neighbouring poor, when desired, within the city of London, or seven miles round." The poor folk carried their prescriptions to the apothecaries, to learn that the trade charge for dispensing them was beyond their means. The physicians asserted that the demands of the drug-vendors were extortionate, and were not reduced to meet the finances of the applicants, to the end that the undertakings of benevolence might prove abortive. This was, of course, absurd. The apothecaries knew their own interests better than to oppose a system which at least rendered drug-consuming fashionable with the lower orders. Perhaps they regarded the poor as their peculiar property as a field of practice, and felt insulted at having the same humble people for whom they had pompously prescribed, and put up boluses at twopence apiece, now entering their shops with papers dictating what the twopenny bolus was to be composed of. But the charge preferred against them was groundless. Indeed, a numerous body of the apothecaries expressly offered to sell medicines "to the poor within their respective parishesat such rates as the committee of physicians should think reasonable."