The Town Part 13

"I've seen an unscrewed spider spin a thought, And walk away upon the wings of angels!"

"What say you to that, doctor?" "Ah, marry, Mr. Lee, that's superfine indeed. The thought of a winged spider may catch sublime readers of poetry sooner than his web, but it will need a commentary in prose to render it intelligible to the vulgar."[131]

Lee's madness does not appear to have been melancholy, otherwise these anecdotes would not bear repeating. There are various stories of the origin of it; but, most probably, he had an over-sanguine const.i.tution, which he exasperated by intemperance. Though he died so young, the author of _A Satyr on the Poets_ gives us to understand that he was corpulent.

"Pembroke loved tragedy, and did provide For the butchers' dogs, and for the whole Bank-side: The bear was fed; but dedicating Lee Was thought to have a greater paunch than he."[132]

This Pembroke, who loved a bear-garden, was the seventh earl of that t.i.tle. His daughter married the son of Jefferies. Lee, on a visit to the earl at Wilton, is said to have drunk so hard, that "the butler feared he would empty the cellar." The madness of Lee is almost visible in his swelling and overladen dramas; in which, however, there is a good deal of true poetic fire, and a vein of tenderness that makes us heartily pity the author.

The social Boswell, in speaking of Johnson's eating-house in Butcher Row, does not approve of establishments of that sort. We shall see, by and by, that he was wrong.

"Happening to dine," says he, "at Clifton's eating-house in Butcher Row, I was surprised to see Johnson come in and take his seat at another table. The mode of dining, or rather being fed, at such houses in London, is well known to many to be peculiarly unsocial, as there is no ordinary or united company, but each person has his own mess, and is under no obligation to hold any intercourse with any one. A liberal and full-minded man, however, who loves to talk, will break through this churlish and unsocial restraint. Johnson and an Irish gentleman got into a dispute concerning the cause of some part of mankind being black. 'Why, sir (said Johnson), it has been accounted for in three ways: either by supposing that they are the posterity of Ham, who was cursed; or that G.o.d at first created two kinds of men, one black and another white; or that, by the heat of the sun, the skin is scorched, and so acquires a sooty hue. This matter has been much canva.s.sed among naturalists, but has never been brought to any certain issue.' What the Irishman said is totally obliterated from my mind; but I remember that he became very warm and intemperate in his expressions; upon which Johnson rose, and quietly walked away. When he had retired, his antagonist took his revenge, as he thought, by saying, 'He has a most ungainly figure, and an affectation of pomposity unworthy of a man of genius.'"[133]

The ungainly figure might have been pardoned by the Irishman; who, we suppose, was equally fiery and elegant. As to Johnson's pompous manner, the most excusable part of it originated, doubtless, in his having decided opinions. The rest may have been an instinct of self-defence, arising from the "ungainly figure," not without a sense of the dignity of his calling. He certainly lost nothing by it, upon the whole. At all events, one is willing to think the best of what was accompanied by so much excellence. Affectation it was not; for n.o.body despised pretension of any kind more than he did. Johnson was a sort of born bishop in his way, with high judgments and cathedral notions lording it in his mind; and _ex cathedra_ he accordingly spoke.

In Butcher Row, one day, Johnson met, in advanced life, a fellow-collegian, of the name of Edwards, whom he had not seen since they were at the university. Edwards annoyed him by talking of their age. "Don't let us discourage one another," said Johnson. It was this Edwards, a dull but good man, who made that _nave_ remark, which was p.r.o.nounced by Burke and others to be an excellent trait of character:--"You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson," said he: "I have tried in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in."[134]

Before we come to St. Clement's, we arrive, on the left-hand side of the way, at Ess.e.x Street; a spot once famous for the residence of the favourite Earl of Ess.e.x. We have mentioned an Outer Temple, which originally formed a companion to the Inner and Middle Temples, the whole const.i.tuting the tenements of the knights. This Outer Temple stretched beyond Temple Bar into the ground now occupied by Ess.e.x Street and Devereux Court; and after being possessed (Dugdale supposes) by the Prior and Canons of the Holy Sepulchre, was transferred by them, in the time of Edward III., to the Bishops of Exeter, who occupied it till the reign of Henry VI., and called it Exeter House. Sir William Paget (afterwards Lord Paget) then had it, and did "re-edify the same," calling it Paget Place. After this it was occupied by the Duke of Norfolk, who was executed for his dealings with Mary, Queen of Scots; then by Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the favourite, who called it Leicester House, and bequeathed it to his "son, Sir Robert;" and then by the other favourite, Leicester's son-in-law, Ess.e.x, from whom it retained the name of Ess.e.x House. It was occasionally tenanted by men of rank till some time after the Restoration, when it was pulled down, and the site converted into the present street and court. The only remnant of it supposed to exist is the present Unitarian Chapel, which, before it became such, was called Ess.e.x House, and latterly contained an auction room.[135]

