expressions" that Johnson rose and walked away. Whereupon his antagonist revenged himself by remarking that he had "a most ungainly figure, and an affectation of pomposity, unworthy of a man of genius." Besides Clifton's, Boswell mentions the Fountain Tavern in the Strand (where now stands Simpson's) at the corner of Fountain Court the present Savoy Buildings. Here Johnson read Irene to Garrick's brother Peter, long before that masterpiece made its appearance on the stage at Drury Lane. Other favoured resorts were the Turk's-Head Coffee-house, opposite Catherine Street, Strand; the British Coffee-house in Cockspur Street (on the site of Stanford's shop); and the Crown and Anchor at the corner of Arundel Street. Of the first of these Johnson said, "I encourage this house, for the mistress of it is a good civil woman, and has not much business." The British, which was rebuilt in 1770, and pulled down in 1886, was chiefly frequented by Scotchmen, a race with whom Johnson forgathered unwillingly. But he seems to have not only dined there, but to have there uttered one of his penetrating short estimates of Goldsmith. "The misfortune of Goldsmith in conversation is this: he goes on without knowing how he is to get off. His genius is great, but his knowledge is small." This-as Swift would say "is near the mark." The Crown and Anchor, which ceased to be a tavern in 1847, is the last of the three; and Boswell records several pleasant dinners and suppers there, where Langton and Reynolds were in the Bill of Company. One wonders whether they ever inspected that egregious discarded altar-piece of William Kent for St. Clement Dane's, which, on concert nights, was used to decorate the Crown and Anchor music-room. Between Middle Temple Lane and Temple Bar, on the site of Child's Bank, stood the old St. Dunstan, or Devil Tavern, above whose Apollo Chamber you might still read the "Welcome" of Ben Jonson, and where, long after him, Swift, and Steele, and Garth, and Addison had held revel. The Devil was also the scene, in 1750, of a remarkable “frisk" on the part of Samuel Johnson, of which, since it occurred before the advent of Boswell, the historian is necessarily Hawkins, who was one of the actors. A protegée of Johnson, Mrs. Charlotte Lenox of the Female Quixote, had finished her first novel of Harriot Stuart; and Johnson must needs celebrate that event by an all-night sitting at the Devil. Guests were convened; "a magnificent hot apple-pye" was ordered for supper; and, after fitting invocation of the Muses, Mrs. Lenox was solemnly crowned with laurel. By the aid of coffee the session was protracted until eight in the morning, when those who were awake paid the bill and broke up the meeting, which, as far as the Devil is concerned, must have been. unique, since we hear of the house no more. But the Boswellian tavern in chief was higher up in Fleet Street. This was the Mitre, then kept by one Cole. Here for the first time Boswell supped with his illustrious friend." 66 "We finished a couple of bottles of port, and sat till between one and two in the morning," says the delighted neophyte; and the talk, from his notes, must have been excellent, digressing from Gray and Goldsmith to ghosts and other themes, which (with the wine) and "the orthodox high-church sound of the MITRE," produced in Boswell "a variety of sensations, and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what he had ever before experienced." In subsequent years these social meetings were often renewed, and Goldsmith, who, at the first encounter, had only been the theme of conversation, figured frequently as a guest. Many of Johnson's best things were uttered over the Mitre port; though, before long, he had again returned to the lemonade which had triumphantly carried him through his all-night sitting at the Devil. It was at the Mitre that he gave vent to his famous boutade about the road to England being the best prospect visible to a Scotchman; and it was at the Mitre that he entertained the two young ladies from Staffordshire who came to consult him about turning Methodists, a subject one would scarcely expect to find chosen for reproduction by the late Dante Gabriel Rossetti. At the Mitre, too, it was, that Goldsmith, speaking to Boswell of Johnson's kindness to a worthless person, said finely and humanely-" He is now become miserable, and that insures the protection of Johnson." Oddly enough Boswell makes no reference to two other Fleet Street taverns which tradition