election of Mr. Walter for Southwark. The Times Telegraph was started on June 29, 1855, by the retaliated when the time came for Alderman late Colonel Sleigh. It was a single sheet, and the Harmer to succeed to the lord mayoralty. Day after price twopence. Colonel Sleigh failing to make it day the Times returned to the attack, denouncing a success, Mr. Lawson, the present chief proprietor the Dispatch as an infidel paper; and Alderman of the paper, took the copyright as part security Harmer, rejected by the City, resigned in conse- for money owed him as a printer by Colonel Sleigh. quence his aldermanic gown. In 1857 the Dispatch | In Mr. Lawson's hands the paper, reduced to a commenced the publication of its famous "Atlas," penny, became a great success. "It was," says Mr. giving away a good map weekly for about five years. Grant, in his "History of the Newspaper Press," The price was reduced from fivepence to twopence," the first of the penny papers, while a single sheet, at the beginning of 1869, and to a penny in 1870. The Daily Telegraph office is No. 136 (north). Mr. Ingram, of the Illustrated London News, originated a paper called the Telegraph, which lasted only seven or eight weeks. The present Daily and as such was regarded as a newspaper marvel; but when it came out-which it did soon after the Standard-as a double sheet the size of the Times, published at fourpence, and for a penny, it created a sensation. Here was a penny paper, containing The "Globe Tavern" (No. 134, north), though now only a memory, abounds with traditions of Goldsmith and his motley friends. The house, in 1649, was leased to one Henry Hottersall for forty-one years, at the yearly rent of £75, ten gallons of Canary sack, and £400 fine. Mr. John Forster gives a delightful sketch of Goldsmith's Wednesday evening club at the Globe," in 1767. When not at Johnson's great club, Oliver beguiled his cares at a shilling rubber club at the "Devil Tavern," or at a ,,, exactly 7s. 6d. The daily receipts for advertise- humble gathering in the parlour of the "Bedford," ments are now said to exceed £500. Mr. Grant Covent Garden. A hanger-on of the theatres, who says that the remission of the tax on paper frequented the "Globe," has left notes which Mr. brought £12,000 a year extra to the Telegraph. Forster has admirably used, and which we now Ten pages for a penny is no uncommon thing with abridge without further apology. Grim old Mackthe Telegraph during the Parliamentary session. hin belonged to the club it is certain; and The returns of sales given by the Telegraph for the among the less obscure members was King, the half-year ending 1870 show an average daily sale comedian, the celebrated impersonator of Lord of 190,885; and though this was war time, a Ogleby. Hugh Kelly, another member, was a competent authority estimates the average daily clever young Irishman, who had chambers near sale at 175,000 copies, One of the printing. Goldsmith in the Temple. He had been a staymachines recently set up by the proprietors of maker's apprentice, who, turning law writer, and the Telegraph throws off upwards of 200 copies soon landing as a hack for the magazines, set 511007.01 100 hour? bas tasiq bobtoupas satirist for the stage, and eventually, per minute, or 12,000 an в T זי wrote his epitaph as he came from his chambers in I don't think he'll wish to come back." Goldsmith sat next Glover that night at the club, and Glover heard the poet repeat, sotto voce, with a mournful intonation, the words,— "I don't think he'll wish to come back." Oliver was musing over his own life, and Mr. Forster says touchingly, "It is not without a certain pathos to me, indeed, that he should have so repeated it.” Among other frequenters of the "Globe" were Boswell's friend Akerman, the keeper of Newgate, who always thought it prudent never to return home till daybreak ; and William Woodfall, the celebrated Parliamentary reporter. In later times Brasbridge, the sporting silversmith of Fleet Street, was a frequenter of the club. He tells us that among his associates was a surgeon, who, living on the Surrey side of the Thames, had to take a boat every night (Blackfriar's Bridge not being then built). This nightly navigation cost him three or four shillings a time, yet, when the bridge came, he grumbled at having to pay a penny toll. Among other frequenters of the "Globe," Mr. Timbs enumerates "Archibald Hamilton, whose mind was 'fit for a lord chancellor ;' Dunstall, the comedian; Carnan, the bookseller, who defeated the Stationers' Company in the almanack trial; and, later still, the eccentric Hugh Evelyn, who set up a claim upon the great