The Town Part 37

"They were clothed and entertained," says a note in the 'Tatler', "at the public expense, being lodged, while they continued in London, in an handsome apartment," perhaps in the house of Mr. Arne, as may be inferred from 'Tatler,' 155, and note. Certainly their landlord was an upholsterer in Covent Garden, in a new street, which seems at that time to have received the name of King Street, which it retains to this day, in common with many other streets so called, in honour of Charles II. The figures of these four Indian kings or chiefs are still preserved in the British Museum. The names and t.i.tles of their Majesties are recorded there and in the 'Annals of Queen Anne,' but with the following differences from the account of them in this paper: _Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Prow_, and _Sa Ga Yean Qua Prah Ion_, of the _Maquas_;--_Elow Oh Kaom_, and _Oh Nee Yeath Ion No Prow_, of the river _Sachem_, and the _Ganajoh-h.o.r.e Sachem_. On the 18th of April 1710, according to Salmon, on the 19th according to Boyer, these four ill.u.s.trious personages were conveyed in two of the Queen's coaches to St.

James's, by Sir Charles Cotterel, master of the ceremonies, and introduced to their public audience by the Duke of Shrewsbury, then Lord Chamberlain. They made a speech by an interpreter, which Major Pidgeon, an officer who came over with them from America, read in English to her Majesty. "They had (they said) with one consent hung up the kettle and taken up the hatchet, in token of their friends.h.i.+p to their great queen and her children, and had been, on the other side of the great water, a strong wall of security to their great queen's children, even to the loss of their best men. For the truth of what they affirmed, and their written proposals, they referred to Colonel Scuyder and Colonel Nicholson, whom they called, in their language, Brother Queder, and Anadgargaux, and, speaking of Colonel Vetch, they named him Anadiasia. They said they always considered the French as men of falsehood, and rejoiced in the prospect of the reduction of Canada; after which they should have free hunting, and a great trade with their great queen's children, and as a token of the sincerity of the six nations, in the name of all, they presented their great queen with the belts of wampum. They concluded their speech with recommending their very hard case to their great queen's gracious consideration, expressing their hopes of her favour, and requesting the mission of more of her children to reinforce and to instruct, for they had got, as they said, since their alliance with her children, some knowledge of the Saviour of the world. The curious may see this speech at full length in the 'Annals of Queen Anne,' year 9th, p. 191, _et seq._, 8vo.

On the same day, according to Boyer, a royal messenger of the Emperor of Morocco, Elhadge Guzman, was likewise introduced by the Duke of Shrewsbury to a private audience, and delivered letters to the Queen from Mula Ishmael, his master; the same emperor, probably, who sent an amba.s.sador to our court in 1706, mentioned in the 'Tatler,' No. 130, and note, vol. iii., p. 44.

The Indian Kings continued about a fortnight longer in London, during which time they were hospitably entertained by some of the lords commissioners of the Admiralty, by the Duke of Ormond, and several persons of distinction. They were carried to see Dr. Flamstead's house and the mathematical instruments in Greenwich Park, and entertained with the sight of the princ.i.p.al curiosities in and about the metropolis; then conveyed to Portsmouth through Hampton Court and Windsor, and embarked with Colonel Frances Nicholson, commander-in-chief of the forces appointed to the American service, on board the Dragon, Captain Martin, Commodore, who, with about eighteen sail under his convoy, sailed from Spithead on the 18th of May, and landed their Majesties safe at Boston, in New England, July 15th, 1710."[310]

Their names are like a set of yawns and sneezes.

Young Arne, who was born in King Street, was a musician against his father's will, and practised in the garret, on a m.u.f.fled spinnet, when the family had gone to bed. He was sent to Eton, which was probably of use to him in confirming his natural refinement, but nothing could hinder his devoting himself to the art. It is said the old man had no suspicion of his advancement in it, till, going to a concert one evening, he was astonished to see his son exalted, bow in hand, as the leader. Seeing the praises bestowed on him, he suffered him to become what nature designed him for. Arne was the most flowing, Italian-like musician of any we have had in England; not capable of the grandeur and profound style of Purcell, but more sustained, continuous, and seductive. His "Water parted" is a stream of sweetness; his song, "When Daisies pied" is truly Shaksperian, full of archness and originality. Like many of his profession, who feel much more than they reflect, he became, in some measure, the victim of his sense of beauty, being excessively addicted to women. His sister, Mrs. Cibber, whose charming performances on the stage we have before noticed, did not escape without the reputation of a like tendency; but she had a bad husband (the notorious Theophilus Cibber); and on the occasion that gave rise to it, is understood to have been the victim of his mercenary designs.