The repose enjoyed in this precinct since the Restoration has been like silence after a succession of storms, for the house was of a turbulent reputation. The first bishop who had it after the Templars, being a favourite of Edward II., was seized by the mob, hurried to Cheapside, where they beheaded him, and then carried back a corpse, and buried in a heap of sand at his door. Lord Paget got into trouble, together with his friend the Duke of Somerset, who was accused of intending to a.s.sa.s.sinate Northumberland and others at this house.

Norfolk possessed it while he formed his designs on Mary, Queen of Scots, for which he was brought to the scaffold; Leicester was always having some ill design or other--perhaps poisoned a visitor or so occasionally (for he is said to have thought nothing of that gentle expediency); and Ess.e.x made the house famous by standing a siege in it against the troops of his mistress. The siege was not long, nor any of his actions in the business very wise, though he was a man of an exalted nature. Ess.e.x got into his troubles partly from heat and ambition, partly from the inferior and more cunning nature of some of his rivals at court. There is no doubt that all these causes, together with his confidence in Elizabeth's inability to proceed to extremities, conspired to lead him into rebellion. His first offence that we hear of, next to a general petulance of manner, which the Queen's own mixture of fondness and petulance was calculated enough to provoke, was a quarrel with some young lords for her favour; the second, his joining the expedition to Cadiz without leave; and the third, his marriage with the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham: for Elizabeth never thought it proper that her favourites should be married to any thing but her "fair idea."

His next dispute with her, which was on the subject of an a.s.sistant in the affairs of Ireland, to which he was going as lord deputy, terminated in the singular catastrophe of his receiving from her a box on the ear, with the encouraging addition of bidding him "Go, and be hanged." It is said to have been occasioned by his turning his back upon her. He clapped his hand to his sword, and swore he would not have put up with such an insult from her father. His fall is generally dated from this circ.u.mstance, and it is thought he never forgave it.

But surely this is not a correct judgment: for the blow which might have been intolerable from the hand of a king, implied, in its very extravagance, something not without flattery and self-abas.e.m.e.nt from that of a princess. It was as if Elizabeth had put herself into the situation of a termagant wife. The quarrel preceded the violence.

Ess.e.x went to Ireland against the rebels, but apparently with great unwillingness, calling it, in a letter to the Queen, the "cursedest of all islands," and insinuating that the best thing that could happen both to please her and himself was the loss of his life in battle. The conclusion of this letter is a remarkable instance of the mixture of romance with real life in those days. It is in verse, terminating with the following pastoral sentiment. Ess.e.x wishes he could live like a hermit, "in some unhaunted desert most obscure"--

"From all society, from love and hate Of worldly folk; then should he sleep secure, Then wake again, and yield G.o.d every praise, Content with hips and hawes, and bramble-berry; In contemplation parting out his days, And change of holy thoughts to make him merry.

Who when he dies, his tomb may be a bush, Where harmless robin dwells with gentle thrush.

Your Majesty's exiled servant, "ROBERT ESs.e.x."

