Part 2
Nevertheless, Fuller has described the wit-combats between Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, "which he beheld," meaning with his mind's eye, for he was only eight years of age when Shakspeare died; "a circumstance," says Mr. Charles Knight, "which appears to have been forgotten by some who have written of these matters." But we have a noble record left of the wit-combats in the celebrated epistle of Beaumont to Jonson:--
"Methinks the little wit I had is lost Since I saw you; for wit is like a rest Held up at tennis, which men do the best With the best gamesters: what things have we seen Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtile flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolv'd to live a fool the rest Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown Wit able enough to justify the town For three days past, wit that might warrant be For the whole city to talk foolishly 'Till that were cancell'd: and when that was gone We left an air behind us, which alone Was able to make the two next companies Right witty; though but downright fools, mere wise."
THE APOLLO CLUB.
The noted tavern, with the sign of St. Dunstan pulling the Devil by the nose, stood between Temple Bar and the Middle Temple gate. It was a house of great resort in the reign of James I., and then kept by Simon Wadloe.
In Ben Jonson's _Staple of News_, played in 1625, Pennyboy Canter advises, to
"Dine in Apollo, with Pecunia At brave Duke Wadloe's."
Pennyboy junior replies--
"Content, i' th' faith; Our meal shall be brought thither; Simon the King Will bid us welcome."
At what period Ben Jonson began to frequent this tavern is not certain; but we have his record that he wrote _The Devil is an Asse_, played in 1616, when he and his boys (adopted sons) "drank bad wine at the Devil." The principal room was called "the Oracle of Apollo," a large room evidently built apart from the tavern; and from Prior's and Charles Montagu's _Hind and Panther Transversed_, it is shown to have been an upper apartment, or on the first story:--
"Hence to the Devil-- Thus to the place where Jonson sat, we climb, Leaning on the same rail that guided him."
Above the door was the bust of Apollo; and the following verses, "the Welcome," were inscribed in gold letters upon a black board, and "placed over the door at the entrance into the Apollo:
"Welcome all, who lead or follow, To the _Oracle of Apollo_-- Here he speaks out of his pottle, Or the tripos, his Tower bottle; All his answers are divine, Truth itself doth flow in wine. Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers, Cries old Sim the king of skinkers; He that half of life abuses, That sits watering with the Muses. Those dull girls no good can mean us; Wine it is the milk of Venus, And the Poet's horse accounted: Ply it, and you all are mounted. 'Tis the true Phoebeian liquor, Cheers the brain, makes wit the quicker, Pays all debts, cures all diseases, And at once three senses pleases. Welcome all, who lead or follow, To the _Oracle of Apollo_."
Beneath these verses was the name of the author, thus inscribed--"O Rare Ben Jonson," a posthumous tribute from his grave in Westminster Abbey. The bust appears modelled from the Apollo Belvedere, by some skillful person of the olden day, but has been several times painted. "The Welcome," originally inscribed in gold letters, on a thick black-painted board, has since been wholly repainted and gilded; but the old thickly-lettered inscription of Ben's day may be seen as an embossment upon the modern painted background. These poetic memorials are both preserved in the banking-house of the Messrs. Child.
"The Welcome," says Mr. Burn, "it may be inferred, was placed in the interior of the room; so also, above the fireplace, were the Rules of the Club, said by early writers to have been inscribed in marble, but were in truth gilded letters upon a black-painted board, similar to the verses of the Welcome. These Rules are justly admired for the conciseness and elegance of the Latinity." They have been felicitously translated by Alexander Broome, one of the wits who frequented the Devil, and who was one of Ben Jonson's twelve adopted poetical sons. Latin inscriptions were also placed in other directions, to adorn the house. Over the clock in the kitchen, in 1731, there remained "_Si nocturna tibi noceat potatio vini, hoc in mane bibes iterum, et fuerit medicina_." Aubrey reports his uncle Danvers to have said that "Ben Jonson, to be near the Devil tavern, in King James's time, lived without Temple-barre, at a combemaker's shop, about the Elephant and Castle;" and James, Lord Scudamore has, in his _Homer à la Mode_, a travesty, said--
"Apollo had a flamen, Who in's temple did say Amen."