Surrey estate of Sir Frederic Evelyn.” through Garrick's patronage, succeeded in sentimental comedy. It was of him Johnson said, "Sir, I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read." Poor Kelly afterwards went to the Bar, and died of disappointment and over-work. A third member was Captain Thompson, a friend of Garrick's, who wrote some good sea songs and edited "Andrew Marvell;" but foremost among all the boon companions was a needy Irish doctor named Glover, who had appeared on the stage, and who was said to have restored to life a man who had been hung; this Glover, who was famous for his songs and imitations, once had the impudence, like Theodore Hook, to introduce Goldsmith, during a summer ramble in Hampstead, to a party where he was an entire stranger, and to pass himself off as a friend of the host. "Our Dr. Glover," says Goldsmith, "had a constant levee of his distressed countrymen, whose wants, as far as he was able, he always relieved." Gordon, the fattest man in the club, was renowned for his jovial song of "Nottingham Ale;" and on special occasions Goldsmith himself would sing his favourite nonsense about the little old woman who was tossed seventeen times higher than the moon. A fat pork-butcher at the "Globe" used to offend Goldsmith by constantly shouting out, "Come, Noll, here's my service to you, old boy." After the success of The Goodnatured Man, this coarse familiarity was more than Goldsmith's vanity could bear, so one special night he addressed the butcher with grave reproof. The stolid man, taking no notice, replied briskly, "Thankee, Mister Noll." "Well, where is the advantage of your reproof?" asked Glover. "In truth," said Goldsmith, good-naturedly, "I give it up; I ought to have known before that there is no The Standard (No. 129, north), "the largest daily putting a pig in the right way." Sometimes rather paper," was originally an evening paper alone. In cruel tricks were played on the credulous poet. 1826 a deputation of the leading men opposed to One evening Goldsmith came in clamorous for his Catholic Emancipation waited on Mr. Charles supper, and ordered chops. Directly the supper Baldwin, proprietor of the St. James's Chronicle, and came in, the wags, by pre-agreement, began to sniff begged him to start an anti-Catholic evening paper, and swear. Some pushed the plate away; others but Mr. Baldwin refused unless a preliminary sum declared the rascal who had dared set such chops of £15,000 was lodged at the banker's. A year later before a gentleman should be made to swallow them this sum was deposited, and in 1827 the Evening himself. The waiter was savagely rung up, and Standard, edited by Dr. Giffard, ex-editor of the forced to eat the supper, to which he consented St. James's Chronicle, appeared. Mr. Alaric Watts, with well-feigned reluctance, the poet calmly ordering the poet, was succeeded as sub-editor of the a fresh supper and a dram for the poor waiter, "who Standard by the celebrated Dr. Maginn. The otherwise might get sick from so nauseating a daily circulation soon rose from 700 or 800 copies meal." Poor Goldy! kindly even at his most foolish to 3,000 and over. The profits Mr. Grant calmoments. A sadder story still connects Goldsmith culates at £7,000 to £8,000 a year. On the with the "Globe." Ned Purdon, a worn-out bankruptcy of Mr. Charles Baldwin, Mr. James booksellers' hack and a protégé of Goldsmith's, Johnson bought the Morning Herald and dropped down dead in Smithfield. Goldsmith Standard, plant and all, for £16,500. The was "The boar's head in hand bring I, With garlands gay and rosemary." proprietor reduced the Standard from fourpence" Hunting, Hawking, and Fishing," partly written to twopence, and made it a morning as well as an by Johanna Berners, a prioress of St. Alban's. In evening paper. In 1858 he reduced it to a penny De Worde's "Collection of Christmas Carols" we only. The result was a great success. The find the words of that fine old song, still sung annual income of the Standard is now, Mr. Grant annually at Queen's College, Oxford,— says, "much exceeding yearly the annual incomes of most of the ducal dignities of the land." The legend of the Duke of Newcastle presenting Dr. Giffard, in 1827, with £1,200 for a violent article against Roman Catholic claims, has been denied by Dr. Giffard's son in the Times. The Duke of Wellington once wrote to Dr. Giffard to dictate the line the Standard and Morning Herald were to adopt on a certain question during the agitation on the Maynooth Bill; and Dr. Giffard withdrew his opposition to please Sir Robert Peel-a concession which injured the Standard. Yet in the following