Think of this being a letter from a lord lieutenant of Ireland to his sovereign! Warton says, from the evidence of some sonnets preserved in the British Museum, that although Ess.e.x was "an ingenious and elegant writer of prose," he was no poet. There is an ungainliness in the lines we have just quoted, and he was probably too much given to action to be a poet; but there is something in him that relished of the truth and directness of poetry, when he had to touch upon any actual emotion. Poetry is nothing but the voluntary power to get at the inner spirit of what is felt, with imagination to embody it. It was supposed that Ess.e.x's enemies first got him into the office of lord lieutenant, and then took advantage of his impatience under it to ruin him. He was accused of tampering with the rebels, and meditating his return into England with the troops under his charge; with a view to which object he is said to have described his army as a force with which he "would make the earth to tremble as he went." He came over, with the pa.s.sion of an injured man, and presented himself before the Queen, who gave him a tolerable reception, but afterwards confined him to the house of the lord keeper. It was then, according to his confession before his death, that he first contemplated violent measures against the throne, though always short of treason. Before his liberation, he was soured by his ineffectual attempts to renew his facility of admission to the presence chamber; and he let fall an expression which his enemies greedily seized at, to wit, that the "Queen grew old and cankered, and that her mind was become as crooked as her carcase." This was exactly in his style, which was off-hand and energetic, with a gusto of truth in it. Meantime he began to have his friends about him more than ever, and to affect a necessity for it; and a summons being sent him to attend the council, he was driven by anger and fear to decline it, and to fortify himself in his house. His chief and most generous companion on this occasion was Henry, Earl of Southampton, the friend of Shakspeare. There was some little resistance; and the Lord Keeper, with the Lord Chief Justice and the Earl of Worcester, coming to summon him to his allegiance, he locked them up in a room, on pretence of taking care of their persons, and then sallied through Fleet Street into the city, where he expected a rising in his favour; for he was the most popular n.o.ble, perhaps, that England had ever seen, and the city had been disgusted by repeated levies on its purse, under pretence of invasions from Spain: though, according to Ess.e.x, Spain had never been so much in favour. The levies, in truth, were made against himself. He was disappointed: heard himself proclaimed a traitor by sound of trumpet in Gracechurch Street, and after a little more scuffling on the part of his adherents, returned by water from Queenhithe, and surrendered himself; being partly moved, he said, by the "cries of ladies." It is clear that he did not know what to be at. He expected, most likely, every moment, that the Queen's tenderness would interfere, fearful of seeing her once beloved favourite in danger. But the Cecils and others aided her good sense in keeping her quiet. Ess.e.x had certainly acted in a way incompatible with the duty of a subject, and such as no sovereign could tolerate. He was tried in Westminster Hall, and convicted of an intention to seize the court and the Tower, to surprise the Queen in her apartments, and then to summon a parliament for a "redress of grievances;" which, he said, should give his enemies "a fair trial."

Southampton was acquitted, no doubt from a sense that he intended nothing but a romantic adherence to his friend.

How a man of Ess.e.x's understanding could give into these preposterous attempts, it would be difficult to conceive, if every day's experience did not show how powerful a succession of little circ.u.mstances is to bring people into situations which themselves might have least looked for. Ess.e.x evidently expected pardon to the last. When Lord Grey's name was read over among the peers who were to try him, he smiled and jogged the elbow of Southampton, for offending whom Grey had been punished. He was at his ease throughout the trial. He said to the Attorney-General (c.o.ke), who had told him in the course of his speech that he should be "Robert the Last" of an earldom, instead of "Robert the First" of a kingdom--"Well, Mr. Attorney, I thank G.o.d you are not my judge this day, you are so uncharitable."

"_c.o.ke._ Well, my lord, we shall prove you anon, what you are; which your pride of heart, and aspiring mind, hath brought you unto.

_Ess.e.x._ Ah, Mr. Attorney, lay your hand upon your heart, and pray to G.o.d to forgive us _both_."[136]

And when sentence was pa.s.sed, though it is not true that he refused to ask for mercy, for he did it after the best fas.h.i.+on of his style, "kneeling (he said) upon the very knees of his heart," yet he seemed to threaten Elizabeth, in a tender way, with his resolution to die.

She left him, like a politic sovereign, to his fate; but is thought never to have recovered it, as a friend. The romantic story of her visiting the Countess of Nottingham, who had kept back a ring which Ess.e.x sent her after his condemnation, of her shaking her on her deathbed, and crying out that "G.o.d might forgive, but she could not,"

is more and more credited as doc.u.ments transpire. The ring, it is said, had been given to Ess.e.x, with a promise that it should serve him in need under any circ.u.mstances, if he did but send it. It is supposed that the non-appearance of it hurt the proud heart of Elizabeth, and finally allowed her to let him die. Yet she was a great sovereign, and might have suffered the law to take its course, with whatever sorrow.