Southampton Street we have noticed in speaking of the Strand.

G.o.dfrey's, the chemist's, in this street, is an establishment of old standing, as may be seen by the inscription over the door. A hundred years ago, Mr. Ambrose G.o.dfrey, who lived here, proposed to extinguish fire by a new method of "explosion and suffocation;" that is to say, a mixture of water and _gunpowder_. Tavistock Street (where Lord Sandwich first saw Miss Ray) was once the great emporium of millinery and mantua-making. Macklin died there. He lived many years in Wyld Street. In Maiden Lane, Voltaire lodged, when in England, at the sign of the White Peruke, probably the house of a fas.h.i.+onable French peruquier. In "Swift's Works" (vol. xx. of the duodecimo edition, p.

294), there is a letter to him, in English, by Voltaire, and dated from this house. The English seems a little too perfect. There is another following it which looks more authentic. But there is no doubt that Voltaire, while in England, made himself such a master of the language, as to be able to write in it with singular correctness for a foreigner. He was then young. He had been imprisoned in the Bastile for a libel; came over here, on his release; procured many subscriptions for the "Henriade;" published in English "An Essay on Epic Poetry," and remained some years, during which he became acquainted with the princ.i.p.al men of letters--Pope, Congreve, and Young. He is said to have talked so indecently at Pope's table (probably no more than was thought decent by the belles in France), that the good old lady, the poet's mother, was obliged to retire.

Objecting, at Lord Chesterfield's table, to the allegories of Milton, Young is said to have accosted him in the well-known couplet:--

Thou art so witty, profligate, and thin, Thou seem'st a Milton, with his Death and Sin.

But this story has been doubted. Young, though not so thin, was as witty and profligate in his way as Voltaire: for, even when affecting a hermit-like sense of religion, he was a servile flatterer and preferment-hunter. The secret of the gloomy tone in his "Night-Thoughts" was his not having too much, and his missing a bishopric. This is the reason why the "Night-Thoughts" are overdone, and have not stood their ground. Voltaire left England with such a ma.s.s of subscriptions for his "Henriade" as laid the foundation of his fortunes, and with great admiration of English talent and genius, particularly that of Newton and Locke, which, with all his insinuations against our poetry, he took warm pains to extend, and never gave up. He was fond to the last of showing he had not forgotten his English. Somebody telling him that Johnson had spoken well of his talents, he said, in English, "He is a clever fellow;" but the gentleman observing that the doctor did not think well of his religion, he added, "a superst.i.tious dog."

During his residence in Maiden Lane, there is a story of Voltaire's having been beset, in one of his walks, by the people, who ridiculed him as a Frenchman. He got upon the steps of a door-way and harangued them in their own language in praise of English liberty and the nation; upon which, the story adds, they hailed him as a fine fellow, and carried him to his lodgings on their shoulders. The treatment of foreigners at this time in the streets of London (and every foreigner was a Frenchman) was very much the reverse of what the inhabitants took it for. Thanks to the progress of knowledge, nations have learnt to understand one another's common cause better, and to suspect that the most ridiculous thing they could do is to forget it.

Long Acre is a portion of the seven acres before mentioned. The great plague of London began there in some goods brought over from Holland; but as that calamity made its princ.i.p.al ravages in the city, we shall speak of it under another head. During the battles of the Whigs and Tories, Long Acre was famous for its Mug-houses, where beer-drinking clubs were held, and politics "sung or said." Cheapside was another place of celebrity for these meetings. There is a description of them in a Journey through England in 1724, quoted by Mr. Malcolm in his "Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century."

"Gentlemen, lawyers, and tradesmen," says the account, "used to meet in a great room, seldom under a hundred."

"They had a president, who sat in an arm-chair some steps higher than the rest of the company, to keep the whole room in order. A harp played all the time at the lower end of the room, and every now and then one or other of the company rose and entertained the rest with a song, and (by the by) some were good masters. Here was nothing drank but ale, and every gentleman had his separate mug, which he chalked on the table where he sat as it was brought in; and every one retired when he pleased, as from a coffee-house.

