Yates was born in 1797. He made his début at Covent Garden as Iago in 1818. He was very versatile, and triumphed alternately in tragedy, comedy, farce, and melodrama. A critic of 1834 says, “Mr. Yates is occasionally capital, and always respectable. In burlesque he is excellent, but a little too broad, and given to an exaggeration which is sometimes vulgar. He is a better buck than fop, and a better rake than either, were he more refined.”
John Reeve was another of the Adelphi celebrities. He was born in 1799, and was originally a clerk at a Fleet Street banking-house. He appeared first at Drury Lane in 1819 as Sylvester Daggerwood. His imitations were pronounced perfect, and he soon rose to great celebrity in broad farce, burlesque, and the comic parts of melodrama. Lord Grizzle, Bombastes, and Pedrillo, were favourite early characters of his. He was considered too heavy for Caleb Quotem, and not quiet enough for Paul Pry. Liston excelled him in the one, and Harley in the other.
Benjamin Webster was born at Bath in 1800. He took the management of the Haymarket in 1837, and built the New Adelphi Theatre in 1858. In melodrama Mr. Webster excels. His best parts are—Lavater, Tartuffe, Belphegor, Triplet, and Pierre Leroux in “The Poor Stroller.” He is excellent in poor authors and strolling players, and achieved a great triumph in Mr. Watts Philips’s play of “The Dead Heart.” He is energetic and forcible, but he has a bad hoarse voice, and he protracts and details his part so elaborately as often to become tedious.
In 1844 Madame Celeste, who in 1837 had appeared at Drury Lane on her return from America, was directress of the Adelphi. She then left and took the Lyceum, which she held until the close of 1860-1.
The old Adelphi closed in June 1858. Although a small and incommodious house, it had long earned a special fame of its own. It began its career with “True Blue Scott,” and went on with Rodwell and Jones during the “Tom and Jerry” mania, when young men about town wrenched off knockers, knocked down old men who were paid to apprehend thieves, and attended beggars’ suppers. Under Terry and Yates, Buckstone and Fitzball produced pieces in which T. P. Cooke, O. Smith, Wilkinson, and Tyrone Power shone (this actor was drowned in 1841). There also flourished Wright, Paul Bedford, Mrs. Yates, and Mrs. Keeley, in “The Pilot,” “The Flying Dutchman,” “The Wreck Ashore,” “Victorine,” “Rory O’More,” and “Jack Sheppard,”[342]—the last of these a play to be branded as a demoralising apotheosis of a clever thief.
In 1844 Mr. Webster became proprietor of the Adelphi, and Madame Celeste, a good melodramatic actress, became the directress. Then was brought out that crowning triumph of the theatre, “The Green Bushes,” by Mr. Buckstone—a tremendous success.
Among the greatest “hits” at the Adelphi have been of later years Mr. Watts Philips’s “Dead Heart,” a powerful melodrama of the French Revolution period, Miss Bateman’s “Leah,” an American-German play of the old school, and “The Colleen Bawn,” Mr. Boucicault’s clever dramatic version of poor Gerald Griffin’s novel, full of fine melodramatic situations.
The old town house of the Earls of Bedford stood on the site of the present Southampton Street, and was taken down in 1704, in Queen Anne’s reign. It was a large house with a courtyard before it, and a spacious garden with a terrace walk.[343] Before this house was built the Bedford family lived at the opposite side of the Strand, in the Bishop of Carlisle’s inn, which, in 1598, was called Russell or Bedford House.[344] In 1704 the family removed to Bloomsbury. The neighbouring streets were christened by this family. Russell Street bears their family name, and Tavistock Street their second title.
Garrick lived at No. 36 Southampton Street before he went to the Adelphi. In 1755, to give himself some rest, he brought out a magnificent ballet pantomime, called “The Chinese Festival,” composed by “the great Noverre.” Unfortunately for Garrick, war had just broken out between England and France, and the pit and gallery condemned the Popish dancers in spite of King George II. and the quality. Gentlemen in the boxes drew their swords, leaped down into the pit, and were bruised and beaten. The galleries looked on and pelted both sides. The ladies urged fresh recruits against the pit, and each fresh levy was mauled. The pit broke up benches, tore down hangings, smashed mirrors, split the harpsichords, and storming the stage, cut and slashed the scenery.[345] The rioters then sallied out to Mr. Garrick’s house (now Eastey’s Hotel) in Southampton Street, and broke every window from basement to garret.
Mrs. Oldfield, who lived in Southampton Street, was the daughter of an officer, and so reduced as to be obliged to live with a relation who kept the Mitre Tavern in St. James’s Market. She was overheard by Mr. Farquhar reading a comedy, and recommended by him to Sir John Vanbrugh. She was excellent as Lady Brute and also as Lady Townley. She died in 1730; her body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and was afterwards buried in the Abbey. Lord Hervey and Bubb Doddington supported her pall. Her corpse, by her own request, was richly adorned with lace—a vanity which Pope ridiculed in those bitter lines—
“One would not sure be ugly when one’s dead;
And, Betty, give this cheek a little red.”
In 1712 Arthur Maynwaring, in his will, describes this street as New Southampton Street.
Bedford Street was first so named in 1766 by the Paving Commissioners. The lower part of the street was called Half-Moon Street; after the fire of London it became fashionable with mercers, lacemen, and drapers.[346] The lower part of the street is in the parish of St. Martin’s in the Fields, the upper in that of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden. In the overseers’ accounts of St. Martin’s mention is made of the names of persons who were fined in 1665 for drinking on the Lord’s Day at the Half-Moon Tavern in this street, also for carrying linen, for shaving customers, for carrying home venison or a pair of shoes, and for swearing. Sir Charles Sedley and the Duke of Buckingham were fined by the Puritans in 1657-58 for riding in their coaches on that day.[347] Ned Ward, the witty publican, in his London Spy, mentions the Half-Moon Tavern in this street.
On the eastern side of the same street, in 1645, lived Remigius van Limput, a Dutch painter, who, at the sale of King Charles’s pictures, bought Vandyke’s florid masterpiece, now at Windsor, of the king on horseback. After the Restoration he was compelled to disgorge it. Had this grand picture been the portrait of any better king, Cromwell would not have parted with it.
The witty bulky Quin lived here from 1749 to 1752. It was in 1749 that this great tragedian, reappearing after a retirement, performed in his friend Thomson’s posthumous play of “Coriolanus.” Good-natured Quin had once rescued the fat lazy poet from a sponging-house. It was about this time that the great elocutionist was instructing Prince George in recitation. When, afterwards, as king, he delivered his first speech successfully in Parliament, the actor exclaimed triumphantly, “Sir, it was I taught the boy.”