This personage certainly Ben Jonson represented in the great room of the Devil tavern. Hither came all who desired to be "sealed of the tribe of Ben." "The _Leges Conviviales_," says Leigh Hunt, "which Jonson wrote for his Club, and which are to be found in his works, are composed in his usual style of elaborate and compiled learning, not without a taste of that dictatorial self-sufficiency, which, notwithstanding all that has been said by his advocates, and the good qualities he undoubtedly possessed, forms an indelible part of his character. 'Insipida poemata,' says he, 'nulla _recitantur_' (Let nobody repeat to us insipid poetry); as if all that he should read of his own must infallibly be otherwise. The Club at the Devil does not appear to have resembled the higher one at the Mermaid, where Shakspeare and Beaumont used to meet him. He most probably had it all to himself."
In the Rules of the Apollo Club, women of character were not excluded from attending the meetings--_Probæ feminæ non repudiantur_. Marmion, one of Jonson's contemporary dramatists, describes him in his presidential chair, as "the boon Delphic god:"--
"_Careless._ I am full Of Oracles. I am come from Apollo.
_Emilia._ From Apollo!
_Careless._ From the heaven Of my delight, where the boon Delphic god Drinks sack, and keeps his bacchanalia, And has his incense and his altars smoaking, And speaks in sparkling prophecies; thence I come, My brains perfumed with the rich Indian vapour, And heightened with conceits. From tempting beauties, From dainty music and poetic strains, From bowls of nectar and ambrosial dishes, From witty varlets, fine companions, And from a mighty continent of pleasure, Sails thy brave Careless."
Randolph was by Ben Jonson, adopted for his son, and that upon the following occasion. "Mr. Randolph having been at London so long as that he might truly have had a parley with his _Empty Purse_, was resolved to see Ben Jonson, with his associates, which, as he heard, at a set time kept a Club together at the Devil Tavern, neere Temple Bar: accordingly, at the time appointed, he went thither, but being unknown to them, and wanting money, which to an ingenious spirit is the most daunting thing in the world, he peeped in the room where they were, which being espied by Ben Jonson, and seeing him in a scholar's threadbare habit, 'John Bo-peep,' says he, 'come in,' which accordingly he did; when immediately they began to rhyme upon the meanness of his clothes, asking him if he could not make a verse? and without to call for a quart of sack: there being four of them, he immediately thus replied,
"I, John Bo-peep, to you four sheep,-- With each one his good fleece; If that you are willing to give me five shilling, 'Tis fifteen-pence a-piece."
"By Jesus!" quoth Ben Jonson (his usual oath), "I believe this is my son Randolph;" which being made known to them, he was kindly entertained into their company, and Ben Jonson ever after called him son. He wrote _The Muses' Looking-glass_, _Cambridge Duns_, _Parley with his Empty Purse_, and other poems.
We shall have more to say of the Devil Tavern, which has other celebrities besides Jonson.
EARLY POLITICAL CLUBS.
Our Clubs, or social gatherings, which date from the Restoration, were exclusively political. The first we hear of was the noted Rota, or Coffee Club, as Pepys calls it, which was founded in 1659, as a kind of debating society for the dissemination of republican opinions, which Harrington had painted in their fairest colours in his _Oceana_. It met in New Palace Yard, "where they take water at one Miles's, the next house to the staires, where was made purposely a large ovall table, with a passage in the middle for Miles to deliver his coffee." Here Harrington gave nightly lectures on the advantage of a commonwealth and of the ballot. The Club derived its name from a plan, which it was its design to promote, for changing a certain number of Members of Parliament annually by _rotation_. Sir William Petty was one of its members. Round the table, "in a room every evening as full as it could be crammed," says Aubrey, sat Milton and Marvell, Cyriac Skinner, Harrington, Nevill, and their friends, discussing abstract political questions. Aubrey calls them "disciples and virtuosi." The place had its dissensions and brawls: "one time Mr. Stafford and his friends came in drunk from the tavern, and affronted the Junto; the soldiers offered to kick them down stayres, but Mr. Harrington's moderation and persuasion hindered it."
