Part 19

[60] Smith makes a slip in locating the historic fight between Broughton and Slack in April 1750, at the “Adam and Eve” tavern. It took place in Broughton’s own Amphitheatre near Adam and Eve Court in the Oxford Road. Smith correctly states the position of this Amphitheatre in his _Antient Topography of London_ (1810): “Broughton’s Amphitheatre is still standing; it is at the south-west corner of Castle Street, Wells Street; the lower part is a coal shed, the upper a stage for timber.” Its site is now occupied by No. 62 Castle Street East, close to Adam and Eve Court.

Here it was that the founder of the modern prize-ring, whose “Broughton rules” were observed everywhere until 1838, met disaster in his fight with the plucky Norwich butcher. The result was his retirement from the ring, and the loss by his backer, the Duke of Cumberland, of a bet of £10,000. In his later years, Broughton lived in Walcot Place, Lambeth, where he died, aged 85. He was buried in Lambeth Church. A monument to him in the West Walk of the Cloisters of Westminster Abbey describes him as “Yeoman of the Guard”; and it is stated in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ that a place among the Yeomen was obtained for him by the Duke of Cumberland. In his _Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, Dean Stanley says: “After his name on the gravestone is a space, which was to have been filled up with the words ‘Champion of England.’ The Dean objected, and the blank remains.” But the blank does not remain. It was filled in 1832 with the names of Roger Monk, another Yeoman of the Guard, and his wife. It is worthy of note, too, that the _earliest_ name on the tablet is that of Broughton’s wife, Elizabeth, who was actually buried here.

[61] See note p. 105.

[62] Fischer had the further distinction of being married to a daughter of J. T. S., whose other daughter married a Mr. Smith, a sculptor.

[63] Gooseberry Fair followed the suppressed Tottenham Fair. Both were held in and about the Adam and Eve Tavern. Richard Yates and Ned Shuter appeared together at various London fairs.

[64] Charles Fleetwood threw Drury Lane into confusion both behind and before the scenes, by his unpunctual payment of salaries, and by attempting to introduce pantomimes against the wishes of the old play-goers. This led to noisy scenes in 1744, in one of which Horace Walpole stigmatised Fleetwood as “an impudent rascal” from his box, and was embarrassed by the enthusiastic approval of the audience.

[65] The exact site of the famous Footsteps is not easily determined. Dr. Rimbault (_Notes and Queries_, February 2, 1850) says that it was reputed to be “at the extreme termination of the north-east end of Upper Montague Street.” It is placed a little farther west by Robert Hill, the water-colour painter, who stated in a letter, quoted by Mr. Wheatley in his _London_: “I well remember the Brothers’ Footsteps. They were near a bank that divided two of the fields between Montague House and the New Road, and their situation must have been, if my recollection serves me, what is now Torrington Square.” Smith says the Footsteps were “on the site of Mr. Martin’s chapel, or nearly so.” Mr. John Martin, the Baptist minister, had the chapel in Keppel Street. It still exists. This brings the Footsteps a few yards south, but Smith’s indefiniteness must be taken into account. That these markings were visible as late as 1800 is proved by the following entry in the Commonplace Book of Joseph Moser: “June 16th, 1800. Went into the fields at the back of Montague House, and there saw, for the last time, the Forty Footsteps: the building materials are there to cover them from the sight of man.” The feeling with which these curious marks were regarded by educated people may be judged by a letter quoted in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ of December 1804, in which the writer expresses his conviction that “the Almighty has ordered it as a standing monument of his great displeasure of the horrid sin of duelling,” an opinion in which the poet Southey concurred. In 1828, Miss Jane Porter published her novel, _The Field of the Forty Footsteps_.

[66] Nearly a hundred years later, a similar superstition survived in London, and is thus noted by Brand in his _Popular Antiquities_: “In the _Morning Post_, Monday, May 2nd, 1791, it was mentioned ‘that yesterday, being the first of May, according to annual and superstitious custom, a number of persons went into the fields and bathed their faces with the dew on the grass, under the idea that it would render them beautiful.’”

[67] The occasion was a dinner at Tom Davies’s in 1762. “BOSWELL: Does not Gray’s poetry, sir, tower above the common mark? JOHNSON: Yes, sir; but we must attend to the difference between what men in general cannot do if they would, and what every man may do if he would. Sixteen-string Jack towered above the common mark.” Dr. William Bell, whom Rann robbed, was Rector of Christ Church, London, 1780-99, and treasurer of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

[68] Probably a mistake. These nosegays were given to condemned criminals on their way to Tyburn by the St. Sepulchre authorities. Rann was one of the last to receive the gift.

