CHAPTER IV

.

FLEET STREET (_continued_).

Dr. Johnson in Ambuscade at Temple Bar--The First Child--Dryden and Black Will--Rupert's Jewels--Telson's Bank--The Apollo Club at the "Devil"--"Old Sir Simon the King"--"Mull Sack"--Dr. Johnson's Supper to Mrs. Lennox--Will Waterproof at the "Cock"--The Duel at "Dick's Coffee House"--Lintot's Shop--Pope and Warburton--Lamb and the _Albion_--The Palace of Cardinal Wolsey--Mrs. Salmon's Waxwork--Isaak Walton--Praed's Bank--Murray and Byron--St. Dunstan's--Fleet Street Printers--Hoare's Bank and the "Golden Bottle"--The Real and Spurious "Mitre"--Hone's Trial--Cobbett's Shop--"Peele's Coffee House."

There is a delightful passage in an almost unknown essay by Dr. Johnson that connects him indissolubly with the neighbourhood of Temple Bar. The essay, written in 1756 for the _Universal Visitor_, is entitled "A Project for the Employment of Authors," and is full of humour, which, indeed, those who knew him best considered the chief feature of Johnson's genius. We rather pride ourselves on the discovery of this pleasant bit of autobiography:--"It is my practice," says Johnson, "when I am in want of amusement, to place myself for an hour at Temple Bar, or any other narrow pass much frequented, and examine one by one the looks of the passengers, and I have commonly found that between the hours of eleven and four every sixth man is an author. They are seldom to be seen very early in the morning or late in the evening, but about dinner-time they are all in motion, and have one uniform eagerness in their faces, which gives little opportunity of discerning their hopes or fears, their pleasures or their pains. But in the afternoon, when they have all dined, or composed themselves to pass the day without a dinner, their passions have full play, and I can perceive one man wondering at the stupidity of the public, by which his new book has been totally neglected; another cursing the French, who fright away literary curiosity by their threat of an invasion; another swearing at his bookseller, who will advance no money without copy; another perusing as he walks his publisher's bill; another murmuring at an unanswerable criticism; another determining to write no more to a generation of barbarians; and another wishing to try once again whether he cannot awaken the drowsy world to a sense of his merit." This extract seems to us to form an admirable companion picture to that in which we have already shown Goldsmith bantering his brother Jacobite, Johnson, as they looked up together at the grim heads on Temple Bar.

[Illustration: DR. TITUS OATES.]

That quiet grave house (No. 1), that seems to demurely huddle close to Temple Bar, as if for protection, is the oldest banking-house in London except one. For two centuries gold has been shovelled about in those dark rooms, and reams of bank-notes have been shuffled over by practised thumbs. Private banks originated in the stormy days before the Civil War, when wealthy citizens, afraid of what might happen, entrusted their money to their goldsmiths to take care of till the troubles had blown over. In the reign of Charles I., Francis Child, an industrious apprentice of the old school, married the daughter of his master, William Wheeler, a goldsmith, who lived one door west of Temple Bar, and in due time succeeded to his estate and business. In the first London Directory (1677), among the fifty-eight goldsmiths, thirty-eight of whom lived in Lombard Street, "Blanchard & Child," at the "Marygold," Fleet Street, figure conspicuously as "keeping running cashes." The original Marygold (sometimes mistaken for a rising sun), with the motto, "Ainsi mon ame," gilt upon a green ground, elegantly designed in the French manner, is still to be seen in the front office, and a marigold in full bloom still blossoms on the bank cheques. In the year 1678 it was at Mr. Blanchard's, the goldsmith's, next door to Temple Bar, that Dryden the poet, bruised and angry, deposited £50 as a reward for any one who would discover the bullies of Lord Rochester who had beaten him in Rose Alley for some scurrilous verses really written by the Earl of Dorset. The advertisement promises, if the discoverer be himself one of the actors, he shall still have the £50, without letting his name be known or receiving the least trouble by any prosecution. Black Will's cudgel was, after all, a clumsy way of making a repartee. Late in Charles II.'s reign Alderman Backwell entered the wealthy firm; but he was ruined by the iniquitous and arbitrary closing of the Exchequer in 1672, when the needy and unprincipled king pocketed at one swoop more than a million and a half of money, which he soon squandered on his shameless mistresses and unworthy favourites. In that quaint room over Temple Bar the firm still preserve the dusty books of the unfortunate alderman, who fled to Holland. There, on the sallow leaves over which the poor alderman once groaned, you can read the items of our sale of Dunkirk to the French, the dishonourable surrender of which drove the nation almost to madness, and hastened the downfall of Lord Clarendon, who was supposed to have built a magnificent house (on the site of Albemarle Street, Piccadilly) with some of the very money. Charles II. himself banked here, and drew his thousands with all the careless nonchalance of his nature. Nell Gwynne, Pepys, of the "Diary," and Prince Rupert also had accounts at Child's, and some of these ledgers are still hoarded over Temple Bar in that Venetian-looking room, approached by strange prison-like passages, for which chamber Messrs. Child pay something less than £50 a year.

