the venerable Chamberlain Clarke, who died in his ninety-third year. The Bridewell prison was pulled down (except the hall, treasurer's house, and offices) in 1863, when its inmates were sent to Holloway. Bridewell Dock, now covered by Tudor and William Streets, was long noted for its taverns, and was a favourite landing-place for the Thames watermen. The "George" Tavern, in Whitefriars, before mentioned (see p. 188), figures in Mrs. Behn's "Lucky Chance" (1687); it was afterwards the printing-office of William Bowyer, whom Nichols commemorates in his "Literary Anecdotes;" it was next occupied by Thomas Davison, a wellknown printer in his time, and latterly became the printing establishment of Messrs. Bradbury and Co. Another old and well-known tavern in this locality, but one that has remained to this day, in name, at least, is the "Black Lion," on the west side of Whitefriars Street. The old house, a quaint and picturesque edifice, of which we give a view on p. 186, was pulled down in 1877, and a large tavern, more in conformity with modern tastes, has been erected in its place. The gas-works of Whitefriars, established in 1814, were removed about 1870 to Barking, in Essex. In 1807 Mr. Winsor, a German, first lit a part of London (Pall Mall) with gas, and in 1809 he applied for a charter. Yet, even as late as 1813, the inquest-men prosecuted two persons, named Sturt and Knight, for endangering the health of the inhabitants by the "making of gas-light;" but the latter, nevertheless, went on committing his harmless misdemeanour, and in the next year (1814) started a company and built gas-works on the bank of the river at Whitefriars. On a part of the site of these gas-works the governors of the City of London School are about to erect schools to accommodate six hundred day scholars. The first theatre in Whitefriars seems to have been built in the hall of the old Whitefriars Monastery. Mr. J. P. Collier gives the duration of this theatre as from 1586 to 1613. A memorandum from the manuscript-book of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels to King Charles I., notes that "I committed Cromes, a broker in Long Lane, the 16th of February, 1634, to the Marshalsey, for lending a Church robe, with the name of Jesus upon it, to the players in Salisbury Court, to represent a flamen, a priest of the heathens. Upon his petition of submission and acknowledgment of his fault, I released him the 17th February, 1634." The Whitefriars Theatre (erected originally in the precincts of the monastery, to be out of the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor) seems to have become disreputable in 1609, and ruinous in 1619, when it is mentioned that "the rain hath made its way in, and if it be not repaired it must soon be plucked down, or it will fall." The Salisbury Court Theatre, which took its place, was erected about 1629, and the Earl of Dorset somewhat illegally let it for a term of sixty-one years and £950 down, Dorset House being afterwards sold for £4,000. The theatre was destroyed by the Puritan soldiers in 1649, and not rebuilt till the Restoration. At the outbreak of pleasure and vice, after the Restoration, the actors, long starved and crestfallen, brushed up their plumes and burnished their tinsel. Killigrew, that clever buffoon of the Court, opened a new theatre in Drury Lane in 1663, with a play of Beaumont and Fletcher's; and Davenant (supposed to be Shakespeare's illegitimate son) opened the little theatre, long disused, in Salisbury Court, the rebuilding of which was commenced in 1660, on the site of the granary of Salisbury House. In time Davenant migrated to the old Tennis Court, in Portugal Street, on the south side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and when the Great Fire came it erased the Granary Theatre. In 1671, on Davenant's death, the company (nominally managed by his widow) returned to the new theatre in Salisbury Court, designed by Wren, and decorated, it is said, by Grinling Gibbons. It opened with Dryden's Sir Martin Marall, which had already had a run, having been first played in 1668. On Killigrew's death, the King's and Duke's Servants united, and removed to Drury Lane in 1682; so that the Dorset Gardens Theatre flourished for only eleven years in all. It was subsequently let to wrestlers, fencers, and other brawny and wiry performers. The engraving on page 193, taken from Settle's "Empress of Morocco (1678), represents the stage of the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Wren's new theatre in Dorset Gardens, an engraving of which is given on page 138, fronted the river, and had public stairs for the convenience of those who came by water. There was also an open place before the theatre for the coaches of the "quality." In 1698 it was used for the drawing of a penny lottery; but in 1703, when it threatened to re-open, Queen Anne finally closed it. It was standing, however, in 1720, when Strype drew up the continuation of Stow, but it was shortly after turned into a timber-yard. The New River Company next had their offices there, and in 1814 water was ousted by fire, and the City Gas Works were established in this quarter, with a dismal front to the bright and pleasant Embankment. Pepys, the indefatigable, was a frequent visitor to the Whitefriars Theatre. A few of his quaint remarks will not be uninteresting: "1660.