On the west side, at No. 15, lived Chief “Justice” Richardson, the humourist. He died in 1635. The interior of the house is ancient. Sir Francis Kynaston, an esquire of the body to Charles I., and author of Leoline and Sydanis, lived in this street in 1637. He died in 1642. The Earl of Chesterfield, one of Grammont’s gay and heartless gallants, lived in Bedford Street in 1656. In the same street, in his old age, at the house of his son, a rich silk-mercer, dwelt Kynaston, the great actor of Charles II.’s time, so well known for his female characters. Thomas Sheridan, the lecturer on elocution, the son of Swift’s friend, and the father of the wit and orator, lived in Bedford Street, facing Henrietta Street and the south side of Covent Garden. Here Dr. Johnson often visited him. “One day,” says Mr. Whyte, “we were standing together at the drawing-room window expecting Johnson, who was to dine with us.[348] Mr. Sheridan asked me could I see the length of the garden. ‘No, sir.’ ‘Take out your opera-glass then: Johnson is coming, you may know him by his gait.’ I perceived him at a good distance, walking along with a peculiar solemnity of deportment, and an awkward, measured sort of step. At that time the broad flagging at each side of the streets was not universally adopted, and stone posts were in fashion to prevent the annoyance of carriages. Upon every post, as he passed along, I could observe he deliberately laid his hand; but missing one of them, when he had got to some distance he seemed suddenly to recollect himself, and immediately returning back, carefully performed the accustomed ceremony, and resumed his former course, not omitting one, till he gained the crossing. This, Mr. Sheridan assured me, however odd it might appear, was his constant practice, but why or wherefore he could not inform me.” This eccentric habit of Johnson, the result of hypochondriacal nervousness, is also mentioned by Boswell.
EXETER CHANGE, 1821.
Richard Wilson, the great landscape-painter—“Red-nosed Dick,” as he was familiarly called—was a great ally of Mortimer, “the English Salvator.” They used to meet over a pot of porter at the Constitution, Bedford Street. Mortimer, who was a coarse joker, used to make Dr. Arne, the composer of “Rule Britannia,” who had a red face and staring eyes, very angry by telling him that his eyes looked like two oysters just opened for sauce, and put on an oval side dish of beetroot.
Close to the Lowther Arcade there is one of those large cafés that are becoming features in modern London. It was started by an Italian named Carlo Gatti. There you may see refugees of all countries, playing at dominoes, sipping coffee, or groaning over the wrongs of their native land and their own exile. No music is allowed in this large hall, because it might interfere with the week-day services at St. Martin’s Church.
TITUS OATES IN THE PILLORY.
CHAPTER IX.
CHARING CROSS.
On July 20, 1864, was laid the first stone of the great Thames Embankment, which now forms the wall of our river from Blackfriars to Westminster. A couple of flags fluttered lazily over the stone as a straggling procession of the members of the Metropolitan Board of Works moved down to the wooden causeway leading to the river. For two years about a thousand men were at work on it night and day. Iron caissons were sunk below the mud, deep in the gravel, and within ten feet of the clay which is the real foundation of London, and the Victoria Embankment rose gradually into being. It was opened by Royalty in the summer of 1870. This scheme, originally sketched out by Wren, was designed by Colonel Trench, M.P., and also by Martin the painter; but it was never carried out until the days of Lord Palmerston and the Metropolitan Board of Works. Its piers, its flights of steps, its broad highway covering a railway, its gardens, its terraces, are complete; and when the buildings along it are finished London may for the first time claim to compare itself in architectural grandeur with Nineveh, Rome, or modern Paris.
Northumberland House, which faced Charing Cross, covering the site of Northumberland Avenue, was a good but dull specimen of Jacobean architecture; it was built by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, son of the poet Earl of Surrey, about 1605.[349] Walpole attributes the building to Bernard Jansen, a Fleming, and an imitator of Dieterling, and to Gerard Christmas, the designer of Aldersgate. Jansen probably built the house, which was of brick, and Christmas added the stone frontispiece, which was profusely ornamented with rich carved scrolls, and an open parapet worked into letters and other devices. John Thorpe is also supposed to have been associated in the work; and plans of both the quadrangles of this enormous palace are preserved among the Soane MSS.[350] Jansen was the architect of Audley End, in Essex, one of the wonders of the age. Thorpe built Burghley. The front was originally 162 feet long, the court 82 feet square; as Inigo Jones has noted in a copy of Palladio preserved at Worcester College, Oxford.
The Earl of Northampton left the house by his will, in 1614, to his nephew, Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, who died in 1626. This was the father of the memorable Frances, Countess of Essex and Somerset; and from him the house took the name of Suffolk House, till the marriage in 1642 of Elizabeth, daughter of Theophilus, second Earl of Suffolk, with Algernon Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland, when it changed its name accordingly.
Dorothy, sister of the rash and ungrateful Earl of Essex, whose violence and follies nothing less than the executioner’s axe could cure, married the “wizard” Earl of Northumberland, as he was called, whom “she led the life of a dog, till he indignantly turned her out of doors.” He was afterwards engaged in the Gunpowder Plot, being angry with the Government that had overlooked him. “His name was used and his money spent by the conspirators; one of his servants hired the vault, and procured the lease of Vineyard House. Thomas Percy, his kinsman and steward, supped with him on the very night of the plot. His servant, Sir Dudley Carleton, who hired the house, was thrust into the Tower, and the earl joined him there not long after; but Cecil was either unable or unwilling to touch his life.”[351] Northumberland, with Cobham and Raleigh, had before this engaged in schemes with the French against the Government. Thomas Percy had been beheaded for plotting with Mary. Henry Percy had shot himself while in the Tower, on account of the Throckmorton Conspiracy. Compounding for a fine of £11,000, the earl devoted himself in the Tower to scientific and literary pursuits, and gave annuities to six or seven eminent mathematicians, who ate at his table. In 1611 he was again examined, and finally released in 1617. The king’s favourite, Hay, afterwards Earl of Carlisle, had married the earl’s daughter Lucy against his will, which so irritated him that he was with difficulty persuaded to accept his own release, because it was obtained through the intercession of Hay.
Joceline Percy, son of Algernon, dying in 1670, without issue male, Northumberland House became the property of his only daughter Elizabeth Percy, the heiress of the Percy estates. Her first husband was Henry Cavendish, Earl of Ogle; her second, Thomas Thynne, of Longleat, in Wilts, who was shot in his coach in Pall Mall, on Sunday, February 12, 1681-2; her third husband was Charles Seymour, the proud Duke of Somerset, who married her in 1682. This lady was twice a widow and three times a wife before the age of seventeen.