She was jealous of her reputation with the old and cool-headed lords about her. When the death, however, had taken place, she might have fancied otherwise. Something preyed strongly on her mind towards her decease, which happened within two years after his execution. She refused to go to bed for ten days and nights before her death, lying upon the carpet with cus.h.i.+ons about her, and absorbed in the profoundest melancholy. To be sure, this may have been disease. A princess like Elizabeth, possessed of sovereign power, which had been sharply exercised on some doubtful occasions, might have had misgivings when going to die. Two certain causes of regret she must have had for Ess.e.x. She must have been well aware that she had alternately encouraged and irritated him over much; and she must have known that he was a better man than many who a.s.sisted in his overthrow, and that if he had been less worthy of regard, he probably would have survived her, as they did.

It may easily be imagined that Ess.e.x was a man for whom a strong affection might be entertained. He excited interest by his character, and could maintain it by his language. In everything he did there was a certain excess, but on the liberal side. When a youth, he plunged into the depths of rural pleasures and books; he was lavish of his money and good words for his friends; he said everything that came uppermost, but then it was worth saying, only his enemies were not as well pleased with it as his friends, and they never forgot it: in fine, he was romantic, brave, and impa.s.sioned. He is so like a _preux chevalier_, that till we call to mind other gallant knights who have not been handsome, we are somewhat surprised to hear that he was not well made, and that nothing is said of his face but that it looked reserved--a seeming anomaly, which deep thought sometimes produces in the countenances of open-hearted men. These were no hindrances, however, to the admiration entertained of him by the ladies; and he was so popular with authors and with the public, that Warton says he could bring evidence of his scarcely ever quitting England or even the metropolis, on the most frivolous enterprise, without a pastoral or other poetical praise of him, which was sold and sung in the streets.

He was the friend of Spenser, most likely of Shakspeare too. being the friend of Southampton. Spenser was well acquainted with Ess.e.x House. In his '_Prothalamion_,' published in 1596, he has left interesting evidence of his having visited Leicester there; and he follows up the record with a panegyric on Leicester's successor, which was probably his first hint to Ess.e.x that he was still in want of such a.s.sistance as he had received from his father-in-law. The two pa.s.sages taken together render the hint rather broad, and such as would make one a little jealous for the dignity of the great poet, were not the manners of that time different in this respect from what they are now.

Speaking of the Temple, in the lines quoted in our last chapter, he goes on to say--

"Next whereunto there stands a stately place, Where oft I gayned giftes and goodly grace Of that great lord, which therein wont to dwell.

Whose want too well now feels my friendless case: But, ah! here fits not well Olde woes, but ioyes, to tell Against the bridale daye, which is not long: Sweet Themmes! runne softly till I end my song.

Yet therein now doth lodge a n.o.ble peer, Great England's glory, and the world's wide wonder, Whose dreadful name late through all Spaine did thunder, And Hercules' two pillars standing near Did make to quake and feare: Faire branch of honour, flower of chevalrie; That fillest England with thy triumph's fame, Joy have thou of thy n.o.ble victorie."

Ess.e.x no doubt took the poet at his word, both for his panegyric and his hint: for it was he that gave Spenser his funeral in Westminster, and he was not of a spirit to treat a great poet, as poets have sometimes been treated--with neglect in their lifetime, and self-complacent monuments to them after their death.

We shall close this notice (in which we have endeavoured to concentrate all the interest we could) of the once great and applauded Ess.e.x, whose memory long retained its popularity, and gave rise to several tragedies, with a letter of his to the Lord Keeper Egerton, in which there is one of his finest sentiments expressed with his most pa.s.sionate felicity. Egerton's eldest son had accompanied Ess.e.x into Ireland, and died there, which is the subject of the letter. As Spenser's death also happened just before the earl set out for that country, at a moment when he might have been of political as well as poetical use to him (for Spenser was a politician, and had been employed in the affairs of Ireland), Mr. Todd thinks, that among the friends alluded to, part of the regret may have been for him:

"Whatt can you receave from a cursed country b.u.t.t vnfortunate newes? whatt can be my stile (whom heaven and earth are agreed to make a martyr) b.u.t.t a stile of mourning? nott for myself thatt I smart, _for I wold I had in my hart the sorow of all my frends_, but I mourn that my destiny is to overlive my deerest frendes. Of yr losse yt is neither good for me to write nor you to reade. But I protest I felt myself sensibly dismembered, when I lost my frend. Shew yr strength in lyfe. Lett me, yf yt be G.o.d's will, shew yt in taking leave of the world, and hasting after my frends. b.u.t.t I will live and dy

"More yr lp's then any "man's living, "ESs.e.x."