year, when Sir Robert Peel brought in his Bill for the abolition of the corn laws, he did not even pay Dr. Giffard the compliment of apprising him of his intention. Such is official gratitude when a tool is done with. De Worde also published some writings of Erasmus. The old printer was buried in the parish church of St. Bride's, before the high altar of St. Katherine; and he left land to the parish so that masses should be said for his soul. To his servants, not forgetting his bookbinder, Nowel, in Shoe Lane, he bequeathed books. De Worde lived near the Conduit, a little west of Shoe Lane. This conduit, which was begun in the year 1439 by Sir William Estfielde, a former Lord Mayor, and finished in 1471, was, according to Stow's account, a stone tower, with images of St. Christopher on the top and angels, who, on sweet-sounding bells, hourly chimed a hymn with hammers, thus anticipating the Near Shoe Lane lived one of Caxton's disciples, wonders of St. Dunstan's. These London conduits Wynkyn de Worde, who is supposed to have were great resorts for the apprentices, whom their been one of Caxton's assistants or workmen, was a masters sent with big leather and metal jugs to native of Lorraine. He carried on a prosperous bring home the daily supply of water. Here these career, says Dibdin, from 1502 to 1534, at the sign noisy, quarrelsome young rascals stayed to gossip, of the "Sun," in the parish of St. Bride's, Fleet Street. idle, and fight. At the coronation of Anne Boleyn In upwards of four hundred works published by this conduit was newly painted, all the arms this industrious man he displayed unprecedented and angels refreshed, and "the music melodiskill, elegance, and care, and his Gothic type was ously sounding." Upon the conduit was raised a considered a pattern for his successors. The books tower with four turrets, and in every turret stood that came from his press were chiefly grammars, one of the cardinal virtues, promising never to romances, legends of the saints, and fugitive poems; leave the queen, while, to the delight and wonder he never ventured on an English New Testament, of thirsty citizens, the taps ran with claret and nor was any drama published bearing his name, red wine. Fleet Street, according to Mr. Noble, His great patroness, Margaret, the mother of was supplied with water in the Middle Ages from Henry VII., seems to have had little taste to guide the conduit at Marylebone and the holy wells De Worde in his selection, for he never reprinted of St. Clement's and St. Bridget's. The tradition the works of Chaucer or of Gower; nor did his is that the latter well was drained dry for the supply humble patron, Robert Thorney, the mercer, lead of the coronation banquet of George IV. As early him in a better direction. De Worde filled his black- as 1358 the inhabitants of Fleet Street complained letter books with rude, engravings, which he used of aqueduct pipes bursting and flooding their so indiscriminately that the same cut often served cellars, upon which they were allowed the privilege for books of a totally opposite character. By some of erecting a pent-house over an aqueduct oppowriters De Worde is considered to be the first site the tavern of John Walworth, and near the introducer of Roman letters into this country; house of the Bishop of Salisbury. In 1478 a Fleet but the honour of that mode of printing is now Street wax-chandler, having been detected tapping generally, claimed by Pynson, a contemporary. the conduit pipes for his own use, was sentenced Among other works published by De Worde were to ride through the City with a vessel shaped like "The Ship of Fools," that great satire that was a conduit on his felonious head, and the City crier so long popular in England; Mandeville's lying walking before him to proclaim his offence. "Travels;" "La Morte d'Arthur" (from which The "Castle Tavern," mentioned as early as Tennyson has derived so much inspiration); "The 1432, stood at the south-west corner of Shoe much Golden Legend;" and those curious treatises on Here the Clockmakers' Company held their 131 Lane. meetings before the Great Fire, and in 1708 the "Castle" possessed the largest sign in London. Early in the last century, says Mr. Noble, its proprietor was Alderman Sir John Task, a wine merchant, who died in 1735 (George II.), worth, it was understood, a quarter of a million of money. The Morning Advertiser (No. 127, north) was established in 1794, by the Society of Licensed Victuallers, on the mutual benefit society principle. Every member is bound to take in the paper and is entitled to a share in its profits. Members unsuccessful in business