persists in connecting with his hero. One is the Cock, now transferred from the northern to the southern side of the street, opposite Chancery Lane; and rich enough in its recollections of Tennyson and "Will Waterproof" to dispense with any less authentic memories. The other is the Cheshire Cheese in Wine Office Court, an excellent specimen, with its panelled walls and sanded floor, of the passed-away eighteenth century tavern; and the present meeting-place of the Johnson Club. Johnson's and Goldsmith's seats are still pointed out to the trustful enquirer; and Cyrus Redding, in his Fifty Years' Recollections, confidently asserts that he had conversed with Fleet Street tradesmen who had actually seen the Doctor in the building.1 With Will's and Tom's in Russell Street it is also supposed that the great man was familiar; and he is besides believed to have frequented two suburban houses equally well-known to Goldsmith— the Old Red Lion at Islington (No. 186, St. John Street Road), which still exists in a restored and renovated form; and the Old Baptist's Head, No. 30, St. John's Lane, Clerkenwell. This, which was not far from the office of the Gentleman's Magazine, was doubtless used by many of Cave's journeymen; and it enjoyed besides the minor honour of serving as a house of call to prisoners bound Newgatewards. But the chief hostelries which now remain to be noted in connection with Johnson, are those in which his favourite clubs were held. Among these the first was the Ivy Lane Club, which met every Tuesday evening at the King's Head, a beef-steak house in Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row, then (1749-56) kept by one Horseman. It was the members of the Ivy Lane Club who formed the bulk of the guests at the Charlotte Lenox symposium, to which reference has been made. The King's Head was closed in Johnson's life-time, and burnt down in the last century. It is said to have occupied the site of No. 4 in the Lane, now (1901) Worrall's Dining Rooms. The more famous club which succeeded it in 1764,-"The Club," par excellence-met at first at the Turk's Head in Gerard Street (at the corner of Greek Street and Compton Street), already a favourite resort of the artists of St. Martin's Lane. The original members,in addition to the founders, Johnson and Reynolds-were Burke, Beauclerk, Langton, Goldsmith, Dr. Nugent, Chamier and Hawkins. 1 "The left-hand room on entering the Cheshire,' and the table on the right on entering that room, having the window at the end, was the table occupied by Johnson and his friends almost uniformly. This table and the room are now as they were when I first saw them, having had the curiosity to visit them recently. They were and are, too, as Johnson and his friends left them in their time. Johnson's seat was always in the window, and Goldsmith sat on his left hand,”—(Redding, 1858, i. 28.) Garrick and Boswell were later additions. Johnson dined at the club for the last time on the 22nd June, 1784, at which date the place of meeting had been transferred to Prince's, in Sackville Street. His health was then failing, and he was much touched by the deferential kindness of his fellow members. Not many months before he had organised a new association at the Essex Head Tavern, No. 40 Essex Street, Strand. It was an unpretentious gathering, and though it had rules, informal. The landlord, Samuel Greaves, after whom it was sometimes styled "Sam's," was an old servant of Thrale, and the members met three times a week, the modest forfeit for nonattendance being a fine of twopence. The Essex Head survived until the autumn of 1890, when it was pulled down. Lastly, there was the Queen's Arms Club, in St. Paul's Churchyard,-the "City Club," where Boswell dined with Johnson in April, 1781, when it "had been lately formed." At the Queen's Arms also took place in 1783-4 those dinners of the survivors of the Ivy Lane Club, recorded by Hawkins and Mrs. Piozzi. Hic finis chartaque viæque. The reader has now before him an account of the haunts and dwelling-places of Johnson in London, with the sites or whereabouts of most. It is impossible that there should not be omissions. But the march of improvement is so rapid, that even an imperfect attempt at such a record is not without its value, to say nothing of the fact that, as Boswell himself puts it in a by-no-means too highly-pitched justification, "there is something pleasingly interesting, to many, in tracing so great a man through all his different habitations." |