[69] Saunders Welch, the father of Mrs. Nollekens, was educated in Aylesbury workhouse, and for many years was a grocer in Museum Street, then Queen Street. He succeeded Fielding as a Justice of the Peace for Westminster. Smith says in his _Nollekens_ that he met many people who recollected seeing him as High Constable of Westminster, “dressed in black, with a large, nine-storey George the Second’s wig highly powdered, with long flowing curls over his shoulder, a high three-cornered hat, and his black baton tipped with silver at either end, riding on a white horse to Tyburn with the malefactors.” A long and warm friendship existed between Saunders Welch and Dr. Johnson. “Johnson, who had an eager and unceasing curiosity to know human life in all its variety, told me that he attended Mr. Welch in his office for a whole winter, to hear the examinations of the culprits” (Boswell).

[70] To-day, High Street, Marylebone, is perhaps the most perfect High Street left in London. Neither from its north end in Marylebone Road nor from Oxford Street does it receive heavy traffic; its shops exist for the fine streets and squares around it, and it offers them the best of most things, from a tender chicken to a county history.

[71] “In the year 1741, the old church in which Hogarth has introduced his “Rake at the Altar with the Old Maid” was taken down, and the present one built on its site; so that the writers who have stated that the scene took place in the present edifice must acknowledge their error, if they will take the trouble to refer to Hogarth’s fifth plate of the Rake’s Progress, where they will find its publication to have taken place June 25, 1735.”--S.

[72] Probably Christopher Norton, of the St. Martin’s Lane Academy.

[73] Tradition reports that from Elizabeth it came to the Forsyths, and thence to the Duke of Portland. In his _Marylebone and St. Pancras_, Mr. Clinch writes: “In the year 1703 a large school was established here by Mr. De la Place. That gentleman’s daughter married the Rev. John Fountayne, Rector of North Sidmouth, in Wiltshire, and the latter succeeded Mr. De la Place in the school. The school is said to have obtained a considerable reputation among the nobility and gentry, whose sons there received an educational training previously to their removal to the universities.”

[74] “Mr. Fountayne had one son, afterwards Dean of York, and three daughters, viz. Mrs. Hargrave, Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. Metz. Mrs. Hargrave was lately living; she was the wife of Counsellor Hargrave, and was esteemed a great beauty. Another daughter of Monsieur De la Place married the Rev. Mr. Dyer, brother to the author of _Grongar Hill_, to whose nephew, the late Mr. Dyer, the printseller, I am obliged for some parts of the above information.”--S.

[75] Reproduced in Mr. Clinch’s _Marylebone and St. Pancras_ (1890).

[76] Michael Angelo Rooker (1743-1801), the water-colour painter and engraver. “His works are drawn with conscientious accuracy, and show a sweet pencil” (Redgrave). He died March 3, 1801, in Dean Street, Soho, and was buried in the ground belonging to St. Martin-in-the-Fields, in the Kentish Town Road. Examples of his work are hung at South Kensington.

[77] The wonderful extra-illustrated copy presented to the Museum by John Charles Crowle, and valued at £5000.

[78] That is to say tiled.

[79] The Rev. John Fountayne was more than “noticed” by Handel; the two men were intimate. A grandson of Fountayne wrote in 1832: “One evening as my grandfather and Handel were walking together and alone, a new piece was struck up by the band. ‘Come, Mr. Fountayne,’ said Handel, ‘let us sit down and listen to this piece--I want to know your opinion of it.’ Down they sat, and after some time the old parson, turning to his companion, said, ‘It is not worth listening to--it’s very poor stuff.’ ‘You are right, Mr. F.,’ said Handel, ‘it is very poor stuff--I thought so myself when I had finished it.’ The old gentleman, being taken by surprise, was beginning to apologise; but Handel assured him there was no necessity; that the music was really bad, having been composed hastily, and his time for the production limited; and that the opinion given was as correct as it was honest” (Hone’s _Year Book_). “Clarke” was doubtless Dr. Adam Clarke, the Wesleyan, who died in Bayswater in 1832, and was well known for his bibliographical and theological works.

