ST. BRIDE'S CHURCH, FLEET STREET, AFTER THE FIRE, 1824
TheDaily Telegraphoffice is No. 136 (north). Mr. Ingram, of theIllustrated London News, originated a paper called theTelegraph, which lasted only seven or eight weeks. The presentDailyTelegraphwas started on June 29, 1855, by the late Colonel Sleigh. It was a single sheet, and the price twopence. Colonel Sleigh failing to make it a success, Mr. Levy, the present chief proprietor of the paper, took the copyright as part security for money owed him by Colonel Sleigh. In Mr. Levy's hands the paper, reduced to a penny, became a great success. "It was," says Mr. Grant, in his "History of the Newspaper Press," "the first of the penny papers, while a single sheet, and as such was regarded as a newspaper marvel; but when it came out—which it did soon after theStandard—as a double sheet the size of theTimes, published at fourpence, for a penny, it created quite a sensation. Here was a penny paper, containingnot only the same amount of telegraphic and general information as the other high-priced papers—their price being then fourpence—but also evidently written, in its leading article department, with an ability which could only be surpassed by that of the leading articles of theTimesitself. This was indeed a new era in the morning journalism of the metropolis." When Mr. Levy bought theTelegraph, the sum which he received for advertisements in the first number was exactly 7s. 6d. The daily receipts for advertisements are now said to exceed £500. Mr. Grant says that the remission of the tax on paper brought £12,000 a year extra to theTelegraph. Ten pages for a penny is no uncommon thing with theTelegraphduring the Parliamentary session. The returns of sales given by theTelegraphfor the half-year ending 1870 show an average daily sale of 190,885; and though this was war time, a competent authority estimates the average daily sale at 175,000 copies. One of the printing-machines recently set up by the proprietors of theTelegraphthrows off upwards of 200 copies per minute, or 12,000 an hour.
WAITHMAN'S SHOP
The "Globe Tavern" (No. 134, north), though now only a memory, abounds with traditions of Goldsmith and his motley friends. The house, in 1649, was leased to one Henry Hottersall for forty-one years, at the yearly rent of £75, ten gallons of Canary sack, and £400 fine. Mr. John Forster gives a delightful sketch of Goldsmith's Wednesday evening club at the "Globe," in 1767. When not at Johnson's great club, Oliver beguiled his cares at a shilling rubber club at the "Devil Tavern," or at a humble gathering in the parlour of the "Bedford," Covent Garden. A hanger-on of the theatres, who frequented the "Globe," has left notes which Mr. Forster has admirably used, and which we now abridge without further apology. Grim old Macklin belonged to the club it is certain; and among the less obscure members was King, the comedian, the celebrated impersonator of Lord Ogleby. Hugh Kelly, another member, was a clever young Irishman, who had chambers near Goldsmith in the Temple. He had been a stay-maker's apprentice, who, turning law writer, and soon landing as a hack for the magazines, set up as a satirist for the stage, and eventually,through Garrick's patronage, succeeded in sentimental comedy. It was of him Johnson said, "Sir, I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read." Poor Kelly afterwards went to the Bar, and died of disappointment and over-work. A third member was Captain Thompson, a friend of Garrick's, who wrote some good sea songs and edited "Andrew Marvell;" but foremost among all the boon companions was a needy Irish doctor named Glover, who had appeared on the stage, and who was said to have restored to life a man who had been hung; this Glover, who was famous for his songs and imitations, once had the impudence, like Theodore Hook, to introduce Goldsmith, during a summer ramble in Hampstead, to a party where he was an entire stranger, and to pass himself off as a friend of the host. "Our Dr. Glover," says Goldsmith, "had a constant levee of his distressed countrymen, whose wants, as far as he was able, he always relieved." Gordon, the fattest man in the club, was renowned for his jovial song of "Nottingham Ale;" and on special occasions Goldsmith himself would sing his favourite nonsense about the little old woman who was tossed seventeen times higher than the moon. A fat pork-butcher at the "Globe" used to offend Goldsmith by constantly shouting out, "Come, Noll, here's my service to you, old boy." After the success ofThe Good-natured Man, this coarse familiarity was more than Goldsmith's vanity could bear, so one special night he addressed the butcher with grave reproof. The stolid man, taking no notice, replied briskly, "Thankee, Mister Noll." "Well, where is the advantage of your reproof?" asked Glover. "In truth," said Goldsmith, good-naturedly, "I give it up; I ought to have known before that there is no putting a pig in the right way." Sometimes rather cruel tricks were played on the credulous poet. One evening Goldsmith came in clamorous for his supper, and ordered chops. Directly the supper came in, the wags, by pre-agreement, began to sniff and swear. Some pushed the plate away; others declared the rascal who had dared set such chops before a gentleman should be made to swallow them himself. The waiter was savagely rung up, and forced to eat the supper, to which he consented with well-feigned reluctance, the poet calmly ordering a fresh supper and a dram for the poor waiter, "who otherwise might get sick from so nauseating a meal." Poor Goldy! kindly even at his most foolish moments. A sadder story still connects Goldsmith with the "Globe." Ned Purdon, a worn-out booksellers' hack and aprotégéof Goldsmith's, dropped down dead in Smithfield. Goldsmithwrote his epitaph as he came from his chambers in the Temple to the "Globe." The lines are:—
"Here lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed,Who long was a booksellers' hack;He led such a miserable life in this world,I don't think he'll wish to come back."
