Club Life of London Volume Ii Part 9

GEORGE'S COFFEE-HOUSE,

No. 213, Strand, near Temple Bar, was a noted resort in the last and present century. When it was a coffee-house, one day, there came in Sir James Lowther, who after changing a piece of silver with the coffee-woman, and paying twopence for his dish of coffee, was helped into his chariot, for he was very lame and infirm, and went home: some little time afterwards, he returned to the same coffee-house, on purpose to acquaint the woman who kept it, that she had given him a bad half-penny, and demanded another in exchange for it. Sir James had about 40,000_l._ per annum, and was at a loss whom to appoint his heir.

Shenstone, who found

"The warmest welcome at an inn,"

found George's to be economical. "What do you think," he writes, "must be my expense, who love to pry into everything of the kind? Why, truly one s.h.i.+lling. My company goes to George's Coffee-house, where, for that small subscription I read all pamphlets under a three s.h.i.+llings'

dimension; and indeed, any larger would not be fit for coffee-house perusal." Shenstone relates that Lord Orford was at George's, when the mob that were carrying his Lords.h.i.+p in effigy, came into the box where he was, to beg money of him, amongst others: this story Horace Walpole contradicts, adding that he supposes Shenstone thought that after Lord Orford quitted his place, he went to the coffee-house to learn news.

Arthur Murphy frequented George's, "where the town wits met every evening." Lloyd, the law-student, sings:--

"By law let others toil to gain renown!

Florio's a gentleman, a man o' the town.

He nor courts clients, or the law regarding, Hurries from Nando's down to Covent Garden, Yet, he's a scholar; mark him in the pit, With critic catcall sound the stops of wit!

Supreme at George's, he harangues the throng, Censor of style, from tragedy to song."

THE PERCY COFFEE-HOUSE,

Rathbone-place, Oxford-street, no longer exists; but it will be kept in recollection for its having given name to one of the most popular publications, of its cla.s.s, in our time, namely, the _Percy Anecdotes_, "by Sholto and Reuben Percy, Brothers of the Benedictine Monastery of Mont Benger," in 44 parts, commencing in 1820. So said the t.i.tle pages, but the names and the locality were _suppose_. Reuben Percy was Thomas Byerley, who died in 1824; he was the brother of Sir John Byerley, and the first editor of the _Mirror_, commenced by John Limbird, in 1822. Sholto Percy was Joseph Clinton Robertson, who died in 1852; he was the projector of the _Mechanics' Magazine_, which he edited from its commencement to his death. The name of the collection of Anecdotes was not taken, as at the time supposed, from the popularity of the _Percy Reliques_, but from the Percy Coffee-house, where Byerley and Robertson were accustomed to meet to talk over their joint work. The _idea_ was, however, claimed by Sir Richard Phillips, who stoutly maintained that it originated in a suggestion made by him to Dr. Tilloch and Mr. Mayne, to cut the anecdotes from the many years' files of the _Star_ newspaper, of which Dr. Tilloch was the editor, and Mr. Byerley a.s.sistant editor; and to the latter overhearing the suggestion, Sir Richard contested, might the _Percy Anecdotes_ be traced. They were very successful, and a large sum was realized by the work.

PEELE'S COFFEE-HOUSE,

Nos. 177 and 178, Fleet-street, east corner of Fetter-lane, was one of the Coffee-houses of the Johnsonian period; and here was long preserved a portrait of Dr. Johnson, on the key-stone of a chimney-piece, stated to have been painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Peele's was noted for files of newspapers from these dates: _Gazette_, 1759; _Times_, 1780; _Morning Chronicle_, 1773; _Morning Post_, 1773; _Morning Herald_, 1784; _Morning Advertiser_, 1794; and the evening papers from their commencement. The house is now a tavern.

Taverns.

THE TAVERNS OF OLD LONDON.

The changes in the manners and customs of our metropolis may be agreeably gathered from such glimpses as we gain of the history of "houses of entertainment" in the long lapse of centuries. Their records present innumerable pictures in little of society and modes, the interest of which is increased by distance. They show us how the tavern was the great focus of news long before the newspaper fully supplied the intellectual want. Much of the business of early times was transacted in taverns, and it is to some extent in the present day. According to the age, the tavern reflects the manners, the social tastes, customs, and recreations; and there, in days when travelling was difficult and costly, and not unattended with danger, the traveller told his wondrous tale to many an eager listener; and the man who rarely strayed beyond his own parish, was thus made acquainted with the life of the world. Then, the old tavern combined, with much of the comfort of an English home, its luxuries, without the forethought of providing either. Its come-and-go life presented many a useful lesson to the man who looked beyond the cheer of the moment.