The “proud” duke and duchess lived in great state and magnificence at Northumberland House. The duchess died in 1722, and the duke followed in 1748. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Algernon, Earl of Hertford, and the seventh Duke of Somerset, who was created Earl of Northumberland in 1749, with remainder, failing issue male, to his son-in-law, Sir Hugh Smithson, who in 1766 was raised to the dukedom. The lion which country cousins for two centuries remember to have crowned the central gateway of the duke’s house, represented the Percy crest. It is of this stiff-tailed animal, for the exact angle of the tail is treated by heralds as a matter of the most vital importance, that the old story imputed to Sheridan is told. Probably some audacious wit did once collect a London crowd by declaring that its tail wagged—but certainly it was not Sheridan.
Tom Thynne, or, as he was called, “Tom of Ten Thousand,” was shot at the east end of Pall Mall, opposite the Opera Arcade, by Borosky, a Polish soldier urged on by Count Königsmark, a Swedish adventurer, son of one of Gustavus’s old generals, and who was enraged with Thynne for having just married the youthful widow of the Earl of Ogle, Lady Elizabeth Percy. Thynne was a favourite of the Duke of Monmouth. Shaftesbury had been lately released from the Tower, in spite of Dryden’s onslaught on him as “Achitophel,” on the foolish duke as “Absalom,” and on Thynne as “Issachar,” his wealthy western friend. The three murderers were hanged in Pall Mall, but their master strangely escaped, partly owing to the influence of Charles II. The count, who had shown great courage at Tangier against the Moors, and had boarded a Turkish galley at his eminent peril, died in 1686, at the battle of Argos in the Morea. His younger brother was assassinated at Hanover, on suspicion of an intrigue with Sophia of Zell, the young and beautiful wife of the Elector, afterwards George I. of England.[352]
The Earl of Northampton, Surrey’s son, who built Northumberland House (as Osborne, who loved scandal, says with Spanish gold), seems to have been an unscrupulous time-server, flatterer, and parasite. In 1596 he wrote to Burleigh, and spoke of his reverend awe at his lordship’s “piercing judgment;” yet a year after he writes a plotting letter to Burleigh’s great enemy, Essex, and says: “Your lordship by your last purchase hath almost enraged the dromedary that would have won the Queen of Sheba’s favour by bringing pearls. If you could once be so fortunate in dragging old Leviathan (Burghley) and his rich tortuosum colubrum (Sir Robert Cecil), as the prophet termeth them, out of their den of mischievous device, the better part of the world would prefer your virtue to that of Hercules.” The earl became a toady and creature of the infamous Carr, Earl of Somerset, and is thought to have died just in time to escape prosecution for the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower.[353]
It was shortly before Suffolk House changed its name that it became the scene of one of Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s mad Quixotic quarrels. His chivalrous lordship had had sundry ague fits, which had made him so lean and yellow that scarce any man could recognise him. Walking towards Whitehall he one day met a Mr. Emerson, who had spoken very disgraceful words of Lord Herbert’s friend, Sir Robert Harley. Lord Herbert therefore, sensible of the dishonour, took Emerson by his long beard, and then, stepping aside, drew his sword; Captain Thomas Scriven being with Lord Herbert, and divers friends with Mr. Emerson. All who saw the quarrel wondered at the Welsh nobleman, weak and “consumed” as he was, offering to fight; however, Emerson ran and took shelter in Suffolk House, and afterwards complained to the Lords in Council, who sent for Lord Herbert, the lean, yellow Welsh Quixote, but did not so much reprehend him for defending the honour of his friend as for adventuring to fight, being at the same time in such weak health.[354]
Algernon, the tenth Earl of Northumberland, is called by Clarendon “the proudest man alive.” He had been Lord High Admiral to King Charles I., and was appointed general against the Scotch Covenanters, but, being unable to take the command from ill health, gave up his commission. He gradually fell away from the king’s cause, but nevertheless refused to continue High Admiral against the king’s wish. He treated the Dukes of York and Gloucester and the Princess Elizabeth with “such consideration” that they were removed from his care, and from that time he turned Royalist again.
Sir John Suckling refers to Suffolk House in his exquisite little poem on the wedding of Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, with Lady Margaret Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk. The well known poem begins—
“At Charing-cross, hard by the way
Where we (thou know’st) do sell our hay,
There is a house with stairs.”
And then the gay and graceful poet goes on to sketch Lady Margaret—
“Her lips were red, and one was thin,
Compared with that was next her chin.
Some bee had stung it newly.”
And then follows that delightful, fantastic simile, comparing her feet to little mice creeping in and out her petticoat.[355] Sir John was born in 1609.
The oldest part of Northumberland House was the Strand entrance. This was crowned, as stated above, by a frieze or balustrade of large stone letters, probably including the name and titles of the earl and the glorified name of the architect. At the funeral of Anne of Denmark, 1619, a young man, named Appleyard, was killed by the fall of the letter S[356] from the house, which was then occupied by the Earl of Strafford, Lord Treasurer. The house was originally only three sides of a quadrangle, the river side remaining open to the gardens; but traffic and noise increasing, the quadrangle was completed along the river side and the principal apartments. There is a drawing by Hollar of the house in his time, and another, a century later, by Canaletti. The new front towards the gardens was spoiled by a clumsy stone staircase, which was attributed to Inigo Jones, but probably incorrectly.
The date, 1746, on the façade referred to the repairs made in that year, and the letters “A. S. P. N.” stood for Algernon Somerset, Princeps Northumbriæ. The lion over the gateway was said to be a copy of one by Michael Angelo; it is now at Sion House, Isleworth. The gateway was covered with ornaments and trophies. Double ranges of grotesque pilasters enclosed eight niches on the sides, and there was a bow window and an open arch above the chief gate. Between each of the fourteen niches in the front there were trophies of crossed weapons, and the upper stories had twenty-four windows, in two ranges, and pierced battlements. Each wing terminated in a little cupola, and the angles had rustic quoins. The quadrangle within the gate was simpler and in better taste, and the house was screened from the river by elm trees.[357]
There used to be a schoolboy tradition, prevalent at King’s College in the author’s time, that one of the niches in the front of Northumberland House was of copper and movable. So far the story was true; but the tradition went on to relate how, once upon a time, a certain enemy of the house of Percy obtained secret admission by this niche and murdered one of the dukes, his enemy. History is, however, fortunately, quite silent on this subject.