"The rooms were always so diverted with songs, and drinking from one table to another one another's healths, that there was no room for anything that could sour conversation.

"One was obliged to be there by seven to get room, and after ten the company were for the most part gone.

"This was a winter's amus.e.m.e.nt, agreeable enough to a stranger for once or twice, and he was well diverted with the different humours when the mugs overflow.

"On King George's accession to the throne, the Tories had so much the better of the friends to the Protestant succession, that they gained the mobs on all public days to their side.

This induced this set of gentlemen to establish mug-houses in all the corners of this great city, for well-affected tradesmen to meet and keep up the spirit of loyalty to the Protestant succession, and to be ready upon all tumults to join their forces for the suppression of the Tory mobs. Many an encounter they had, and many were the riots, till at last the Parliament was obliged by law to put an end to this city strife, which had this good effect, that, on pulling down the mug-houses in Salisbury Court, for which some boys were hanged on this Act, the city has not been troubled with them since."[311]

One of the mistresses whom Prior celebrates, under the name of Chloe, and compares to Venus and Diana, lived in Long Acre, and was the wife, some say, of a common soldier, others of a cobbler, others of the keeper of an ale-house. Perhaps she was all these, or there were three mistresses whose alliances were confounded. Spence says that the ale-house keeper was the first husband, and the cobbler the second.

"Everybody knows," says Pope, "what a wretch she was." And again:--"Prior was not a right good man. He used to bury himself, for whole days and nights together, with a poor mean creature, and often drank hard. He turned from a strong Whig (which he had been when most with Lord Halifax) to a violent Tory; and did not care to converse with any Whigs after, any more than Rowe did with Tories."[312] "I have been a.s.sured," says Pope's friend, Richardson, the painter, "that Prior, after having spent the evening with Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift, would go and smoke a pipe, and drink a bottle of ale, with a common soldier and his wife, in Long Acre, before he went to bed."[313] After the poet's death, Arbuthnot says something to the same effect; but we forget what.

None of the wits of that time seem to have known much about love as a sentiment. There is no end of the misconceptions of what is called love. Prior would probably have retorted upon Pope, that his own taste was not very delicate; and upon Arbuthnot, that the doctor was a sensualist in his way, and of a lower order.[314] He would have quoted Propertius, Raphael, and others, for the impartiality of his taste; and the woman, though in low life, might have had wit and beauty. The secret of these inequalities has been explained by Fielding.[315]

Sir Joshua Reynolds lived successively in St. Martin's Lane, and on the north side of Great Newport Street, before he settled finally in Leicester Square. In Newport Street was born the celebrated Horne Tooke, the son of a poulterer in the adjoining market; which made him say, that his father was a "Turkey merchant." He was, perhaps, the hardest-headed man that ever figured in the union of literature and politics; meaning, by that epithet, the power to discuss, and impenetrability to objection. He died at his house at Wimbledon, and was buried at Ealing. His history trenches too closely on the politics of our own day, to allow us to expatiate upon it in a work expressly devoted to the past.

St. Martin's Lane (see Charing Cross, for a notice of the church,) was once as famous for artists as Newman Street has been since. In Salisbury Court and in St. Martin's Lane the Royal Academy may be said to have originated, for in those places successively its original members first came together as a society established by themselves.

Perhaps there was not a single artist, contemporary with Sir Joshua, who was unconnected with St. Martin's Lane, either as a lodger, student, or visitor. Old Slaughter's coffee-house, in the same lane, became celebrated on the same account, and as a resort of the contemporary wits, especially Hogarth, who may be said to have amalgamated in his works the wit and the painter. St. Martin's Lane and Leicester Square are the head-quarters of the memory of English art. In the annals of the former we meet with the names of Wilson and Gainsborough: in the latter flourished and died Hogarth and Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Sir Joshua's house in Leicester Square was on the eastern side, four doors from Sydney's Alley.[316] It was there he kept a handsome table, and was visited by Johnson and Goldsmith, and had the whole round of the fas.h.i.+onable world fluttering before him, and steadying itself to become immortal in his pictures: if, indeed, immortal they are to be, in the ordinary meaning of that word; for, out of certain misgivings, which perhaps argued a want of perfect claim to that destiny, he dabbled in experiments upon colours which have failed; and his pictures, though but of yesterday, already look old and worn out, while t.i.tian's are as blooming as Apollo.