Goldsmith sat next Glover that night at the club, and Glover heard the poet repeat,sotto voce, with a mournful intonation, the words,—
"I don't think he'll wish to come back."
Oliver was musing over his own life, and Mr. Forster says touchingly, "It is not without a certain pathos to me, indeed, that he should have so repeated it."
Among other frequenters of the "Globe" were Boswell's friend Akerman, the keeper of Newgate, who always thought it prudent never to return home till daybreak; and William Woodfall, the celebrated Parliamentary reporter. In later times Brasbridge, the sporting silversmith of Fleet Street, was a frequenter of the club. He tells us that among his associates was a surgeon, who, living on the Surrey side of the Thames, had to take a boat every night (Blackfriar's Bridge not being then built). This nightly navigation cost him three or four shillings a time, yet, when the bridge came, he grumbled at having to pay a penny toll. Among other frequenters of the "Globe," Mr. Timbs enumerates "Archibald Hamilton, whose mind was 'fit for a lord chancellor;' Dunstall, the comedian; Carnan, the bookseller, who defeated the Stationers' Company in the almanack trial; and, later still, the eccentric Hugh Evelyn, who set up a claim upon the great Surrey estate of Sir Frederic Evelyn."
TheStandard(No. 129, north), "the largest daily paper," was originally an evening paper alone. In 1826 a deputation of the leading men opposed to Catholic Emancipation waited on Mr. Charles Baldwin, proprietor of theSt. James's Chronicle, and begged him to start an anti-Catholic evening paper, but Mr. Baldwin refused unless a preliminary sum of £15,000 was lodged at the banker's. A year later this sum was deposited, and in 1827 theEvening Standard, edited by Dr. Giffard, ex-editor of theSt. James's Chronicle, appeared. Mr. Alaric Watts, the poet, was succeeded as sub-editor of theStandardby the celebrated Dr. Maginn. The daily circulation soon rose from 700 or 800 copies to 3,000 and over. The profits Mr. Grant calculates at £7,000 to £8,000 a year. On the bankruptcy of Mr. Charles Baldwin, Mr. James Johnson bought theMorning HeraldandStandard, plant and all, for £16,500. Theproprietor reduced theStandardfrom fourpence to twopence, and made it a morning as well as an evening paper. In 1858 he reduced it to a penny only. The result was a great success. The annual income of theStandardis now, Mr. Grant says, "much exceeding yearly the annual incomes of most of the ducal dignities of the land." The legend of the Duke of Newcastle presenting Dr. Giffard, in 1827, with £1,200 for a violent article against Roman Catholic claims, has been denied by Dr. Giffard's son in theTimes. The Duke of Wellington once wrote to Dr. Giffard to dictate the line theStandardandMorning Heraldwere to adopt on a certain question during the agitation on the Maynooth Bill; and Dr. Giffard withdrew his opposition to please Sir Robert Peel—a concession which injured theStandard. Yet in the following year, when Sir Robert Peel brought in his Bill for the abolition of the corn laws, he did not even pay Dr. Giffard the compliment of apprising him of his intention. Such is official gratitude when a tool is done with.