To the Rota, in January, 1660, came Pepys, and "heard very good discourse in answer to Mr. Harrington's answer, who said that the state of the Roman government was not a settled government; and so it was no wonder the balance of prosperity was in one hand, and the command in another, it being therefore always in a posture of war: but it was carried by ballot that it was a steady government; though, it is true, by the voices it had been carried before that, that it was an unsteady government. So to-morrow it is to be proved by the opponents that the balance lay in one hand and the government in another." The Club was broken up after the Restoration; but its members had become marked men. Harrington's _Oceana_ is an imaginary account of the construction of a commonwealth in a country, of which Oceana is the imaginary name. "Rota-men" occurs by way of comparison in _Hudibras_, part ii. canto 3:
"But Sidrophel, as full of tricks As Rota-men of politics."
Besides the Rota, there was the old Royalist Club, "The Sealed Knot," which, the year before the Restoration, had organized a general insurrection in favour of the King. Unluckily, they had a spy amongst them--Sir Richard Willis,--who had long fingered Cromwell's money, as one of his private "intelligencers;" the leaders, on his information, were arrested, and committed to prison.
THE OCTOBER CLUB.
The writer of an excellent paper in the _National Review_, No. VIII., well observes that "Politics under Anne had grown a smaller and less dangerous game than in the preceding century. The original political Clubs of the Commonwealth, the Protectorate, and the Restoration, plotted revolutions of government. The Parliamentary Clubs, after the Revolution of 1688, manoeuvred for changes of administration. The high-flying Tory country gentleman and country member drank the health of the King--sometimes over the water-decanter, and flustered himself with bumpers in honour of Dr. Sacheverell and the Church of England, with true-blue spirits of his own kidney, at the October Club," which, like the Beef Steak Club, was named after the cheer for which it was famed,--_October ale_; or rather, on account of the quantities of the ale which the members drank. The hundred and fifty squires, Tories to the backbone, who, under the above name, met at the Bell Tavern, in King Street, Westminster, were of opinion that the party to which they belonged were too backward in punishing and turning out the Whigs; and they gave infinite trouble to the Tory administration which came into office under the leadership of Harley, St. John, and Harcourt, in 1710. The Administration were for proceeding moderately with their rivals, and for generally replacing opponents with partisans. The October Club were for immediately impeaching every member of the Whig party, and for turning out, without a day's grace, every placeman who did not wear their colours, and shout their cries.
Swift was great at the October Club, and he was employed to talk over those who were amenable to reason, and to appease a discontent which was hastily ripening into mutiny. There are allusions to such negotiations in more than one passage of the _Journal to Stella_, in 1711. In a letter, February 10, 1710-11, he says: "We are plagued here with an October Club; that is, a set of above a hundred Parliament men of the country, who drink October beer at home, and meet every evening at a tavern near the Parliament, to consult affairs, and drive things on to extremes against the Whigs, to call the old ministry to account, and get off five or six heads." Swift's _Advice humbly offered to the Members of the October Club_, had the desired effect of softening some, and convincing others, until the whole body of malcontents was first divided and finally dissolved. The treatise is a masterpiece of Swift's political skill, judiciously palliating those ministerial errors which could not be denied, and artfully intimating those excuses, which, resting upon the disposition of Queen Anne herself, could not, in policy or decency, be openly pleaded.
