Читать книгу A Book for a Rainy Day; or, Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766-1833 - John Thomas Smith - Страница 15

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The “Mother Red-cap,” at Kentish Town, was a house of no small terror to travellers in former times. This house was lately taken down, and another inn built on its site; however, the old sign of “Mother Red-cap” is preserved on the new building. It has been stated that Mother Red-cap was the “Mother Damnable” of Kentish Town in early days; and that it was at her house the notorious “Moll Cut-purse,” the highway-woman of the time of Oliver Cromwell, dismounted and frequently lodged.[46]

As few persons possess so retentive a memory as myself, I make no doubt that many will be pleased with my recollections of the state of Tottenham Court Road at this time. I shall commence at St. Giles’s churchyard, in the northern wall of which there was a gateway of red and brown brick. Over this gate, under its pediment, was a carved composition of the Last Judgment, not borrowed from Michael Angelo, but from the workings of the brain of some ship-carver.[47] This was and is still admired by the generality of ignorant observers, as much as Mr. Charles Smith[48] the sculptor’s “Love among the Roses” is by the well-informed; and, perhaps, a more correct assertion was never made than that by the late worthy Rev. James Bean,[49] when speaking of an itinerant musician, “that bad music was as agreeable to a bad ear as that of Corelli or Pergolesi was to persons who understood the science.”

At this gate stood for many years an eccentric but inoffensive old man called “Simon,” some account of whom will be found in a future page. Nearly on the site of the new gate, in which this basso relievo has been most conspicuously placed, stood a very small old house towards Denmark Street, tottering for several years whenever a heavy carriage rolled through the street, to the great terror of those who were at the time passing by.

I must not forget to observe that I recollect the building of most of the houses at the north end of New Compton Street (Dean Street and Compton Street, Soho, were named in compliment to Bishop Compton, Dean of St. Paul’s, who held the living of St. Anne), and I also remember a row of six small almshouses, surrounded by a dwarf brick wall, standing in the middle of High Street.[50]

On the left-hand of High Street, passing on to Tottenham Court Road, there were four handsomely finished brick houses, with grotesque masks on the key-stones above the first-floor windows, probably erected in the reign of Queen Anne. These houses have lately been rebuilt without the masks; fortunately my reader may be gratified with a sight of such ornaments in Queen Square, Westminster.[51] There is a set of engravings of masks, of a small quarto size, considered as the designs of Michael Angelo; and in the sale of Mr. Moser, the first keeper of the Royal Academy, which took place at Hutchinson’s in 1783, were several plaster casts, considered to be taken from models by him. The next object of notoriety is a large circular boundary stone, let into the pavement in the middle of the highway, exactly where Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road meet in a right angle. When the charity boys of St. Giles’s parish walk the boundaries, those who have deserved flogging are whipped at this stone, in order that, as they grow up, they may remember the place, and be competent to give evidence should any dispute arise with the adjoining parishes. Near this stone stood St. Giles’s Pound.[52] Two old houses stood near this spot on the eastern side of the street, where the entrance gates of Meux’s brewery have been erected: between the second-floor windows of one of them the following inscription was cut in stone: “Opposite this house stood St. Giles’s Pound.” This spot has been rendered popular by a song, attributed to the pen of a Mr. Thompson, an actor of the Drury Lane Company:

“On Newgate steps Jack Chance was found,

Bred up near St. Giles’s Pound.”[53]

The ground behind the north-west end of Russell Street was occupied by a farm occupied by two old maiden sisters of the name of Capper. They wore riding-habits, and men’s hats; one rode an old grey mare, and it was her spiteful delight to ride with a large pair of shears after boys who were flying their kites, purposely to cut their strings; the other sister’s business was to seize the clothes of the lads who trespassed on their premises to bathe.[54]

From Capper’s farm were several straggling houses; but the principal part of the ground to the “King’s Head,” at the end of the road, was unbuilt upon. The “Old King’s Head” forms a side object in Hogarth’s beautiful and celebrated picture of the “March to Finchley,” which may be seen with other fine specimens of art in the Foundling Hospital, for the charitable donation of one shilling.