Near Shoe Lane lived one of Caxton's disciples. Wynkyn de Worde, who is supposed to have been one of Caxton's assistants or workmen, was a native of Lorraine. He carried on a prosperous career, says Dibdin, from 1502 to 1534, at the sign of the "Sun," in the parish of St. Bride's, Fleet Street. In upwards of four hundred works published by this industrious man he displayed unprecedented skill, elegance, and care, and his Gothic type was considered a pattern for his successors. The books that came from his press were chiefly grammars, romances, legends of the saints, and fugitive poems; he never ventured on an English New Testament, nor was any drama published bearing his name. His great patroness, Margaret, the mother of Henry VII., seems to have had little taste to guide De Worde in his selection, for he never reprinted the works of Chaucer or of Gower; nor did his humble patron, Robert Thorney, the mercer, lead him in a better direction. De Worde filled his black-letter books with rude engravings, which he used so indiscriminately that the same cut often served for books of a totally opposite character. By some writers De Worde is considered to be the first introducer of Roman letters into this country; but the honour of that mode of printing is now generally claimed by Pynson, a contemporary. Among other works published by De Worde were "The Ship of Fools," that great satire that was so long popular in England; Mandeville's lying "Travels;" "La Morte d'Arthur" (from which Tennyson has derived so much inspiration); "The Golden Legend;" and those curious treatises on"Hunting, Hawking, and Fishing," partly written by Johanna Berners, a prioress of St. Alban's. In De Worde's "Collection of Christmas Carols" we find the words of that fine old song, still sung annually at Queen's College, Oxford,—
"The boar's head in hand bring I,With garlands gay and rosemary."
De Worde also published some writings of Erasmus. The old printer was buried in the parish church of St. Bride's, before the high altar of St. Katherine; and he left land to the parish so that masses should be said for his soul. To his servants, not forgetting his bookbinder, Nowel, in Shoe Lane, he bequeathed books. De Worde lived near the Conduit, a little west of Shoe Lane. This conduit, which was begun in the year 1439 by Sir William Estfielde, a former Lord Mayor, and finished in 1471, was, according to Stow's account, a stone tower, with images of St. Christopher on the top and angels, who, on sweet-sounding bells, hourly chimed a hymn with hammers, thus anticipating the wonders of St. Dunstan's. These London conduits were great resorts for the apprentices, whom their masters sent with big leather and metal jugs to bring home the daily supply of water. Here these noisy, quarrelsome young rascals stayed to gossip, idle, and fight. At the coronation of Anne Boleyn this conduit was newly painted, all the arms and angels refreshed, and "the music melodiously sounding." Upon the conduit was raised a tower with four turrets, and in every turret stood one of the cardinal virtues, promising never to leave the queen, while, to the delight and wonder of thirsty citizens, the taps ran with claret and red wine. Fleet Street, according to Mr. Noble, was supplied with water in the Middle Ages from the conduit at Marylebone and the holy wells of St. Clement's and St. Bridget's. The tradition is that the latter well was drained dry for the supply of the coronation banquet of George IV. As early as 1358 the inhabitants of Fleet Street complained of aqueduct pipes bursting and flooding their cellars, upon which they were allowed the privilege of erecting a pent-house over an aqueduct opposite the tavern of John Walworth, and near the house of the Bishop of Salisbury. In 1478 a Fleet Street wax-chandler, having been detected tapping the conduit pipes for his own use, was sentenced to ride through the City with a vessel shaped like a conduit on his felonious head, and the City crier walking before him to proclaim his offence.
The "Castle Tavern," mentioned as early as 1432, stood at the south-west corner of Shoe Lane. Here the Clockmakers' Company held theirmeetings before the Great Fire, and in 1708 the "Castle" possessed the largest sign in London. Early in the last century, says Mr. Noble, its proprietor was Alderman Sir John Task, a wine merchant, who died in 1735 (George II.), worth, it was understood, a quarter of a million of money.
TheMorning Advertiser(No. 127, north) was established in 1794, by the Society of Licensed Victuallers, on the mutual benefit society principle. Every member is bound to take in the paper and is entitled to a share in its profits. Members unsuccessful in business become pensioners on the funds of the institution. The paper, which took the place of theDaily Advertiser, and was the suggestion of Mr. Grant, a master printer, was an immediate success. Down to 1850 theMorning Advertisercirculated chiefly in public-houses and coffee-houses at the rate of nearly 5,000 copies a day. But in 1850, the circulation beginning to decline, the committee resolved to enlarge the paper to the size of theTimes, and Mr. James Grant was appointed editor. The profits now increased, and the paper found its way to the clubs. The late Lord Brougham and Sir David Brewster contributed to theAdvertiser; and the letters signed "An Englishman" excited much interest. This paper has always been Liberal. Mr. Grant remained the editor for twenty years.
No. 91 (south side) was till lately the office of that old-established paper,Bell's Weekly Messenger. Mr. Bell, the spirited publisher who founded this paper, is delightfully sketched by Leigh Hunt in his autobiography.