The red-hot "tantivies," for whose loyalty the October Club was not thorough-going enough, seceded from the original body, and formed "the March Club," more Jacobite and rampant in its hatred of the Whigs, than the Society from which it branched.
King Street would, at this time, be a strange location for a Parliamentary Club, like the October; narrow and obscure as is the street, we must remember that a century ago, it was the only thoroughfare to the Palace at Westminster and the Houses of Parliament. When the October was broken up, the portrait of Queen Anne, by Dahl, which ornamented the club-room, was bought of the Club, after the Queen's death, by the Corporation of Salisbury, and may still be seen in their Council-chamber. (Cunningham's _Handbook_, 2nd edit., p. 364.)
THE SATURDAY, AND BROTHERS CLUBS.
Few men appear to have so well studied the social and political objects of Club-life as Dean Swift. One of his resorts was the old Saturday Club. He tells Stella (to whom he specially reported most of his club arrangements), in 1711, there were "Lord Keeper, Lord Rivers, Mr. Secretary, Mr. Harley, and I." Of the same Club he writes, in 1713: "I dined with Lord Treasurer, and shall again to-morrow, which is his day, when all the ministers dine with him. He calls it whipping-day. It is always on Saturday; and we do, indeed, rally him about his faults on that day. I was of the original Club, when only poor Lord Rivers, Lord Keeper, and Lord Bolingbroke came; but now Ormond, Anglesey, Lord Stewart, Dartmouth, and other rabble intrude, and I scold at it; but now they pretend as good a title as I; and, indeed, many Saturdays I am not there. The company being too many, I don't love it."
In the same year Swift framed the rules of the Brothers Club, which met every Thursday. "The end of our Club," he says, "is to advance conversation and friendship, and to reward learning without interest or recommendation. We take in none but men of wit, or men of interest; and if we go on as we began, no other Club in this town will be worth talking of."
The Journal about this time is very full of _Brothers_ Arran and Dupplin, Masham and Ormond, Bathurst and Harcourt, Orrery and Jack Hill, and other Tory magnates of the Club, or Society as Swift preferred to call it. We find him entertaining his "Brothers" at the Thatched House Tavern, in St. James's Street, at the cost of seven good guineas. He must have been an influential member; he writes: "We are now, in all, nine lords and ten commoners. The Duke of Beaufort had the confidence to propose his brother-in-law, the Earl of Danby, to be a member; but I opposed it so warmly, that it was waived. Danby is not above twenty, and we will have no more boys; and we want but two to make up our number. I staid till eight, and then we all went away soberly. The Duke of Ormond's treat last week cost £20, though it was only four dishes and four without a dessert; and I bespoke it in order to be cheap. Yet I could not prevail to change the house. Lord Treasurer is in a rage with us for being so extravagant; and the wine was not reckoned neither, for that is always brought in by him that is president."
Not long after this, Swift writes: "Our Society does not meet now as usual; for which I am blamed; but till Treasurer will agree to give us money and employments to bestow, I am averse to it, and he gives us nothing but promises. We now resolve to meet but once a fortnight, and have a committee every other week of six or seven, to consult about doing _some good_. I proposed another message to Lord Treasurer by three principal members, to give a hundred guineas to a certain person, and they are to urge it as well as they can."
One day, President Arbuthnot gives the Society a dinner, dressed in the Queen's kitchen: "we eat it in Ozinda's Coffee-house just by St. James's. We were never merrier or better company, and did not part till after eleven." In May, we hear how "fifteen of our Society dined together under a canopy in an arbour at Parson's Green last Thursday. I never saw anything so fine and romantic."