I shall now recommence on the left-hand side of the road, noticing that on the front of the first house, No. 1, in Oxford Street, near the second-floor windows, is the following inscription cut in stone: Oxford Street, 1725. In Aggas’s plan of London, engraved in the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the commencement of this street is designated “The Waye to Uxbridge”; farther on in the same plan the highway is called “Oxford Road.” Hanway Street, better known by the vulgar people under the name of Hanover Yard, was at this time the resort of the highest fashion for mercery and other articles of dress. The public-house, the sign of the “Blue Posts,” at the corner of Hanway Street, in Tottenham Court Road, was once kept by a man of the name of Sturges, deep in the knowledge of chess, upon which game he published a little work, as is acknowledged on his tombstone in St. James’s burial-ground, Hampstead Road.[55] From the “Blue Posts” the houses were irregularly built to a large space called Gresse’s Gardens, thence to Windmill Street, strongly recommended by physicians for the salubrity of the air. The premises occupied by the French charity children were held by the founders of the Middlesex Hospital, which were established in 1755, where the patients remained until the present building was erected in Charles Street. Colvill Court, parallel with Windmill Street northward, was built in 1766; and Goodge Street,[56] farther on, was, I conjecture, erected much about the same time. Mr. Whitefield’s chapel was built in 1754, upon the site of an immense pond, called The Little Sea. This pond, so called, is inserted in Pine and Tinney’s plan of London, published in 1742, and also in the large one issued by the same persons in 1746.[57] Beyond the chapel[58] the four dwellings, then called “Paradise Row,” almost terminated the houses on that side. A turnstile opened into Crab-tree Fields.[59] They extended to the “Adam and Eve” public-house, the original appearance of which Hogarth has also introduced into his picture of the “March to Finchley.” It was at this house that the famous pugilistic skill of Broughton and Slack was publicly exhibited, upon an uncovered stage, in a yard open to the North Road.[60]

GEORGE WHITEFIELD

“Fain would I die preaching.”

The rare and beautiful etching of the before-mentioned picture by Hogarth was the production of Luke Sullivan,[61] a native of Ireland, but how he acquired his knowledge of art I have not been able to learn; most probably he was of Dame Nature’s school, where pupils can be taught gratis the whole twenty-four hours of every day as long as the world lasts. Sullivan’s talents were not confined to the art of engraving; he was, in my humble opinion, the most extraordinary of all miniature painters. I have three or four of his productions, one of which was so particularly fine, that I could almost say I have it on my retina at this moment. It was the portrait of a most lovely woman as to features, flesh, and blood. She was dressed in a pale green silk gown, lapelled with straw-coloured satin; and in order to keep up a sweetness of tone, the artist had placed primroses in her stomacher; the sky was of a warm green, which blended harmoniously with the carnations of her complexion; her hair was jet, and her necklace of pearls.

Lord Orford, whose early attachment to the sleepy-eyed beauties of King Charles II.’s Court, and those with the lascivious leer of that of Louis XIV., as may be inferred by their numerous portraits in the cabinets at Strawberry Hill, would no doubt have preferred his favourites, Cooper and Petitot—names eternally, and many times unjustly, extolled by the admirers of their works to the injury of our artists, whose talents equal, if not surpass, those of every country put together, in, I think I may say, every branch of the fine arts. Upon this too general opinion of the pre-eminence of Petitot, I have now and then had a battle with Mr. Paul Fischer, the miniature painter, who certainly has produced some most highly finished and excellent likenesses of the Royal Family and several persons of fashion, particularly of King George IV. and Sir Wathen Waller, Bart.[62]

Notwithstanding Tottenham Court Road was so infested by the lowest order, who kept what they called a Gooseberry Fair,[63] it was famous at certain times of the year, particularly in summer, for its booths of regular theatrical performers, who deserted the empty benches of Drury Lane Theatre, under the mismanagement of Mr. Fleetwood,[64] and condescended to admit the audience at sixpence each. Mr. Yates, and several other eminent performers, had their names painted on their booths.

The whole of the ground north from Capper’s farm, at the back of the British Museum, so often mentioned as being frequented by duellists, was in irregular patches, many fields with turnstiles. The pipes of the New River Company were propped up in several parts to the height of six and eight feet, so that persons walked under them to gather watercresses, which grew in great abundance and perfection, or to visit the “Brothers’ Steps,” well known to the Londoners. Of these steps there are many traditionary stories; the one generally believed is, that two brothers were in love with a lady, who would not declare a preference for either, but coolly sat upon a bank to witness the termination of a duel, which proved fatal to both. The bank, it is said, on which she sat, and the footmarks of the brothers when pacing the ground, never produced grass again. The fact is that these steps were so often trodden that it was impossible for the grass to grow. I have frequently passed over them; they were in a field on the site of Mr. Martin’s chapel, or very nearly so, and not on the spot as communicated to Miss Porter, who has written an entertaining novel on the subject.[65]

Aubrey, in his Miscellanies, states: “The last summer, on the day of St. John Baptist (1694), I accidentally was walking in the pasture behind Montague House; it was twelve o’clock. I saw there about two or three and twenty young women, most of them well habited, on their knees very busie, as if they had been weeding. I could not presently learn what the matter was; at last a young man told me that they were looking for a coal under the root of a plantain to put under their heads that night, and they should dream who would be their husbands. It was to be found that day and hour.”[66]

JOHN RANN

“Sixteen String Jack.”