"_Arbrachan, this last day of August_" [1599].

"Little,"[137] says Mr. Todd, "did the generous but unfortunate Ess.e.x then imagine, that the learned statesman, to whom this letter of condolence was addressed, would be directed very soon afterwards to issue an order for his execution. The original warrant, to which the name of Elizabeth is prefixed, is now in the possession of the Marquis of Stafford; and the queen has written her name, not with the firmness observable in numerous doc.u.ments existing in the same and other collections, but with apparent tremor and hesitation."

In Ess.e.x House was born another Robert, Earl of Ess.e.x, son of the preceding, well known in history as general of the Parliament. He was a child when his father died; and was in the hands, first, of his grandmother, Lady Walsingham, and, secondly, of Henry Saville (afterwards Sir Henry), under whose severe discipline he was educated at Eton. We mention these circ.u.mstances, because they tended to keep him in that Presbyterian interest, which his father patronised out of a love of toleration and popularity. Perhaps, also, they did him no good with his wives; for he married two, and was singularly unfortunate in both. To the first, Lady Frances Howard, he was betrothed when a boy. He travelled, returned, and married her, with little love on his own side, and none on hers. Her connection with Car, Earl of Somerset, and all the infamy, crime, and wretchedness it brought upon her, are well known. Her best excuse, which is the ordinary one in cases of great wickedness (and it is a comfort to human nature that it is so), is, that she was a great fool. Her dislike of her first husband was not, perhaps, the least excusable part of her conduct, first, because she was a child like himself when they were betrothed; and secondly, because his second wife appears to have liked him no better. The latter was divorced also. After this, Ess.e.x took to a country retirement, and subsequently to an active part in the Civil Wars, during which his love of justice and affability to his inferiors rendered him extremely popular. He was of equivocal service, however, to the Parliament. He was a better general than politician, not of a commanding genius in any respect, and was suspected, not without reason, of an overweening desire to accommodate matters too much, partly out of ignorance of what the nature of the quarrel demanded, and partly from an affectation of playing the part of an amicable dictator for his own aggrandis.e.m.e.nt. So the Parliament got rid of him by the famous self-denying ordinance. Clarendon says, that when he resigned his commission, the whole Parliament went the day following to Ess.e.x House, to return him thanks for his great services; but a late historian of the commonwealth says, there is no trace of this compliment on the journals.[138] Next year they attended him to his grave. Ess.e.x's character was a prose-copy of his father's, with the love and romance left out.

Dr. Johnson, the year before he died, founded in Ess.e.x Street one of his minor clubs. The Literary Club did not meet often enough for his want of society, was too distant, and perhaps had now become too much for his conversational ambition. He wanted a mixture of inferior intellects to be at ease with. Accordingly, this club, which was held at the Ess.e.x Head, then kept by a servant of Mr. Thrale, was of a more miscellaneous nature than the other, and made no pretension to expense. One cannot help smiling at the modest and pensive tone of the letter which Johnson sent to Sir Joshua, inviting him to join it. "The terms are lax, and the expenses light. We meet thrice a-week; and he who misses, forfeits two-pence."[139] This stretch of philosophy seems to have startled the fas.h.i.+onable painter, who declined to become a member. When we find, however, in the list the names of Brocklesby, Horsley, Daines Barrington, and Windham, Boswell has reason to say that Sir John Hawkins's charge of its being a "low ale-house a.s.sociation" appears to be sufficiently obviated. But the names might have been subscribed out of civility without any further intention.

The club, nevertheless, was in existence when Boswell wrote, and went on, he says, happily. Johnson said of him, when he was proposed, "Boswell is a very _clubable_ man."

In Devereux Court, through which there is a pa.s.sage round into the Temple, is the Grecian Coffee House, supposed to be the oldest in London. We should rather say the revival of the oldest, for the premises were burnt down and rebuilt. The Grecian was the house from which Steele proposed to date his learned articles in the _Tatler_.