Latterly, the Club removed to the Star and Garter, in Pall Mall, owing to the dearness of the Thatched House; after this, the expense was wofully complained of. At these meetings, we may suppose, the literature of politics formed the staple of the conversation. The last epigram, the last pamphlet, the last _Examiner_, would be discussed with keen relish; and Swift mentions one occasion on which an impromptu subscription was got up for a poet, who had lampooned Marlborough; on which occasion all the company subscribed two guineas each, except Swift himself, Arbuthnot, and Friend, who only gave one. Bolingbroke, who was an active member, and Swift, were on a footing of great familiarity. St. John used to give capital dinners and plenty of champagne and burgundy to his literary coadjutor, who never ceased to wonder at the ease with which our Secretary got through his labours, and who worked for him in turn with the sincerest devotion, though always asserting his equality in the sturdiest manner.
Many pleasant glimpses of convivial meetings are afforded in the _Journal to Stella_, when there was "much drinking, little thinking," and the business which they had met to consider was deferred to a more convenient season. Whether (observes a contemporary) the power of conversation has declined or not, we certainly fear that the power of drinking has; and the imagination dwells with melancholy fondness on that state of society in which great men were not forbidden to be good fellows, which we fancy, whether rightly or wrongly, must have been so superior to ours, in which wit and eloquence succumb to statistics, and claret has given place to coffee.
The _Journal to Stella_ reveals Swift's sympathy for poor starving authors, and how he carried out the objects of the Society, in this respect. Thus, he goes to see "a poor poet, one Mr. Diaper, in a nasty garret, very sick," described in the Journal as "the author of the _Sea Eclogues_, poems of Mermen, resembling pastorals and shepherds; and they are very pretty, and the thought is new." Then Swift tells us he thinks to recommend Diaper to the Society; he adds, "I must do something for him, and get him out of the way. I hate to have any new wits rise; but when they do rise, I would encourage them; but they tread on our heels, and thrust us off the stage." Only a few days before, Swift had given Diaper twenty guineas from Lord Bolingbroke.
Then we get at the business of "the Brothers," when we learn that the printer attended the dinners; and the Journal tells us: "There was printed a Grub-street speech of Lord Nottingham, and he was such an owl to complain of it in the House of Lords, who have taken up the printer for it. I heard at Court that Walpole, (a great Whig member,) said that I and my whimsical Club writ it at one of our meetings, and that I should pay for it. He will find he lies; and I shall let him know by a third hand my thoughts of him." ... "To-day I published _The Fable of Midas_, a poem printed on a loose half-sheet of paper. I know not how it will take; but it passed wonderfully at our Society to-night." At one dinner, the printer's news is that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had sent Mr. Adisworth, the author of the _Examiner_, twenty guineas.
There were gay sparks among "the Brothers," as Colonel or "Duke" Disney, "a fellow of abundance of humour, an old battered rake, but very honest; not an old man, but an old rake. It was he that said of Jenny Kingdown, the maid of honour, who is a little old, 'that since she could not get a husband, the Queen should give her a brevet to act as a married woman.'"--_Journal to Stella._
THE SCRIBLERUS CLUB.
"The Brothers," as we have already seen, was a political Club, which, having, in great measure served its purpose, was broken up. Next year, 1714, Swift was again in London, and in place of "the Brothers," formed the celebrated "Scriblerus Club," an association rather of a literary than a political character. Oxford and St. John, Swift, Arbuthnot, Pope, and Gay, were members. Satire upon the abuse of human learning was their leading object. The name originated as follows. Oxford used playfully to call Swift _Martin_, and from this sprung Martinus Scriblerus. _Swift_, as is well known, is the name of one species of swallow, (the largest and most powerful flier of the tribe,) and Martin is the name of another species, the wall-swallow, which constructs its nest in buildings.
Part of the labours of the Society has been preserved in _P. P._, _Clerk of the Parish_, the most memorable satire upon Burnet's _History of his Own Time_, and part has been rendered immortal by the _Travels of Lemuel Gulliver_; but, says Sir Walter Scott, in his _Life of Swift_, "the violence of political faction, like a storm that spares the laurel no more than the cedar, dispersed this little band of literary brethren, and prevented the accomplishment of a task for which talents so various, so extended, and so brilliant, can never again be united."