The master, or taverner, was mostly a person of substance, often of ready wit and cheerful manners--to render his public home attractive.

The "win-hous," or tavern, is enumerated among the houses of entertainment in the time of the Saxons; and no doubt existed in England much earlier. The peg-tankard, a specimen of which we see in the Ashmolean Collection at Oxford, originated with the Saxons; the pegs inside denoted how deep each guest was to drink: hence arose the saying, "he is a peg too low," when a man was out of spirits. The Danes were even more convivial in their habits than the Saxons, and may be presumed to have multiplied the number of "guest houses," as the early taverns were called. The Norman followers of the Conqueror soon fell into the good cheer of their predecessors in England.

Although wine was made at this period in great abundance from vineyards in various parts of England, the trade of the taverns was princ.i.p.ally supplied from France. The traffic for Bordeaux and the neighbouring provinces is said to have commenced about 1154, through the marriage of Henry II. with Eleanor of Aquitaine. The Normans were the great carriers, and Guienne the place whence most of our wines were brought; and which are described in this reign to have been sold in the s.h.i.+ps and in the wine-cellars near the public place of cookery, on the banks of the Thames. We are now speaking of the customs of seven centuries since; of which the public wine-cellar, known to our time as _the Shades_, adjoining old London Bridge, was unquestionably a relic.

The earliest dealers in wines were of two descriptions: the _vintners_, or importers; and the _taverners_, who kept taverns for them, and sold the wine by retail to such as came to the tavern to drink it, or fetched it to their own homes.

In a doc.u.ment of the reign of Edward II., we find mentioned a tenement called Pin Tavern, situated in the Vintry, where the Bordeaux merchants _craned_ their wines out of lighters, and other vessels on the Thames; and here was the famous old tavern with the sign of the _Three Cranes_. Chaucer makes the apprentice of this period loving better the tavern than the shop:--

"A prentis whilom dwelt in our citee,-- At ev'ry bridale would he sing and hoppe; He loved bet' the _tavern_ than the shoppe, For when ther any riding was in Chepe, Out of the shoppe thider would he lepe; And til that he had all the sight ysein And dancid wil, he wold not com agen."

Thus, the idle City apprentice was a great tavern haunter, which was forbidden in his indenture; and to this day, the apprentice's indenture enacts that he shall not "haunt taverns."

In a play of 1608, the apprentices of old Hobson, a rich citizen, in 1560, frequent the _Rose and Crown_, in the Poultry, and the _Dagger_, in Cheapside.

"_Enter Hobson, Two Prentices, and a Boy._

"1 PREN. Prithee, fellow Goodman, set forth the ware, and looke to the shop a little. I'll but drink a cup of wine with a customer, at the Rose and Crown in the Poultry, and come again presently.

"2 PREN. I must needs step to the _Dagger in Cheape_, to send a letter into the country unto my father. Stay, boy, you are the youngest prentice; look you to the shop."

In the reign of Richard II., it was ordained by statute that "the wines of Gascoine, of Osey, and of Spain," as well as Rhenish wines, should not be sold above sixpence the gallon; and the taverners of this period frequently became very rich, and filled the highest civic offices, as sheriffs and mayors. The fraternity of vintners and taverners, anciently the Merchant Wine Tonners of Gascoyne, became the Craft of Vintners, incorporated by Henry VI. as the Vintners' Company.

The curious old ballad of London Lyckpenny, written in the reign of Henry V., by Lydgate, a monk of Bury, confirms the statement of the prices in the reign of Richard II. He comes to Cornhill, when the wine-drawer of the Pope's Head tavern, standing without the street-door, it being the custom of drawers thus to waylay pa.s.sengers, takes the man by the hand, and says,--"Will you drink a pint of wine?"

whereunto the countryman answers, "A penny spend I may," and so drank his wine. "For bread nothing did he pay"--for that was given in. This is Stow's account: the ballad makes the taverner, not the drawer, invite the countryman; and the latter, instead of getting bread for nothing, complains of having to go away hungry:--

"The taverner took me by the sleeve, 'Sir,' saith he, 'will you our wine a.s.say?'

I answered, 'That cannot much me grieve, A penny can do no more than it may;'

I drank a pint, and for it did pay; Yet, sore a-hungered from thence I yede, And, wanting money, I could not speed," etc.

There was no eating at taverns at this time, beyond a crust to relish the wine; and he who wished to dine before he drank, had to go to the cook's.