-By water to Salsbury Court Playhouse, where, not liking to sit, we went out again, and by coach to the theatre, &c.-To the playhouse, and there saw The Changeling, the first time it hath been acted these twenty years, and it takes exceedingly. Besides, I see the gallants do begin to be tyred with the vanity and pride of the theatre actors, who are indeed grown very proud and rich. "1661.-To White-fryars, and saw The Bondman acted; an excellent play, and well done; but above all that I ever saw, Betterton do the Bondman the best. “1661.-After dinner I went to the theatre, where I found so few people (which is strange, and the reason I do not know) that I went out again, and so to Salisbury Court, where the house as full as could be; and it seems it was a new play, The Queen's Maske, wherein there are some good humours; among others, a good jeer to the old story of the siege of Troy, making it to be a common country tale. But above all it was strange to see so little a boy as that was to act Cupid, which is one of the greatest parts in it. "Creed and I to Salisbury Court, and there saw Love's Quarrell acted the first time, but I do not like the design or words. . . . . To Salsbury Court Playhouse, where was acted the first time a simple play, and ill acted, only it was my fortune to sit by a most pretty and most ingenuous lady, which pleased me much." show. "You who each day can theatres behold, : Then he brings in the dictum of the king :- To build a playhouse, while you throw down plays. To these new conquerors of the Norman race." "So we expect the lovers, braves, and wits; The gaudy house with scenes will serve for cits." In another epilogue Dryden alludes sarcastically to the death of Mr. Scroop, a young rake of fortune, who had just been run through by Sir Thomas Armstrong, a sworn friend of the Duke of Monmouth, in a quarrel at the Dorset Gardens Theatre, and died soon after. This fatal affray took place during the representation of Davenant's adaptation of Macbeth. From Dryden's various prologues and epilogues we cull many sharply-outlined and brightcoloured pictures of the wild and riotous audiences of those evil days. We see again the “hot Burgundians" in the upper boxes wooing the masked beauties, crying "bon" to the French dancers and beating cadence to the music that had stirred even the stately Court of Versailles. Again we see the scornful critics, bunched with glistening ribbons, shaking back their cascades of blonde hair, lolling contemptuously on the foremost benches, and "looking big through their curls." There from "Fop's Corner" rises the tipsy laugh, the prattle, and the chatter, as the dukes and lords, the wits and courtiers, practise what Dryden calls "the diving bow," Dryden, in his prologues, makes frequent mention of the Dorset Gardens Theatre, more especially in the address on the opening of the new Drury Lane, March, 1674. The Whitefriars house, under Davenant, had been the first to introduce regular scenery, and it prided itself on stage pomp and The year before, in Shadwell's opera of The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island, the machinery was very costly; and one scene, in which the spirits away with the wicked duke's table and viands just as the company was sitting down, had excited or "the toss and the new French wallow"-the the town to enthusiasm. Psyche, another opera by Shadwell, perhaps adapted from Molière's Court spectacle, had succeeded the Tempest. St. André and his French dancers were probably engaged in Shadwell's piece. The king, whose taste and good sense the poet praises, had recommended simplicity of dress and frugality of ornament. This Dryden took care to well remember. He says: flew diving bow being especially admired, because it— "With a shug casts all the hair before, Till he, with full decorum, brings it back, And rises with a water-spaniel's shake." Nor does the poet fail to recall the affrays in the upper boxes, when some quarrelsome rake was often pinned to the wainscot by the sword of his insulted rival. Below, at the door, the Flemish horses and the heavy gilded coach, lighted by flambeaux, are waiting for the noisy gallant, and will take back only his corpse. Of Dryden's coldly licentious comedies and ranting bombastic tragedies a few only seem to have been produced at the Dorset Gardens Theatre. Among these we may mention Limberham, Edipus, Troilus and Cressida, and The Spanish Friar. Limberham was acted at the Duke's Theatre, in Dorset Gardens; because, being a satire upon a Court vice, it was deemed peculiarly calculated for that playhouse. The concourse of the citizens thither is alluded to in the prologue to Marriage à la Mode. Ravenscroft, also, in his epilogue to the play of Citizen Turned Gentleman, which was acted at the same theatre, takes occasion to disown the patronage of the more dissolute courtiers, in all probability because they formed the minor part of his audience. The citizens were his great patrons. In the Postman, December 8, 1679, there is the following notice, quoted by Smith:-"At the request of several persons of quality, on