[80] Lady Harrington might well lend her jewels, since she often borrowed. Horace Walpole tells how, at the Coronation of George III., she appeared “covered with all the diamonds she could borrow, hire, or seize, with the air of Roxana, the finest figure at a distance.”

[81] The great actress. She played Violante to Garrick’s Don Felix in the actor’s last appearance.

[82] In his _Memoirs_, the Rev. John Trusler, who was educated at Dr. Fountayne’s school, does not spare Mrs. Fountayne’s tuft-hunting tendencies. In one instance she was covered with ridicule through the action of a Soho pastry-cook named Jenkins, who, wishing his son to enter the school, arranged that he should do so under the name of the Prince De Chimmay. When Mrs. Fountayne discovered that his father made tarts a mile from the school door, “she had the laugh so much against her, that she could not show her face for months.”

[83] The Royal College of Physicians, then housed in Warwick Lane.

[84] Norfolk Street was the northern continuation of Newman Street; it is now merged in Cleveland Street.

[85] John Baptist Locatelli, a native of Verona, had his studio in Union Street, Tottenham Court Road, from 1776. He was befriended by Horace Walpole, with whom he quarrelled bitterly over a group representing Theseus offering assistance to Hercules. Walpole refused to take this work, although he had already paid the sculptor £350 on account, and was probably justified, since Nollekens said the group looked “like the dry skins of two brickmakers stuffed with clotted flocks from an old mattress.” Locatelli worked also for the brothers Adam, and he superintended the carving of the basso-relievos put up by Nollekens on the outside of the Sessions House, Clerkenwell Green. In 1796 he left England for Milan, where Buonaparte employed him and granted him a pension. (See Smith’s _Life of Nollekens_, 1829, pp. 119-123, and Thornbury’s _British Artists_, vol. ii. pp. 9-16).

[86] Wilson, upon whom a note has been given under the year 1766, lived at No. 36 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, within a few minutes’ walk of this group of elms. He was accustomed of a fine evening, says Redgrave, to throw open his window and invite his friends to enjoy with him the glowing sunset behind the Hampstead and Highgate hills. Fitzroy Square was not begun until 1790-94. To-day the miles between Charlotte Street and these northern heights are filled by streets. Nevertheless, Hampstead church can still be seen from Charlotte Street, piercing the northern distance, and, but for the slight deflection of Rathbone Place, it would be visible from Oxford Street. John Constable afterwards lived in the same street. The elms under which Wilson and Baretti walked must have had their roots in the ground on which the east side of Cleveland Street is built.

[87] It is difficult to form an idea of this instrument. It was beaten with a rolling-pin, and appears to have been used as a drum in such a way (according to the manner in which it was struck) as to produce something like notes. This is indicated in Bonnell Thornton’s burlesque, _Ode to St. Cecilia’s Day_, in which occur the well-known lines which amused Dr. Johnson:--

“In strains more exalted the salt-box shall join, And clattering and battering and clapping combine; With a rap and a tap while the hollow side sounds. Up and down leaps the flap, and with rattling rebounds.”

The character of the neighbourhood round the “Farthing Pie House” (Portland Road Station) in Smith’s boyhood, may be judged by Smith’s statement in his _Vagabondiana_, that “when the sites of Portland Place, Devonshire Street, etc., were fields, the famous Tommy Lowe, then a singer at Mary-le-bone Gardens, raised a subscription, to enable an unfortunate man to run a small chariot, drawn by four muzzled mastiffs, from a pond near Portland Chapel, called Cockney Ladle, which supplied Mary-le-bone Bason with water, to the ‘Farthing Pie House’ … in order to accommodate children with a ride for a halfpenny.”

[88] By Queen Anne Street Smith means the street which has borne the successive names of Little Queen Anne Street, Queen Anne Street East, Foley Place, and (now) Langham Street. The present Queen Anne Street is on the _west_ side of Portland Place; it was originally Great Queen Anne Street, then Queen Anne Street West. A curious interest attaches to these streets, neither of which runs, as it seems destined to do, into Portland Place. Thus:--

Their failure to run directly into Portland Place (see dotted lines) is a relic of Foley House which occupied the site of the Langham Hotel, and interposed its gardens where these streets would have joined. It was afterwards intended to build a Queen Anne Square at the foot of Great Portland Street, but this project fell through.