The furnis.h.i.+ng of the Boar's Head, in Eastcheap, with sack, in Henry IV., is an anachronism of Shakspeare's; for the vintners kept neither sacks, muscadels, malmseys, b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, alicants, nor any other wines but white and claret, until 1543. All the other sweet wines before that time, were sold at the apothecaries' shops for no other use but for medicine.

Taking it as the picture of a tavern a century later, we see the alterations which had taken place. The single drawer or taverner of Lydgate's day is now changed to a troop of waiters, besides the under skinker, or tapster. Eating was no longer confined to the cook's row, for we find in Falstaff's bill "a capon 2_s._ 2_d._; sack, two gallons, 5_s._ 8_d._; anchovies and sack, after supper, 2_s._ 6_d._; bread, one halfpenny." And there were evidently _different rooms_[27]

for the guests, as Francis[28] bids a brother waiter "Look down in the Pomgranite;" for which purpose they had windows, or loopholes, affording a view from the upper to the lower apartments. The custom of naming the princ.i.p.al rooms in taverns and hotels is usual to the present day.

Taverns and wine-bibbing had greatly increased in the reign of Edward VI., when it was enacted by statute that no more than 8_d._ a gallon should be taken for any French wines, and the consumption limited in private houses to ten gallons each person yearly; that there should not be "any more or great number of taverns in London of such tavernes or wine sellers by retaile, above the number of fouretye tavernes or wyne sellers," being less than two, upon an average to each parish.

Nor did this number much increase afterwards; for in a return made to the Vintners' Company, late in Elizabeth's reign, there were only one hundred and sixty-eight taverns in the whole city and suburbs.

It seems to have been the fas.h.i.+on among old ballad-mongers, street chroniclers, and journalists, to sing the praises of the taverns in rough-shod verse, and that lively rhyme which, in our day, is termed "patter." Here are a few specimens, of various periods.

In a black-letter poem of Queen Elizabeth's reign, ent.i.tled _Newes from Bartholomew Fayre_, there is this curious enumeration:

"There hath been great sale and utterance of Wine, Besides Beere, and Ale, and Ipocras fine, In every country, region, and nation, But chiefly in Billingsgate, at the _Salutation_; And the _Bore's Head_, near London Stone; The _Swan_ at Dowgate, a tavern well knowne; The _Miter_ in Cheape, and then the _Bull Head_; And many like places that make noses red; The _Bore's Head_ in Old Fish-street; _Three Cranes_ in the Vintry; And now, of late, St. Martins in the Sentree; The _Windmill_ in Lothbury; the _s.h.i.+p_ at th' Exchange; _King's Head_ in New Fish-street, where roysterers do range; The _Mermaid_ in Cornhill; _Red Lion_ in the Strand; _Three Tuns_ in Newgate Market; Old Fish-street at the _Swan_."

This enumeration omits the Mourning Bush, adjoining Aldersgate, containing divers large rooms and lodgings, and shown in Aggas's plan of London, in 1560. There are also omitted The Pope's Head, The London Stone, The Dagger, The Rose and Crown, etc. Several of the above _Signs_ have been continued to our time in the very places mentioned; but nearly all the original buildings were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666; and the few which escaped have been re-built, or so altered, that their former appearance has altogether vanished.

The following list of taverns is given by Thomas Heywood, the author of the fine old play of _A Woman killed with Kindness_. Heywood, who wrote in 1608, is telling us what particular houses are frequented by particular cla.s.ses of people:--

"The Gentry to the King's Head, The n.o.bles to the Crown, The Knights unto the Golden Fleece, And to the Plough the Clown.

The churchman to the Mitre, The shepherd to the Star, The gardener hies him to the Rose, To the Drum the man of war; To the Feathers, ladies you; the Globe The seaman doth not scorn; The usurer to the Devil, and The townsman to the Horn.

The huntsman to the White Hart, To the s.h.i.+p the merchants go, But you who do the Muses love, The sign called River Po.

The banquerout to the World's End, The fool to the Fortune Pie, Unto the Mouth the oyster-wife, The fiddler to the Pie.

The punk unto the c.o.c.katrice, The Drunkard to the Vine, The beggar to the Bush, then meet, And with Duke Humphrey dine."

In the _British Apollo_ of 1710, is the following doggrel:--

"I'm amused at the signs, As I pa.s.s through the town, To see the odd mixture-- A Magpie and Crown, The Whale and the Crow, The Razor and the Hen, The Leg and Seven Stars, The Axe and the Bottle, The Tun and the Lute, The Eagle and Child, The Shovel and Boot."