Saturday next, being the 9th instant, at the theatre in Dorset Gardens, the famous Kentish men, Wm. and Rich. Joy, design to show to the town before they leave it the same tryals of strength, both of them, that Wm. had the honour of showing before his majesty and their royal highnesses, with several other persons of quality, for which he received a considerable gratuity. The lifting a weight of two thousand two hundred and forty pounds. His holding an extraordinary large cart-horse; and breaking a rope which will bear three thousand five hundred weight. Beginning exactly at two, and ending at four. The boxes, 45.; the pit, 2s. 6d.; first gallery, 25.; upper gallery, Is. Whereas several scandalous persons have given out that they can do as much as any of the brothers, we do offer to such persons 100 reward, if he can perform the said matters of strength as they do, provided the pretender will forfeit £20 if he doth not. The day it is performed will be affixed a signal-flag on the theatre. No money to be returned after once paid." the Duchess, in Shirley's Cardinal. In Charles's time he played Othello, by the king's command, and rivalled Betterton's Hamlet at the other house. He created the part of Alexander, was excellent as Brutus, and terribly and vigorously wicked as Ben Jonson's Cataline. Rymer, says Dr. Doran, styled Hart and Mohun the Esopus and Roscius of their time. As Amintor and Melanthus, in The Maid's Tragedy, they were incomparable. Pepys is loud too in his praises of Hart. His salary, was, however, at the most, £3 a week, though he realised £1,000 yearly after he became a shareholder of the theatre. Hart died in 1683, within a year of his being bought off. Kynaston, in his way, was also a celebrity. Ast a handsome boy he had been renowned for playing heroines, and he afterwards acquired celebrity by his dignified impersonation of kings and tyrants. Betterton, the greatest of all the Charles II. actors, also played occasionally at Dorset Gardens. Pope knew him; Dryden was his friend; Kneller painted him. He was probably the greatest Hamlet that ever appeared; and Cibber sums up all eulogy of him when he says, "I never heard a line in tragedy come from Betterton wherein my judgment, my ear, and my imagination were not fully satisfied, which since his time I cannot equally say of any one actor whatsoever." The enchantment of his voice was such, adds the same excellent dramatic critic, that the multitude no more cared for sense in the words he spoke, "than our musical connoiseurs think it essential in the celebrated airs of an Italian opera." Even when Whitefriars was at its grandest, and plumes moved about its narrow river-side streets, Dorset House was its central and most stately mansion. It was originally a mansion with gardens, belonging to a Bishop of Winchester; but about the year 1217 (Henry III.) a lease was granted by William, Abbot of Westminster, to Richard, Bishop of Sarum, at the yearly rent of twenty shillings, the Abbot retaining the advowson of St. Bride's Church, and promising to impart to the said bishop any needful ecclesiastical advice. It afterwards fell into the hands of the Sackvilles, held at first by a long lease from the see,' but was eventually alienated by Bishop Jewel. In 1611 a grant from James I. confirmed the manor of Salisbury Court to Richard, Earl of Dorset. In 1681 Dr. Davenant seems, by rather unfair tactics, to have bought off and pensioned both Hart and Kynaston from the King's Company, and so to have greatly weakened his rivals. Of these two actors some short notice may not be uninteresting. Hart had been a Cavalier captain during the Civil Wars, and was a pupil of Robinson, This Earl of Dorset, to whom Bishop Jewel the actor, who was shot down at the taking of alienated the Whitefriars House, was the father of Basing House. Hart was a tragedian who excelled the poet, Thomas Sackville, Lord High Treasurer in parts that required a certain heroic and chivalrous to Queen Elizabeth. The bishop received in dignity. As a youth, before the Restoration, when exchange for the famous old house a piece boys played female parts, Hart was successful asof land near Cricklade, in Wiltshire. The poet earl was that wise old statesman who began "The Mirror for Magistrates," an allegorical poem of gloomy power, in which the poet intended to make all the great statesmen of England since the Conquest pass one by one to tell their troublous stories. He, however, lived to write only one Went on three feet, and sometimes crept on four, At the Restoration, the Marquis of Newcastle, legend that of Henry Stafford, Duke of Bucking--the author of a magnificent book on horseman ham. One of his finest and most Holbeinesque ship-and his pedantic wife, whom Scott has passages relates to old age : "And next in order sad, Old Age we found; Crooked-back'd he was, tooth-shaken, and blear-eyed, sketched so well in "Peveril of the Peak," inhabited a part of Dorset House; but whether Great Dorset House or Little Dorset House, topographers do not record. "Great Dorset House," says Mr. Peter Cunningham, quoting Lady Anne Clifford's "Memoirs," "was the jointure house of Cicely Baker, Dowager Countess of Dorset, who died in it in 1615 (James I.)." |