[Illustration: TEMPLE BAR AND THE "DEVIL TAVERN" (_see page 38_).]

When Prince Rupert died at his house in the Barbican, the valuable jewels of the old cavalry soldier, valued at £20,000, were disposed of in a lottery, managed by Mr. Francis Child, the goldsmith; the king himself, who took a half-business-like, half-boyish interest in the matter, counting the tickets among all the lords and ladies at Whitehall.

In North's "Life of Lord Keeper Guildford," the courtier and lawyer of the reign of Charles II., there is an anecdote that pleasantly connects Child's bank with the fees of the great lawyers who in that evil reign ruled in Chancery Lane:--

"The Lord Keeper Guildford's business increased," says his biographer, "even while he was solicitor, to be so much as to have overwhelmed one less dexterous; but when he was made Attorney-General, though his gains by his office were great, they were much greater by his practice, for that flowed in upon him like an orage, enough to overset one that had not an extraordinary readiness in business. His skull-caps, which he wore when he had leisure to observe his constitution, as I touched before, were now destined to lie in a drawer, to receive the money that came in by fees. One had the gold, another the crowns and half-crowns, and another the smaller money. When these vessels were full, they were committed to his friend (the Hon. Roger North), who was constantly near him, to tell out the cash and put it into the bags according to the contents; and so they went to his treasurers, Blanchard & Child, goldsmiths, Temple Bar."

Year by year the second Sir Francis Child grew in honour. He was alderman, sheriff, Lord Mayor, President of Christ's Hospital, and M.P. for the City, and finally, dying in 1713, full of years, was buried under a grand black marble tomb in Fulham churchyard, and his account closed for ever. The family went on living in the sunshine. Sir Robert, the son of the Sir Francis, was also alderman of his ward; and, on his death, his brother, Sir Francis, succeeded to all his father's dignities, became an East Indian director, and in 1725 received the special thanks of the citizens for promoting a special act for regulating City elections. Another member of this family (Sir Josiah Child) deserves special mention as one of the earliest writers on political economy and a man much in advance of his time. He saw through the old fallacy about the balance of trade, and explained clearly the true causes of the commercial prosperity of the Dutch. He also condemned the practice of each parish paying for its own poor, an evil which all Poor-law reformers have endeavoured to alter. Sir Josiah was at the head of the East India Company, already feeling its way towards the gold and diamonds of India. His brother was Governor of Bombay, and by the marriage of his numerous daughters the rich merchant became allied to half the peers and peeresses of England. The grandson of Alderman Backwell married a daughter of the second Sir Francis Child, and his daughter married William Praed, the Truro banker, who early in the present century opened a bank at 189, Fleet Street. So, like three strands of a gold chain, the three banking families were welded together. In 1689 Child's bank seems to have for a moment tottered, but was saved by the timely loan of £1,400 proffered by that overbearing woman the Duchess of Marlborough. Hogarth is said to have made an oil sketch of the scene, which was sold at Hodgson's sale-room in 1834, and has since disappeared.

In Pennant's time (1793) the original goldsmith's shop seems to have still existed in Fleet Street, in connection with this bank. The principal of the firm was the celebrated Countess of Jersey, a former earl having assumed the name of Child on the countess inheriting the estates of her maternal grandfather, Robert Child, Esq., of Osterly Park, Middlesex. A small full-length portrait of this great beauty of George IV.'s court, painted by Lawrence in his elegant but meretricious manner, hangs in the first-floor room of the old bank. The last Child died early in this century. A descendant of Addison is a member of the present firm. In