In February 1762 Horace Walpole and a party of quality set out from Northumberland House to hear the ghost in Cock Lane that Dr. Johnson exposed, and that Hogarth and Churchill ridiculed with pen and pencil. The Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, and Lord Hertford, all returned from the Opera with Horace Walpole, then changed their dress, and set out in a hackney coach. It rained hard, and the lane and house were “full of mob.” The room of the haunted house, small and miserable, was stuffed with eighty persons, and there was no light but one tallow candle. As clothes-lines hung from the ceiling, Walpole asked drily if there was going to be rope-dancing between the acts. They said the ghost would not come till 7 A.M., when only ’prentices and old women remained. The party stayed till half-past one. The Methodists had promised contributions, provisions were sent in like forage, and the neighbouring taverns and ale-houses were making their fortunes.[358]
On May 14, 1770, poor Chatterton, who suffered so terribly for the deceptions of his ambitious boyhood, writes from the King’s Bench (for the present) that a gentleman who knew him at the Chapter coffee-house, in Paternoster Row—frequented by authors and publishers—would have introduced him to the young Duke of Northumberland as a companion in his intended general tour, “but, alas! I spake no tongue but my own.”[359] But this is taken from a most questionable work, full of fictions and forgeries. Its author was a Bristol man, who afterwards fled to America. He also wrote a series of Conversations with the poets of the Lake school, many of which are too obviously imaginary.
On March 18, 1780, the Strand front of Northumberland House was totally destroyed by fire. The apartments of Dr. Percy, the Duke’s kinsman and chaplain, afterwards Bishop of Dromore and editor of the Reliques of Ancient Poetry were consumed; but great part of his library escaped.
Goldsmith’s simple-hearted ballad of Edwin and Angelina was originally “printed for the amusement of the Countess of Northumberland.” Two years after, Kenrick accused him in the papers of plagiarising it from Percy’s pasticcio from Shakspere in the Reliques, which was probably written in 1765.[360]
It is probable that Goldsmith often visited Percy, when acting as chaplain at Northumberland House. Sir John Hawkins, indeed, describes meeting the poet waiting for an audience in an outer room. At his own audience Hawkins mentioned that the doctor was waiting. On their way home together, Goldsmith told Hawkins that his lordship said that he had read the Traveller with delight, that he was going as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, and should be glad, as Goldsmith was an Irishman, to do him any kindness. Hawkins was enraptured at the rich man’s graciousness. But Goldsmith had mentioned only his brother, a clergyman there, who needed help. “As for myself,” he added, bitterly, “I have no dependence on the promises of great men. I look to the booksellers for support; they are my best friends, and I am not inclined to forsake them for others.” “Thus,” says Hawkins, “did this idiot in the affairs of the world trifle with his fortunes and put back the hand that was held out to assist him.” The earl told Percy, after Goldsmith’s death, that had he known how to help the poet he would have done so, or he would have procured him a salary on the Irish establishment that would have allowed him to travel. Let men of the world remember that the poet a few days before had been forced to borrow 15s. 6d. to meet his own wants.
This conversation took place in 1765. In 1771, when Goldsmith was stopping at Bath with his good-natured friend Lord Clare, he blundered by mistake at breakfast time into the next door on the same Parade, where the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland were staying. As he took no notice of them, but threw himself carelessly on a sofa, they supposed there was some mistake, and therefore entered into conversation with him, and when breakfast was served up, invited him to stay and partake of it. The poet, hot, stammering, and irrecoverably confused, withdrew with profuse apologies for his mistake, but not till he had accepted an invitation to dinner. This story, a parallel to the laughable blunder in She Stoops to Conquer, was told by the duchess herself to Dr. Percy.
It was probably of the first of these interviews that Goldsmith used to give the following account:—
“I dressed myself in the best manner I could, and, after studying some compliments I thought necessary on such an occasion, proceeded to Northumberland House, and acquainted the servants that I had particular business with the duke. They showed me into an ante-chamber, where, after waiting some time, a gentleman, very elegantly dressed, made his appearance. Taking him for the duke, I delivered all the fine things I had composed, in order to compliment him on the honour he had done me; when to my fear and astonishment, he told me I had mistaken him for his master, who would see me immediately. At that instant the duke came into the apartment, and I was so confounded on the occasion that I wanted words barely sufficient to express the sense I entertained of the duke’s politeness, and went away exceedingly chagrined at the blunder I had committed.”[361]
Dr. Waagen, the picture critic, seems to have been rather dazzled at the splendour of Northumberland House. He praises the magnificent staircase, lighted from above and reaching up through three stories, the white marble floors, the balustrades and chandeliers of gilt bronze, the cabinets of Florentine mosaic, and the arabesques of the drawing-room.[362] The great picture of the duke’s collection was the Cornaro family, by Titian; I believe from the Duke of Buckingham’s collection. It is a splendid specimen of the painter’s middle period and golden tone. The faces of the kneeling Cornari are grand, simple, senatorial, and devout. There was also a Saint Sebastian, by Guercino, “clear and careful,” and large as life; a fine Snyders and Vandyke; many copies by Mengs (particularly “The School of Athens”); and a good Schalcken, with his usual candlelight effect. The gem of all the English pictures was one by Dobson, Vandyke’s noble pupil. It contained the portrait of the painter and those of Sir Balthasar Gerbier, the architect, and Sir Charles Cotterell. The colour is as rich and juicy as Titian’s, the drapery learned and graceful, the faces are full of fire and spirit. Dobson died at the age of thirty-six. Sir Charles was his patron.[363] Vandyke is said to have disinterred Dobson from a garret, and recommended him to the king. Gerbier was a native of Antwerp, a painter, architect, and ambassador. This picture of Dobson was bought at Betterton’s sale for £44.[364] The gallery of the Duke of Northumberland was removed in 1875, when the house was demolished, to Sion House.
Northumberland House was connected with, at all events, one period of English history. In the year 1660, when General Monk was in quarters at Whitehall, the Earl of Northumberland, in the name of the nobility and gentry of England, invited him here to the first conference in which the restoration of the Stuarts was publicly talked of. Algernon Percy, the tenth earl, had been Lord High Admiral under Charles I.
That staunch, brave, crotchety man, Sir Harry Vane the younger (the son of Lord Strafford’s enemy), lived next door to Northumberland House, eastwards, in the Strand. The house in Charles II.’s time became the official residence of the Secretary of State, and Mr. Secretary Nicholas dwelt there, when meetings were held to found a commonwealth and put down that foolish, good-natured, incompetent Richard Cromwell. To the great Protector, Vane was a thorn in the flesh, for he wanted a republic when the nation required a stronger and more compact government. Oliver’s exclamation, “Oh, Sir Harry Vane! Sir Harry Vane!—The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!” expresses infinite vexation with an impracticable person. Vane was a “Fifth-monarchy man,” and believed in universal salvation. He must have been a good man, or Milton would never have addressed the sonnet to him in which he says—
“Therefore, on thy firm hand Religion leans
In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son.”
Sir Harry left behind him some very tough and dark treatises on prophecy, and other profound matters that few but angels or fools dare to meddle with.