[89] There were many ponds in the fields on which the streets of St. Pancras and Marylebone are built. In an early view of Whitefield’s Tabernacle, a pond is delineated on a spot now covered, as nearly as may be judged, by Torrington Square. Farther west, on the site of Duke Street, Portland Place, was the Cockney Ladle, in which small boys bathed at the risk of having their clothes seized by the parish beadles. Close by this--on the site of the backs of the east side of Harley Street--was the Marylebone Basin, a dangerously deep water. Many drownings occurred in ponds of which no trace or memory remains. Thus, the _St. James’s Chronicle_ of August 8, 1769, says: “Two young chairmen [_i.e._ carriers of sedan chairs] were unfortunately drowned on Friday Evening last, in a Pond behind the North-Side of Portman-Square. They had been beating a Carpet in the Square, and being thereby warm and dirty agreed to bathe in the above Pond, not being aware of its great Depth. The Man who first went in could swim, and while he was swimming his Companion went in, but being presently out of his Depth he sunk. The Swimmer immediately made to the Place to save his Companion; but he, coming up again under the Swimmer, laid fast hold of him, and they both sunk down together and were drowned.”

[90] “On Friday last, Mr. Carlile, a Quaker of about 17 years of age, had the misfortune to fall into Marylebone-Bason, and was drowned” (_Daily Advertiser_, June 18, 1744).

[91] And from their contiguity to a French Protestant chapel, founded in 1756.

[92] The difficulty of writing recent history is exemplified by Smith in his account of Marylebone Gardens, which is far excelled by Mr. Warwick Wroth’s chapter on Marylebone Gardens in his _London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century_ (1896). Fully to annotate Smith’s chronology of these gardens would require many pages, and the result would be unsatisfactory. I shall therefore deal with only the more prominent names he mentions.

[93] May 7, 1668.

[94] M. Wroth says: “In 1691 the place was known as Long’s Bowling Green at the Rose, and for several years (_circ._ 1679-1736) persons of quality might have been seen bowling there during the summer-time.

‘At the Groom Porters battered bullies play; Some Dukes at Marybone bowl time away.’”

These lines, often erroneously attributed to Lady Mary Wortley Montague, occur in Pope’s _The Basset-table, an Eclogue_.

[95] Rockhoult, or Rockholt House, was at Leyton, in Essex, and was “for a short period an auxiliary place of amusement for the Summer to the established Theatres” (_Gentleman’s Magazine_, July 1814). It was opened about 1742, and was apparently regarded as “the place to spend a happy day.” A ballad to “Delia” exclaimed--

“Delia, in whose form we trace All that can a virgin grace, Hark where pleasure, blithe as May, Bids us to Rockholt haste away.”

[96] “The principal shareholder and manager of Ranelagh at this date was Sir Thomas Robinson, Bart., M.P., whose gigantic form was for many years familiar to frequenters of the Rotunda; a writer of 1774 calls him its Maypole, and Garland of Delights. Robinson lived at Prospect Place, adjoining the gardens.”

[97] The New Wells belonged to the Islington group of pleasure gardens, and stood on ground now occupied by Lower Rosomon Street, Clerkenwell. It flourished 1737-50, and numbered a collection of rattlesnakes among its attractions.

[98] Cuper’s Gardens, a great resort. The Feathers Tavern at the end of Waterloo Bridge is the successor of the tavern originally in the gardens, the site of which is traversed by the Waterloo Road. They were closed in 1759, after which Dr. Johnson, passing them in a coach with Langton, Beauclerk, and Lady Sydney Beauclerk (mother of his friend), jokingly proposed, to Lady Sydney’s horror, that they should lease them: “She had no notion of a joke, sir; she had come late into life, and had a mighty unpliable understanding.”

[99] Advertised as “the Pariton, an instrument never played in publick before.”

[100] Mary Ann Falkner was a niece of George Falkner, the Dublin printer, whom Foote caricatured on the stage. She appeared at Marylebone from 1747 to about 1752, giving such songs as “Amoret and Phyllis,” “The Happy Couple,” and “The Faithful Lover.” Much sought after, she remained faithful to her husband, a linen draper named Donaldson, until his conduct threw her under the protection of the second Earl of Halifax.

[101] M. Wroth says, on good evidence, that Trusler became proprietor only in 1756.