In this court are the premises of the eminent tea-dealers, Messrs.

Twining, the front of which, surmounted with its stone figures of Chinese, has an elegant appearance in the Strand. We notice the house, not only on this account, but because the family have to boast of a very accomplished scholar, the translator of the _Poetics_ of Aristotle. Mr. Twining was contemporary with Gray and Mason at Cambridge; and besides his acquirements as a linguist (for, in addition to his knowledge of Greek and Latin, he wrote French and Italian with idiomatic accuracy), was a musician so accomplished as to lead the concerts and oratorios that were performed during term-time, when Bate played the organ and harpsichord. He was also a lively companion, full of wit and playfulness, yet so able to content himself with country privacy, and so exemplary a clergyman, that for the last forty years of his life he scarcely allowed himself to be absent from his paris.h.i.+oners more than a fortnight in a year.

The church of St. Clement Danes, which unworthily occupies the open part of the Strand, to the west of Ess.e.x Street, was the one most frequented by Dr. Johnson. It is not known why this church was called St. Clement _Danes_. Some think because there was a ma.s.sacre of the Danes thereabouts; others because Harold Harefoot was buried there; and others, because the Danes had the quarter given them to live in, when Alfred the Great drove them out of London, the monarch at the same time building the church, in order to a.s.sist their conversion to Christianity. The name _St. Clement_ has been derived with probability from the patron saint of Pope Clement III., a great friend of the Templars, to whom the church at one time belonged. St. Clement's was rebuilt towards the end of the century before last by Edward Pierce, under the direction of Sir Christopher Wren, but is a very incongruous ungainly edifice. Its best aspect is at night-time in winter, when the deformities of its body are not seen, and the pale steeple rises with a sort of ghastliness of grandeur through the cloudy atmosphere.

The chimes may still be heard at midnight, as Falstaff describes having heard them with Justice Shallow. If they did not execute one of Handel's psalm-tunes, we should take them to be the very same he speaks of, and conclude that they had grown hoa.r.s.e with age and sitting-up; for to our knowledge they have lost some of their notes these twenty years, and the rest are falling away. A steeple should set a better example.

A few years back, when the improvements on the north side, in this quarter, had not been followed by those on the south, Gay's picture of the avenue between the church and the houses was true in all its parts. We remember the "combs dangling in our faces," and almost mourned their loss for the sake of the poet.

"Where the fair columns of St. Clement stand, Whose straiten'd bounds encroach upon the Strand; Where the low penthouse bows the walker's head, And the rough pavement wounds the yielding tread; Where not a post protects the narrow s.p.a.ce, And, strung in twines, combs dangle in thy face; Summon at once thy courage, rouse thy care, Stand firm, look back, be resolute, beware.

Forth issuing from steep lanes, the collier's steeds Drag the black load; another cart succeeds; Team follows team, crowds heap'd on crowds appear, And wait impatient till the road grow clear."

Everybody can testify to the truth of this description. A little patience, however, is well repaid by the sight of the n.o.ble creatures dragging up the loads. The horses of the colliers and brewers of London are worth notice at all times for the magnificence of their _build_. Gay proceeds to other particulars, now no longer to be encountered. He cautions you how you lose your sword; and adds a pleasant mode of theft, practised in those times:--

"Nor is the flaxen wig with safety worn: High on the shoulder, in a basket borne, Lurks the sly boy, whose hands, to rapine bred, Plucks off the curling honours of thy head."[140]

Clement's Inn is named from the church. The device over the gate, of an anchor and the letter C, is supposed to allude to the martyrdom of St. Clement, who is said to have been tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea, by order of the Emperor Trajan.

"The hall is situated on the south side of a neat but small quadrangle. It is a Tuscan diminutive building, with a very large Corinthian door, and arched windows, erected in 1715.

Another irregular area is surrounded by convenient houses, in which are the possessor's chambers. Part of this is a pretty garden, with a kneeling African, of considerable merit, supporting a dial, on the eastern side."[141]

In Knox's _Elegant Extracts_ are some lines on this negro, which have often been repeated:--

"In vain, poor sable son of woe, Thou seek'st the tender tear; For thee in vain with pangs they flow; For mercy dwells not here.