"About the period of my writing the above essays," he says, in his easy manner, "circumstances introduced me to the acquaintance of Mr. Bell, the proprietor of theWeekly Messenger. In his house, in the Strand, I used to hear of politics and dramatic criticisms, and of the persons who wrote them. Mr. Bell had been well known as a bookseller and a speculator in elegant typography. It is to him the public are indebted for the small editions of the poets that preceded Cooke's. Bell was, upon the whole, a remarkable person. He was a plain man, with a red face and a nose exaggerated by intemperance; and yet there was something not unpleasing in his countenance, especially when he spoke. He had sparkling black eyes, a good-natured smile, gentlemanly manners, and one of the most agreeable voices I ever heard. He had no acquirements—perhaps not even grammar; but his taste in putting forth a publication and getting the best artists to adorn it was new in those times, and may be admired in any. Unfortunately for Mr. Bell, the Prince ofWales, to whom he was bookseller, once did him the honour to partake of an entertainment or refreshment (I forget which—most probably the latter) at his house. He afterwards became a bankrupt. After his bankruptcy he set up a newspaper, which became profitable to everybody but himself."[2]
No. 93, Fleet Street (south side) is endeared to us by its connection with Charles Lamb. At that number, in 1823, that great humorist, the king of all London clerks that ever were or will be, published his "Elia," a collection of essays immortal as the language, full of quaint and tender thoughts and gleaming with cross-lights of humour as shot silk does with interchanging colours. In 1821, when the first editor was shot in a duel, theLondon Magazinefell into the hands of Messrs. Taylor & Hessey, of No. 93; but they published the excellent periodical and gave their "magazine dinners" at their publishing house in Waterloo Place.
Mr. John Scott, a man of great promise, the editor of theLondonfor 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 theLondonand the clever but bitter and unscrupulous writers inBlackwood, started in 1817. Lockhart, who had cruelly maligned Leigh Hunt and his set (the "Cockney School," as the Scotch Tories chose to call them), was sharply attacked in theLondon. 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 ofBlackwood. 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 principal. At the second fire Christie's ball struck Scott just above the right hip, and hefell. 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 mightyMagaitself—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 theLondon, 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, Godwin, Byron, Keats, Shelley, 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 ofPaul Pryand that humorous novel, "Little Pedlington," which is supposed to have furnished Mr. Charles Dickens 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 Cockpit, the trial of Thurtell (a very powerful article), &c. That delightful punster and humorist, with pen or pencil, Tom Hood, sent to theLondonhis first poems of any ambition or length—"Lycusthe Centaur," and "The Two Peacocks 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 theRetrospective 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 Northamptonshire peasant poet; and Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet. Nor must we omit that strange contrast to these pure-hearted and wise men, "Janus Weathercock" (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 fashionable associates. 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, wishing 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 almostthrew 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 amassed 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, theci-devantshoemaker 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. Willcocks, a bookseller inthe 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. Willcocks was proved the next of kin, and the base shoemaker returned to his last. The lucky Mr. Willcocks 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.
ALDERMAN WAITHMAN, FROM AN AUTHENTIC PORTRAIT
Nos. 103 (now theSunday Timesoffice) 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 thesepersons," 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 destitute 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 cock 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 bytalking 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, assumed 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.
GROUP AT HARDHAM'S TOBACCO SHOP
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 tothe 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 assiduously 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 petition 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, hewas 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 chamberlainship, in the competition for which Sir James Shaw obtained a large majority of votes.
We subjoin the remarks made on his death by the editor of theTimesnewspaper:—"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 space 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 circumstances 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. Noble, 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 passage 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 fashion 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 wasbrimful 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 inTom and Jerry, who is so indignant at the beggars' supper on seeing "a turkey without sassenges."
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 fashion 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 quickcoup d'œilat 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 theCity 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 namingthe 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 sassafras chips. The proprietor, who began life, as Mr. Noble 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 passages 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.
[2]An intelligent compositor (Mr. J.P.S. Bicknell), who has been a noter of curious passages 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]
[2]An intelligent compositor (Mr. J.P.S. Bicknell), who has been a noter of curious passages 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.
[3]The real fact is, the famous snuff was merely called from the number of the drawer that held it.
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.
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 Shire 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 theTatler, 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 assembled 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, noblemen, and gentlemen formed the staple of the association. The noblemen were perhaps rather too numerous for that republican equality that should prevail in the best intellectual society; yet above all the dukes shine 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 wereCongreve, 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 perishing 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 Godfrey 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 Hertfordshire. 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 Shire 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 glasses. The most celebrated of these toasts were the four daughters of the Duke of Marlborough—Lady Godolphin, 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 versesseem 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 snatches of the best conversation are embalmed in theSpectatorand theTatler. 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 passing her round with kisses, at once inscribed her name with a diamond on a drinking-glass. "Pleasure," she says, "was too poor a word to express my sensations. They amounted to ecstasy. Never again throughout my whole life did I pass 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 fashion, and drank the Orange toast in a tankard of foaming October. No one laughed at the tipsy hatter; but Steele, kindlyeven 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 multitude of such sins:—