[102] The career of young John Trusler, afterwards the Rev. Dr. Trusler, is interesting. Without a collegiate training, he took Holy Orders, and officiated as a curate in London. His eye for business revealed to him the possibilities of sermon-mongering, and he was soon making a respectable income by supplying clergymen all over the country with sermons in script characters. His operations became something of a scandal, and Cowper scourged him in “The Task”--

“He grinds divinity of other days Down into modern use, transforms old print To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes Of gallery critics by a thousand arts. Are there who purchase of the doctor’s ware? Oh, name it not in Gath! It cannot be That grave and learned clerks should need such aid. He doubtless is in sport, and does but droll, Assuming thus a rank unknown before-- Grand caterer and dry-nurse of the Church!”

Trusler also issued the morning and evening services so printed and punctuated as to indicate to incompetent readers how they should be delivered. Cowper writes--

“He teaches those to read, whom schools dismiss’d, And colleges, untaught; sells accent, tone, And emphasis in score, and gives to prayer The _adagio_ and _andante_ it demands.”

Prospering at this business, Trusler set up a publishing establishment in Wardour Street, from which he issued manuals of all kinds, including his most respectable work, _Hogarth Moralised_, in which Mrs. Hogarth became a partner and collaborator. At the age of 85 he died in his villa at Englefield Green, Middlesex.

[103] Miss Trusler’s seed and plum cakes were famous. In a judgment on Mrs. Cornelys for keeping an objectionable house, Sir John Fielding sagely remarked that her Soho assemblies were unnecessary, having regard to the many attractions elsewhere, such as “Ranelagh with its music and fireworks, and Marylebone Gardens, with music, wine, and plum-cake.”

[104] The arrival of three Cherokee Indian chiefs in the spring of 1762 roused the liveliest interest in London. These braves came over in token of friendship after the ratification of a treaty of peace at Charlestown, South Carolina. They were well-made men, six feet in height, and were dressed, says the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ (May 1762), “in their own country habit with only a shirt, trousers, and mantle round them; their faces are painted of a copper colour, and their heads adorned with shells, feathers, ear-rings, and other trifling ornaments. They neither of them can speak to be understood, and very unfortunately lost their interpreter in their passage. A house is taken for them in Suffolk Street, and cloaths have been given them in the English fashion.” Among the thousands of Londoners who went to see the “Cherokee Kings” was Oliver Goldsmith.

[105] By an indenture dated August 30, 1763. This document, which Smith’s namesake Thomas Smith quoted in his _History of the Parish of Marylebone_, shows that the Gardens were attached to the Rose Tavern, and that they contained walks, statuary, boxes, benches, and musical appliances and books. Lowe’s lease was for fourteen years at the annual rent of £170.

[106] Not the well-known Stephen Storace (who was born only in this year), but his father, a Neapolitan, described by George Hogarth as “a good performer on the double bass in the band of the Opera House.”

[107] Nan Catley won hearts by her breezy manner and air of camaraderie. Hers “was the singing of unequalled animal spirits; it was Mrs. Jordan’s comedy carried into music.… She was bold, volatile, audacious” (Boaden: _Life of Mrs. Siddons_).

[108] Long before this, Dick Turpin had appeared in the Garden itself, and had surprised Mrs. Fountayne, the wife of the Marylebone schoolmaster, with a kiss. He impudently remarked, “Be not alarmed, madam; you can now boast that you have been kissed by Dick Turpin. Good-morning!”

[109] Lowe was now glad to obtain singing engagements at Sadler’s Wells and other tea-gardens. His career from riches to poverty is illustrated in the story, told by John Taylor in his _Records of My Life_, that, soon after becoming master of Marylebone Gardens, he was seen riding thither in his chariot with a large iron trunk behind it, which he explained he had purchased “to place the profits of the Gardens in.” Taylor adds that he had last seen Lowe in a lane near Aldersgate Street, coming out of a butcher’s shop, with some meat in a checked handkerchief.

[110] An editorial note in the third edition of the _Rainy Day_ suggests that this name was made popular by Prior’s “Chloe.” This seems probable, for Prior gave all the vogue of an ideal to this woman, who, in real life, was the wife of a coachman in Long Acre, and was described by Johnson as “a despicable drab of the lowest species.”

[111] See note on Weston, p. 208.

[112] Charles Bannister, the vocalist and actor, father of the more famous John Bannister.