become pensioners on the funds of the institution. The paper, which took the place of the Daily Advertiser, and was the suggestion of Mr. Grant, a master printer, was an immediate success. Down to 1850 the Morning Advertiser circulated chiefly in public-houses and coffee-houses at the rate of nearly 5,000 copies a day. But in 1850, the circulation beginning to decline, the committee resolved to enlarge the paper to the size of the Times, and Mr. James Grant was appointed editor. The profits now increased, and the paper found its way to the clubs. The late Lord Brougham and Sir David Brewster contributed to the Advertiser; and the letters signed "An Englishman" excited much interest. This paper has always been Liberal. Mr. Grant remained the editor for twenty years. No. 91 (south side) was till lately the office of that old-established paper, Bell's Weekly Messenger. Mr. Bell, the spirited publisher who founded this paper, is delightfully sketched by Leigh Hunt in his autobiography. Wales, to whom he was bookseller, once did him the honour to partake of an entertainment or refreshment (I forget which-most probably the latter) at his house. He afterwards became a bankrupt. After his bankruptcy he set up a newspaper, which became profitable to everybody but himself."* No. 93, Fleet Street (south side) is endeared to us by its connection with Charles Lamb. At that number, in 1823, that great humorist, the king of all London clerks that ever were or will be, published his "Elia," a collection of essays immortal as the language, full of quaint and tender thoughts and gleaming with cross-lights of humour as shot silk does with interchanging colours. In 1821, when the first editor was shot in a duel, the London Magazine fell into the hands of Messrs. Taylor & Hessey, of No. 93; but they published the excellent periodical and gave their "magazine dinners" at their publishing house in Waterloo Place. Mr. John Scott, a man of great promise, the editor of the London for the first publishers— Messrs. Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy-met with a very tragic death in 1821. The duel in which he fell arose from a quarrel between the men on the London and the clever but bitter and unscrupulous writers in Blackwood, started in 1817. Lockhart, who had cruelly maligned Leigh Hunt and his set (the "Cockney School," as the Scotch Tories chose to call them), was sharply attacked in the London. Fiery and vindictive Lockhart flew at once up to town, and angrily demanded from Mr. Scott, the editor, an explanation, an apology, or a meeting. Mr. Scott declined giving an apology unless Mr. Lockhart would first deny that he was editor of Blackwood. Lockhart refused to give this denial, and retorted by expressing a mean opinion of Mr. Scott's courage. Lockhart and Scott both "About the period of my writing the above essays," he says, in his easy manner, "circumstances introduced me to the acquaintance of Mr. Bell, the proprietor of the Weekly Messenger. In his house, in the Strand, I used to hear of politics and dramatic criticisms, and of the persons who wrote them. Mr. Bell had been well known as a book-printed contradictory versions of the quarrel, which seller and a speculator in elegant typography. It is to him the public are indebted for the small editions of the poets that preceded Cooke's. Bell was, upon the whole, a remarkable person. He was a plain man, with a red face and a nose exaggerated by intemperance; and yet there was something not unpleasing in his countenance, especially when he spoke. He had sparkling black eyes, a good-natured smile, gentlemanly manners, and one of the most agreeable voices I ever heard. He had no acquirements—perhaps not even grammar; but his taste in putting forth a publication and getting the best artists to adorn it was new in those times, and may be admired any, Unfortunately for Mr. Bell, the Prince of in worked up till at last Mr. Christie, a friend of Lockhart's, challenged Scott; and they met at Chalk Farm by moonlight on February 16th, at nine o'clock at night, attended by their seconds and surgeons, in the old business-like, bloodthirsty way. The first time Mr. Christie did not fire at Mr. Scott, a fact of which Mr. Patmore, the author, Scott's second, with most blamable indiscretion, did not inform his principal. At the second fire Christie's ball struck Scott just above the right hip, and he * An intelligent compositor (Mr. J. P. S. Bicknell), who has been a noter of curious passages in his time, informs me that Bell was the first printer who confined the small letter "s" to its present shape, and rejected altogether the older form "f." |