There is a foolish tradition that Charing Cross was so named originally by Edward I. in memory of his chère reine. Peele, one of the glorious band of Elizabethan dramatists, helped to spread this tradition. He makes King Edward say—
“Erect a rich and stately carved cross,
Whereon her statue shall with glory shine;
And henceforth see you call it Charing Cross.
For why?—the chariest and the choicest queen
That ever did delight my royal eyes
There dwells in darkness.”[365]
The inconsolable widower, however, in spite of his costly grief, soon married again.
The truth is, there are in England one or two Charings; one of them is a village thirteen miles from Maidstone. “Ing” means meadow in Saxon.[366] The meaning of “Char” is uncertain; it may be the contraction of the name of some long-forgotten landowner, “rich in the possession of dirt.”[367] The Anglo-Saxon word cerre—a turn (says Mr. Robert Ferguson, an excellent authority), is retained in the name given in Carlisle and other northern towns to the chares, or wynds—small streets. In King Edward’s time Charing was bounded by fields, both north and west. There has been a good deal of nonsense, however, written about “the pleasant village of Charing.” In Aggas’s map, published under Elizabeth, Hedge Lane (now Whitcombe Street) is a country lane bordered with fields; so is the Haymarket, and all behind the Mews up to St. Martin’s Lane is equally rural.
Horne Tooke[368] derives the word Charing from the Saxon verb charan—to turn; but the etymology is still doubtful, however much the river may bend on its way to Westminster. However, doubtless, the place was named Charing as far back as the Saxon times.
It was Peele also who kept alive the old tradition of Queen Eleanor sinking at Charing Cross and rising again at Queenhithe. When falsely accused of her crimes, his heroine replies in the words of a rude old ballad well known in Elizabeth’s time—
“If that upon so vile a thing
Her heart did ever think,
She wished the ground might open wide,
And therein she might sink.
With that at Charing Cross she sank
Into the ground alive,
And after rose with life again,
In London at Queenhithe.”[369]
The Eleanor crosses were erected at Lincoln, Geddington, Northampton, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Albans, Waltham, Cheap, and Charing. Three only now remain,—Northampton, Geddington, and Waltham. Charing Cross was probably the most costly; it was octagonal, and was adorned with statues in tiers of niches, which were crowned with pinnacles. It was begun by Master Richard de Crundale, “cementarius,” but he died about 1293, before it was finished, and the work went on under the supervision of Roger de Crundale. Richard received about £500 for his work, exclusive of materials furnished him, and Roger £90: 7: 5. The stone was brought from Caen, and the marble steps from Corfe in Dorsetshire. Only one foreigner was employed on all the crosses, and he was a Frenchman. The Abbot Ware brought mosaics, porphyry, and perhaps designs from Italy, but there is no proof that he brought over Cavallini. A replica of the original cross, designed by Mr. Barry, has been erected at the west end of the Strand, opposite the Charing Cross Railway Station and Hotel.
The cluster of houses at Charing acquired the name of Cross from the monument set up by Edward I. to the memory of his gentle, pious, and brave wife Eleanor, the sister of Alphonso, King of Castille. This good woman was the daughter of Ferdinand III., and after the death of her mother, heiress of Ponthieu. She bore to her fond husband four sons and eleven daughters, of whom only three are supposed to have survived their father.
Queen Eleanor died at Hardley, near Lincoln, in 1290. The king followed the funeral to Westminster, and afterwards erected a cross to his wife’s memory at every place where the corpse rested for the night. In the circular which the king sent on the occasion to his prelates and nobles, he trusts that prayers may be offered for her soul at these crosses, so that any stains not purged from her, either from forgetfulness or other causes, may through the plenitude of the Divine grace be removed.[370] It was Queen Eleanor who, when Edward was stabbed at Acre, by an emissary of the Emir of Joppa, according to a Spanish historian,[371] sucked the poison from the wounds at the risk of her own life.
This warlike king, who subdued Wales and Scotland, who expelled the Jews from England, who hunted Bruce, hanged Wallace, and who finally died on his march to crush Scotland, had a deep affection for his wife, and strove by all that art could do to preserve her memory.
Old Charing Cross was long supposed to have been built from the designs of Pietro Cavallini, a contemporary of Giotto. He is said to have assisted that painter in the great mosaic picture over the chief entrance of St. Peter’s. But there is little ground for accepting the tradition as true, though asserted by Vertue, as we learn from Horace Walpole’s ‘Anecdotes.’ Cavallini was born in 1279, and died in 1364. The monument to Henry III. at the Abbey, and the old paintings round the chapel of St. Edward are also attributed to this patriarch of art by Vertue.[372]
Queen Eleanor had three tombs—one in Lincoln Cathedral, over her viscera; another in the church of the Blackfriars in London, over her heart; a third in Westminster Abbey, over the rest of her body. The first was destroyed by the Parliamentarians; the second probably perished at the dissolution of the monasteries; the third has escaped. It is a valuable example of the thirteenth century beau-ideal. The tomb was the work of William Torel, a London goldsmith. The statue is not a portrait statue any more than the statue of Henry III. by the same artist. Torel seems to have received for his whole work about £1700 of our money.[373]
The beautiful cross, with its pinnacles and statues, was demolished in 1647 under an order of the House of Commons, which had remained dormant for three years; and at the same time fell its brother cross in Cheapside.
The Royalist ballad-mongers, eager to catch the Puritans tripping, produced a lively street song on the occasion, beginning—
“Undone, undone the lawyers are,
They wander about the town,
Nor can find the way to Westminster,
Now Charing Cross is down.
At the end of the Strand they make a stand,
Swearing they are at a loss,
And chaffing say that’s not the way,
They must go by Charing Cross.”
The ballad-writer goes on to deny that the Cross ever spoke a word against the Parliament, though he confesses it might have inclined to Popery; for certain it was that it “never went to church.”
The workmen were engaged for three months in pulling down the Cross.[374] Some of the stones went to form the pavement before Whitehall; others were polished to look like marble, and were sold to antiquaries for knife-handles. The site remained vacant for thirty-one years.
After the Restoration Charing Cross was turned into a place of execution. Here Hugh Peters, Cromwell’s chaplain, and Major-General Harrison, the sturdy Anabaptist, Colonel Jones, and Colonel Scrope were executed. They all died bravely, without a doubt or a fear.