Hogarth, the greatest name in English art, lived in one of the two houses which now form Sabloniere's hotel. It was the one to the north.

He was a little bustling man, with a face more lively than refined, a sort of knowing jockey look; and was irritable and egotistical, but not ungenerous. As a painter, he did what no man ever did before or since--brought out the absurdities of artificial life,

"Showed vice her own features, scorn her own image,"

and fairly painted even goods and chattels with a meaning! His intentions were less profound than his impulses; that is to say, he sometimes had an avowed common-place in view, as in the instance of the Industrious and Idle Apprentice, while the execution of it was full of much higher things and profounder humanities. As to the rest, if ever there was a wit on canva.s.s, it was he. To take one instance alone, his spider's web over the poor's box is a union of remote ideas, coalescing but too perfectly.[317]

Leicester Square, formerly Leicester Fields, was not built upon till towards the restoration of Charles II. It took its name from a family mansion of the Sydneys, Earls of Leicester, which stood on the north side, on the site of the present houses and of Leicester Place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RESIDENCE OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON.]

"It was for a short time," says Pennant, "the residence of Elizabeth, daughter of James I., the t.i.tular Queen of Bohemia, who, on February 13th, 1661, here ended her unfortunate life.

It has been tenanted for a great number of years. It was successively the pounting-place of princes. The late King [George II.], when Prince of Wales, after he had quarrelled with his father, lived here several years. His son Frederic followed his example, succeeded him in his house, and in it finished his days."

"Behind Leicester House," the same author informs us, "stood, in 1658, the Military-yard, founded by Henry Prince of Wales, the spirited son of our peaceful James. M. Faubert afterwards kept here his academy for riding and other gentlemanlike exercises, in the reign of Charles II., which, in later years, was removed to Swallow Street, opposite the end of Conduit Street. Part is retained for the purpose of a riding-house; the rest is converted into a workhouse for the parish of St.

James's."[318]

But the glory of the neighbourhood of Leicester Fields is in St.

Martin's Street, where the house is still remaining which was occupied by the great Newton.

FOOTNOTES:

[274] Scott's 'Dryden,' vol. viii., p. 178.

[275] In the prologue to Etherege's play of the 'Man of Mode.' Scott's 'Dryden,' vol. x., p. 340.

[276] Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii., p. 317.

[277] Cibber's 'Lives of the Poets' vol. iii., p. 252.

[278] Works of Dryden, vol. i., p. 387. Sir Walter thus notices a letter of Tonson's on the subject of Dryden's contribution to one of the volumes known under the t.i.tle of his Miscellanies:--"The contribution, although ample, was not satisfactory to old Jacob Tonson, who wrote on the subject a most mercantile expostulatory letter to Dryden, which is fortunately still preserved, as a curious specimen of the minutiae of a literary bargain in the seventeenth century. Tonson, with reference to Dryden, having offered a strange bookseller six hundred lines for twenty guineas, enters into a question in the rule of three, by which he discovers and proves, that for fifty guineas he has only 1,446 lines, which he seems to take more unkindly, as he had not counted the lines until he had paid the money; from all which Jacob infers, that Dryden ought, out of generosity, at least to throw him in something to the bargain, especially as he had used him more kindly in Juvenal, which, saith old Jacob, is not reckoned so easy to translate as Ovid."--Vol. i., p. 379.

[279] Dryden, vol. i., p. 114.

[280] Dryden, vol. i., p. 203.

[281] Poems on State Affairs, vol. i., p. 99.

[282] Spence's 'Anecdotes,' p. 263.

[283] Spence's 'Anecdotes,' p. 59.

[284] Vol. xv., p. 218.

[285] Spence, p. 263.

[286] Ibid., p. 286.

[287] Boswell, vol. i., p. 373.

[288] Boswell, vol. iii., p. 378.

[289] It is still so called by many of the poorer orders, who are oftener in the right in their old English than is suspected. Some of them call it Common Garden, which is a better corruption than its present one.