Harrison was the son of a Staffordshire farmer, and had fought bravely at the siege of Basing; he had been major-general in Scotland; had helped Cromwell at the disbanding of the Rump; had served in the Council of State; and finally having expressed honest Anabaptist scruples about the Protectorate, had been imprisoned to prevent rebellion. Cromwell’s son Oliver had been captain in Harrison’s regiment.[375] As he was led to the scaffold some base scullion called out to the brave old Ironside, “Where is your good old cause now?” Harrison replied with a cheerful smile, clapping his hand on his breast, “Here it is, and I am going to seal it with my blood.” When he came in sight of the gallows he was transported with joy; his servant asked him how he did? He answered, “Never better in my life.” His servant told him, “Sir, there is a crown of glory prepared for you.”[376] “Yes,” replied he, “I see.” When he was taken off the sledge, the hangman desired him to forgive him. “I do forgive thee,” said he, “with all my heart, as it is a sin against me,” and told him he wished him all happiness; and further said, “Alas, poor man, thou dost it ignorantly; the Lord grant that this sin may not be laid to thy charge!” and putting his hand into his pocket he gave him all the money he had; and so parting with his servant, hugging him in his arms, he went up the ladder with an undaunted countenance. The cruel rabble observing him tremble in his hands and legs, he took notice of it, and said, “Gentlemen, by reason of some scoffing that I do hear, I judge that some do think I am afraid to die by the shaking I have in my hands and knees. I tell you No; but it is by reason of much blood I have lost in the wars, and many wounds I have received in my body, which caused this shaking and weakness in my nerves. I have had it this twelve years. I speak this to the praise and glory of God. He hath carried me above the fear of death, and I value not my life, because I go to my Father, and I am assured I shall take it again. Gentlemen, take notice, that for being an instrument in that cause (an instrument of the Son of God) which hath been pleaded amongst us, and which God hath witnessed to by many appeals and wonderful victories, I am brought to this place to suffer death this day, and if I had ten thousand lives I could freely and cheerfully lay them down all to witness to this matter.”
Then he prayed to himself with tears, and having ended, the hangman pulled down his cap, but he thrust it up and said, “I have one word more to the Lord’s people. Let them not think hardly of any of the good ways of God for all this, for I have found the way of God to be a perfect way, and He hath covered my head many times in the day of battle. By my God I have leaped over a wall, by my God I have run through a troop, and by my God I will go through this death, and He will make it easy to me. Now, into thy hands, O Lord Jesus, I commit my spirit.”
After he was hanged they cut down this true martyr, and stripping him, slashed him open in order to disembowel him. In the last rigour of his agony this staunch soldier is said to have risen up and struck the executioner.
Three days after, Carew and Cook were hanged at the same place, rejoicing and praying cheerfully to the last. As Cook parted from his wife he said to her, “I am going to be married in glory this day. Why weepest thou?—let them weep who part and shall never meet again.”
On the 17th, Thomas Scot perished at the same place. His last words were—“God engaged me in a cause not to be repented of—I say, in a cause not to be repented of.”
Jones and Scrope (both old men) were drawn in one sledge. Their grave yet cheerful and courageous countenances caused great admiration and compassion among the crowd. Observing one of his friend’s children weeping at Newgate, Colonel Jones took her by the hand. He said, “Suppose your father were to-morrow to be King of France, and you were to tarry a little behind, would you weep so? Why, he is going to reign with the King of kings.” When he saw the sledge, he said, “It is like Elijah’s fiery chariot, only it goes through Fleet Street.” The night before he suffered, he told a friend the only temptation he had was lest he should be too much transported, and so neglect and slight his life, so greatly was he satisfied to die in such a cause. Another friend he grasped in his arms and said, “Farewell! I could wish thee in the same condition as myself, that our souls might mount up to heaven together and share in eternal joys.” To another friend he said, “Ah, dear heart! if we had perished together in that storm going to Ireland, we had been in heaven to welcome honest Harrison and Carew; but we will be content to go after them—we will go after.” It is added that “the executioner, having done his part upon three others that day, was so surfeited with blood and sick, that he sent his boy to finish the tragedy on Colonel Jones.”
Hugh Peters was much afraid while in Newgate lest his spirits should fail him when he saw the gibbet and the fire, but his courage did not fail him in that hour of great need. On his way to execution he looked about and espied a man to whom he gave a piece of gold, having bowed it first, and desired him to carry that as a token to his daughter, and to let her know that her father’s heart was as full of comfort as it could be, and that before the piece should come into her hands he should be with God in glory.
While Cook was being hanged they made Peters sit within the rails to behold his death. While sitting thus, one came to him and upbraided the old preacher with the king’s death, and bade him repent. Peters replied, “Friend, you do not well to trample upon a dying man: you are greatly mistaken—I had nothing to do in the death of the king.”
When Mr. Cook was cut down and about to be quartered, Colonel Turner told the sheriff’s men to bring Mr. Peters nearer to see the body. By and by the hangman came to him, rubbing his bloody hands, and tauntingly asked him, “Come, how do you like this—how do you like this work?” To whom Mr. Peters calmly replied, “I am not, I thank God, terrified at it—you may do your worst.”
Being upon the ladder, he spoke to the sheriff and said, “Sir, you have here slain one of the servants of God before mine eyes, and have made me to behold it on purpose to terrify and discourage me, but God hath made it an ordinance to me for my strengthening and encouragement.”
When he was going to die, he said, “What, flesh! art thou unwilling to go to God through the fire and jaws of death? Oh! this is a good day. He is come that I have long looked for, and I shall soon be with Him in glory.” And he smiled when he went away. “What Mr. Peters said further it could not be taken, in regard his voice was low at the time and the people uncivil.”
In May 1685 that consummate scoundrel Titus Oates came to the pillory at Charing Cross. He had been condemned to pay a thousand marks fine, to be stripped of his gown, to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn, from Aldgate to Newgate, and to stand in the pillory at the Royal Exchange and before Westminster Hall. He was also condemned to stand one hour in the pillory at Charing Cross every 10th of August, and there an eye-witness describes seeing him in 1688.[377]
In 1666 and 1667 an Italian puppet-player set up his booth at Charing Cross, and there and then probably introduced “Punch and Judy” into England. He paid a small rent to the overseers of St. Martin’s parish, and is called in their books “Punchinello.” In 1668 we learn that a Mr. Devone erected a small playhouse in the same place.[378]
There is still extant a song written to ridicule the long delay in setting up the king’s statue, and it contains an allusion to “Punch”—
“What can the mistry be, why Charing Cross
These five months continues still blinded with board?
Dear Wheeler, impart—wee are all att a loss,
Unless Punchinello is to be restored.”[379]
The royal statue at Charing Cross is the work of Hubert Le Sœur, a Frenchman and a pupil of the famous John of Bologna, the sculptor of the “Rape of the Sabines” in the Loggia at Florence. Le Sœur’s copy of the “Fighting Gladiator,” which is praised by Peacham in his “Compleat Gentleman,” once at the head of the canal in St. James’s Park, is now at Hampton Court. Le Sœur also executed the monuments of Sir George Villiers, and Sir Thomas Richardson the judge, in Westminster Abbey.
The original contract for the brazen equestrian statue, a foot larger than life, is dated 1630. The sculptor was to receive £600. The agreement was drawn up by Sir Balthasar Gerbier for the purchaser, the Lord High Treasurer Weston. Yet the existing statue was not cast till 1633, and the above-mentioned agreement speaks of it as to be erected in the Lord Treasurer’s garden at Roehampton; so that the agreement may not refer to the same work, although it certainly specifies that the sculptor shall “take advice of his Maj. riders of greate horses, as well for the shape of the horse and action as for the graceful shape and action of his Maj. figure on the same.”[380]
The present statue was cast in 1633, on a piece of ground near the church in Covent Garden, and not being actually erected when the Civil War broke out, it was sold by the Parliament to John Rivet, a brazier, living at “the Dial, near Holburn Conduit,” with strict orders to break it up. But the man, being a shrewd Royalist, produced some fragments of old brass, and hid the statue underground till the Restoration. Rivet refusing to deliver up the statue after Charles’s return, a replevin was served upon him to compel its surrender. The dispute, however, lasted many years, and he probably pleaded compensation. The statue was erected in its present position about 1674, by an order from the Earl of Danby, afterwards Duke of Leeds. Le Sœur died, it is supposed, before the statue was erected.
Horace Walpole, who praises the “commanding grace of the figure,” and the “exquisite form of the horse,”[381] incorrectly says, “The statue was made at the expense of the family of Howard, Lord Arundel, who have still the receipt to show by whom and for whom it was cast.”
There is still extant a very rare large sheet print of the statue, engraved in the manner and time of Faithorne, but without name or date. The inscription beneath it describes the statue as almost ten feet high, and as “preserved underground,” with great hazard, charge, and care, by John Rivet, a brazier.[382]
John Rivet may have been a patriot, but he was certainly a shrewd one. To secure his concealed treasure he had manufactured a large quantity of brass handles for knives and forks, and advertised them as being forged from the destroyed statue. They sold well; the Royalists bought them as sad and precious relics; the Puritans as mementos of their triumph. He doubled his prices, and still his shop was crowded with eager customers, so that in a short time he realised a considerable fortune.[383]
The brazier, or the brazier’s family, probably sold the statue to Charles II. at his restoration. The Parliament voted £70,000 for solemnising the funeral of Charles I., and for erecting a monument to his memory.[384] Part of this sum went for the pedestal, but whether the brazier or his kin were rewarded is not known. Charles II. probably spent most of the money on his pleasures.
There is a fatality attending the verses of most time-serving poets. Waller never wrote a court poem well but when he lauded that great man, the Protector. When the statue of “the Martyr” was set up, fourteen years after the Restoration—so tardy was filial affection—Waller wrote the following dull and unworthy lines about the statue of a faithless king:—
“That the first Charles does here in triumph ride,
See his son reign where he a martyr died,
And people pay that reverence as they pass
(Which then he wanted) to the sacred brass
Is not th’ effect of gratitude alone,
To which we owe the statue and the stone;
But Heaven this lasting monument has wrought,
That mortals may eternally be taught
Rebellion, though successful, is but vain,
And kings so kill’d rise conquerors again.
This truth the royal image does proclaim
Loud as the trumpet of surviving fame.”
Andrew Marvell, one of the most powerful of lampoon writers, and the very Gillray of political satirists, wrote some bitter lines on the statue of the so-called Martyr at Charing Cross, lines which in an earlier reign would have cost the honest daring poet his ears, if not his head.
There was an equestrian stone statue of Charles II. at Woolchurch (Woolwich?), and the poet imagines the two horses, the one of stone and the other of brass, talking together one evening, when the two riders, weary of sitting all day, had stolen away together for a chat.
“Woolchurch.—To see Dei gratia writ on the throne,
And the king’s wicked life says God there is none.
Charing.—That he should be styled Defender of the Faith
Who believes not a word what the Word of God saith.
Woolchurch.—That the Duke should turn Papist and that church defy
For which his own father a martyr did die.
Charing.—Tho’ he changed his religion, I hope he’s so civil
Not to think his own father has gone to the devil.”
Upon the brazen horse being asked his opinion of the Duke of York, it replies with terrible truth and force:—
“The same that the frogs had of Jupiter’s stork.
With the Turk in his head and the Pope in his heart,
Father Patrick’s disciple will make England smart.
If e’er he be king, I know Britain’s doom:
We must all to the stake or be converts to Rome.
Ah! Tudor! ah! Tudor! of Stuarts enough.
None ever reigned like old Bess in her ruff.
******
Woolchurch.—But can’st thou devise when kings will be mended?
Charing.—When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended.”
In April 1810 the sword, buckles, and straps fell from the statue.[385] The king’s sword was stolen on the day on which Queen Victoria went to open the Royal Exchange.
London has its local traditions as well as the smallest village. There is a foolish story that the sculptor of Charles I. and his steed committed suicide in vexation at having forgotten to put a girth to the horse. The myth has arisen from the supposition of there being no girth, and retailers of such stories, Mr. Leigh Hunt included, did not take the trouble to ascertain whether there was or was not a girth. Unfortunately for the story there is a girth, and it is clearly visible.
The pedestal, by some assigned to Marshal, by others to Grinling Gibbons, the great wood-carver, and a Dutchman by birth, is seventeen feet high, and is enriched with the arms of England, trophies of armour, cupids, and palm-branches. It is erected in the centre of a circular area, thirty feet in diameter, raised one step from the roadway, and enclosed with iron rails. The lion and unicorn are much mutilated, and the trophies are honeycombed and corroded by the weather. It has not been generally observed that on the south side of the pedestal two weeping children support a crown of thorns, and that the same emblem is repeated on the opposite side, below the royal arms.
In 1727 (1st George II.) that infamous rogue, Edmund Curll, the publisher of all the filth and slander of his age, stood in the pillory at Charing Cross for printing a vile work called Venus in a Cloyster. He was not, however, pelted or ill-used; for, with the usual lying and cunning of his reptile nature, he had circulated printed papers telling the people that he stood there for daring to vindicate the memory of Queen Anne. The mob allowed no one to touch him; and when he was taken down they carried him off in triumph to a neighbouring tavern.[386]
Archenholz, an observant Prussian officer who was in England in 1784, tells a curious anecdote of the statue at Charing Cross. During the war in which General Braddock was defeated by the French in America, about the time when Minorca was in the enemy’s hands, and poor Byng had just fallen a victim to popular fury, an unhappy Spaniard, who did not know a word of English, and had just arrived in England, was surrounded by a mob near Whitehall, who took him by his dress for a French spy. One of the rabble instantly proposed to mount him on the king’s horse. The idea was adopted. A ladder was brought, and the miserable Spaniard was forced upon its back, to be loaded with insults and pelted with mud. Luckily for the stranger, at that moment a cabinet minister happening to pass by, stopped to inquire the cause of the crowd. On addressing the man in French he discovered the mistake, and informed the mob. They instantly helped the man down, and the minister, taking him in his coach to the Spanish ambassador, apologised in the name of the nation for a mistake that might have been fatal.[387]
In June 1731 Japhet Crook, alias Sir Peter Stranger, who had been found guilty of forging the writings to an estate, was sentenced to imprisonment for life.[388] He was condemned to stand for one hour in the pillory at Charing Cross. He was then seated in an elbow-chair; the common hangman cut off both his ears with an incision knife, and then delivered them to Mr. Watson, a sheriff’s officer. He also slit both Crook’s nostrils with a pair of scissors, and seared them with a hot iron, pursuant to the sentence. A surgeon attended on the pillory and instantly applied styptics to prevent the effusion of blood. The man bore the operations with undaunted courage. He laughed on the pillory, and denied the fact to the last. He was then removed to the Ship Tavern at Charing Cross, and thence taken back to the King’s Bench prison, to be confined there for life.[389]
This Crook had forged the conveyance, to himself, of an estate, upon which he took up several thousand pounds. He was at the same time sued in Chancery for having fraudulently obtained a will and wrongfully gained an estate. In spite of losing his ears, he enjoyed the ill-gained money in prison till the day of his death, and then quietly left it to his executor. He is mentioned by Pope in his 3d epistle, written in 1732. Talking of riches, he says—
“What can they give?—to dying Hopkins heirs?
To Chartres vigour? Japhet nose and ears?”[390]
It was in this essay that, having been accused of attacking the Duke of Chandos, Pope first began to attack vices instead of follies, and, in order to prevent mistakes, boldly to publish the names of the malefactors whom he gibbeted.
Crook had been a brewer on Tower Hill. The 2d George II., c. 25, made forgery a felony; and the first sufferer under the new law was Richard Cooper, a Stepney victualler, who was hanged at Tyburn, in June 1731, six days only after the older and luckier thief had stood in the pillory.
In 1763 Parsons, the parish-clerk of St. Sepulchre’s, and the impudent contriver of the “Cock Lane ghost” deception, mounted here to the same bad eminence. Parsons’s child, a cunning little girl of twelve years, had contrived to tap on her bed in a way that served to convey what were supposed to be supernatural messages. It proved to be a plot devised by Parsons out of malice against a gentleman of Norfolk who had sued him for a debt. This gentleman was a widower, who had taken his wife’s sister as his mistress—a marriage with her being forbidden by law—and had brought her to lodge with Parsons, from whence he had removed her to other lodgings, where she had died suddenly of small-pox. The object of Parsons was to obtain the ghost’s declaration that she had been poisoned by Parsons’s creditor. The rascal was set three times in the pillory and imprisoned for a year in the King’s Bench. The people, however, singularly enough, did not pelt the impudent rogue, but actually collected money for him.
There is a rare sheet-print of Charing Cross by Sutton Nicholls, in the reign of Queen Anne. It shows about forty small square stone posts surrounding the pedestal of the statue. The spot seems to have been a favourite standing-place for hackney coaches and sedan chairs. Every house has a long stepping-stone for horsemen at a regulated distance from the front.
In 1737 Hogarth published his four prints of the “Times of the Day.”[391] The scene of Night is laid at Charing Cross; it is an illumination-night. Some drunken Freemasons and the Salisbury “High-flyer” coach upset over a street bonfire near the Rummer Tavern, fill up the picture, which is curious as showing the roadway much narrower than it is now, and impeded with projecting signs above and bulkheads below.
The place is still further immortalised in the old song—
“I cry my matches by Charing Cross,
Where sits a black man on a black horse.”
In a sixpenny book for children, published about 1756, the absurd figure of King George impaled on the top of Bloomsbury Church is contrasted with that of King Charles at the Cross.
“No longer stand staring,
My friend, at Cross Charing,
Amidst such a number of people;
For a man on a horse
Is a matter of course,
But look! here’s a king on a steeple.”[392]
It was at Robinson’s coffee-house, at Charing Cross, that that clever scamp, vigorous versifier, and, as I think, great impostor, Richard Savage, stabbed to death a Mr. Sinclair in a drunken brawl. Savage had come up from Richmond to settle a claim for lodgings, when, meeting two friends, he spent the night in drinking, till it was too late to get a bed. As the three revellers passed Robinson’s, a place of no very good name, they saw a light, knocked at the door, and were admitted. It was a cold, raw, November night; and hearing that the company in the parlour were about to leave, and that there was a fire there, they pushed in and kicked down the table. A quarrel ensued, swords were drawn, and Mr. Sinclair received a mortal wound. The three brawlers then fled, and were discovered lurking in a back-court by the soldiers who came to stop the fray. The three men were taken to the Gate House at Westminster, and the next morning to Newgate. That cruel and bullying judge, Page, hounded on the jury at the trial in the following violent summing up:—“Gentlemen of the jury, you are to consider that Mr. Savage is a very great man, a much greater man than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he wears very fine clothes, much finer than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he has abundance of money in his pocket, much more money than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; but, gentlemen of the jury, is it not a very hard case, gentlemen of the jury, that Mr. Savage should therefore kill you or me, gentlemen of the jury?”
The verdict was of course “Guilty,” for these homicides during tavern brawls had become frightfully common, and quiet citizens were never sure of their lives. Sentence of death was recorded against him. Eventually a lady at court interceded for the poet, who escaped with six months’ imprisonment in Newgate, which he certainly well deserved.
There is every reason to suppose from the researches of Mr. W. Moy Thomas, that Savage was an impostor. He claimed to be the illegitimate son of the Countess of Macclesfield by Lord Rivers. The lady had an illegitimate child born in Fox Court, Gray’s Inn Lane in 1697; but this child, there is reason to think, died in 1698.[393] Savage imposed on Dr. Johnson and other friends with stories of being placed at school and apprenticed to a shoemaker in Holborn by his countess mother, until among his nurse’s old letters he one day accidentally discovered the secret of his birth. There is no proof at all of his being persecuted by the countess, whose life he rendered miserable by insults, lampoons, abuse, slander, and begging letters.
Pope has embalmed Page in the Dunciad just as a scorpion is preserved in a spirit-bottle:—
“Morality by her false guardians drawn,
Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn,
Gasps as they straighten at each end the cord,
And dies when Dulness gives her Page the word.”[394]
And again, with equal bitterness and truth, in his Imitations of Horace:—