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THE BEDFORD COFFEE HOUSE, in Covent Garden
This celebrated resort once attracted so much attention as to have published, "
Memoirs of the Bedford Coffee-house/' two editions, 1751 and 1763. It stood "
under the Piazza, in Covent Garden" in the north-west corner, near the entrance
to the theatre, and has long ceased to exist.
In The Connoisseur, No. 1, 1754, we are assured that " this Coffee-house is
every night crowded with men of parts. Almost every one you meet is a polite
scholar and a wit. Jokes and bon-mots are echoed from box to box : every branch
of literature is critically examined, and the merit of every production of the
press, or performance of the theatres, weighed and determined."
And in the above-named Memoirs, we read that " this spot has been signalized for
many years as the emporium of wit, the seat of criticism, and the standard of
taste. — Names of those who frequented the house : —
Foote, Mr. Fielding, Mr. Woodward, Mr. Leone, Mr. Murphy, Mopsy, Dr. Arne. Dr.
Arne was the only man in a suit of velvet in the dog-days."
Stacie kept the Bedford when John and Henry-Fielding, Hogarth, Churchill,
Woodward, Lloyd, Dr. Goldsmith, and many others met there and held a gossiping
shilling rubber club. Henry Fielding was a very merry fellow."
The Inspector appears to have given rise to this reign of the Bedford, when
there was placed here the Lion from Button's, which proved so serviceable to
Steele, and once more fixed the dominion of wit in Covent Garden.
The reign of wit and pleasantry did not, however, cease at the Bedford at the
demise of the Inspector.
A race of punsters next succeeded. A particular box was allotted to this
occasion, out of the hearing of the lady at the bar, that the double entendres,
which were sometimes very indelicate, might not offend her.
The Bedford was beset with scandalous nuisances, of which the following letter,
from Arthur Murphy to Garrick, April 10, 1769, presents a pretty picture:
" Tiger Roach (who used to bully at the Bedford Coffee-house because his name
was Roach) is set up by Wilkes's friends to burlesque Luttrel and his
pretensions. I own I do not know a more ridiculous circumstance than to be a
joint candidate with the Tiger.
O'Brien used to take him off very pleasantly, and perhaps you may, from his
representation, have some idea of this important wight. He used to sit with a
half-starved look, a black patch upon his cheek, pale with the idea of murder,
or with rank cowardice, a quivering lip, and a downcast eye. In that manner he
used to sit at a table all alone, and his soliloquy, interrupted now and then
with faint attempts to throw off a little saliva, was to the following effect :
— ' Hut ! hut ! a mercer's
'prentice with a bag- wig ; — d — n my s — 1, if I would not skiver a dozen of
them like larks ! Hut ! hut ! I don't understand such airs ! — I'd cudgel him
back, breast, and belly, for three skips of a louse ! — How do vou do, Pat ! Hut
! hut ! God's blood — Larry, I'm glad to see you ; — 'Prentices ! a fine thing
indeed ! — Hut ! hut ! How do you, Dominick ! — D — n my s — 1, what's here to
do !' These were the meditations of this agreeable youth. From one of these
reveries he started up one night, when I was there, called a Mr. Bagnell out of
the room, and most heroically stabbed him in the dark, the other having no
weapon to defend himself with. In this career the Tiger persisted, till at
length a Mr. Lennard brandished a whip over his head, and stood in a menacing
attitude, commanding him to ask pardon directly. The Tiger shrank from the
danger, and with a faint voice pronounced — l Hut ! what signifies it between
you and me? Well! well! I ask your pardon.'' ' Speak louder, sir ; I don't hear
a word you say.' And indeed he was so very tall, that it seemed as if the sound,
sent feebly from below, could not ascend to such a height. This is the hero who
is to figure at Brentford."
Foote's favourite Coffee-house was the Bedford. He was also a constant
frequenter of Tom's, and took a lead in the Club held there, and already
described.*
Dr. Barrowby, the well-known newsmonger of the Bedford, and the satirical critic
of the day, has left this whole-length sketch of Foote : — "One evening (he savs)
, he saw a young man extravagantly dressed out in a frock suit of green and
silver lace, bag-wig, sword, bouquet, and point- ruffles, enter the room (at the
Bedford), and immediately join the critical circle at the upper end. Nobody
recognised him ; but such was the ease of his bearing, and the point of humour
and remark with which he at once took up the conversation, that his presence
seemed to disconcert no one, and a sort of pleased buzz of ' who is he ? ' was
still going round the room unanswered, when a handsome carriage stopped at the
door ; he rose, and quitted the room, and the servants announced that his name
was Foote, that he was a young gentleman of family and fortune, a student of the
Inner Temple, and that the carriage had called for him on its way to the
assembly of a lady of fashion."
Dr. Barrowby once turned the laugh against Foote at the Bedford, when he was
ostentatiously showing his gold repeater, with the remark — ''Why, my watch does
not go ! n " It soon will go" quietly remarked the Doctor. Young Collins, the
poet, who came to town in 1744 to seek his fortune, made his way to the Bedford,
where Foote was supreme among the wits and critics. Like Foote, Collins was fond
of fine clothes, and walked about with a feather in his hat, very unlike a young
man who had not a single guinea he could call his own. A letter of the time
tells us that " Collins was an acceptable companion everywhere; and among the
gentlemen who loved him for a genius, may be reckoned the Doctors Armstrong,
Barrowby, Hill, Messrs. Quin, Garrick, and Foote, who frequently took his
opinion upon their pieces before they were seen by the public.
He was particularly noticed by the geniuses who frequented the Bedford and
Slaughter's Coffee-houses. "*
* See " Club at Tom's Coffee-house," vol. i.pp. 159-164.
Ten years later (1754) we find Foote again supreme in his critical corner at the
Bedford. The regular frequenters of the room strove to get admitted to his party
at supper; and others got as nearly as they could to the table, as the only
humour flowed from Footers tongue. The Bedford was now in its highest repute.
* Memoir by Moy Thomas, prefixed to Collins's Poetical Works. Bell and Daldy,
1858.
Foote and Garrick often met at the Bedford, and many and sharp were their
encounters. They were the two great rivals of the day. Foote usually attacked,
and Garrick, who had many weak points, was mostly the sufferer. Garrick, in
early life, had been in the wine trade, and had supplied the Bedford with wine ;
he was thus described by Foote as living in Durham-yard, with three quarts of
vinegar in the cellar, calling himself a wine-merchant. How Foote must have
abused the Bedford wine of this period !
One night, Foote came into the Bedford, where Garrick was seated, and there gave
him an account of a most wonderful actor he had just seen. Garrick was on the
tenters of suspense, and there Foote kept him a full hour. At last Foote,
compassionating the suffering listener, brought the attack to a close by asking
Garrick what he thought of Mr. Pitt's histrionic talents, when Garrick, glad of
the release, declared that if Pitt had chosen the stage, he might have been the
first actor upon it.
One night, Garrick and Foote were about to leave the Bedford together, when the
latter, in paying the bill, dropped a guinea; and not finding it at once, said,
" Where on earth can it be gone to? " — " Gone to the devil, I think," replied
Garrick, who had assisted in the search. — " Well said, David ! " was Footers
reply ; " let you alone for making a guinea go further than anybody else."
Churchill's quarrel with Hogarth began at the shilling rubber club, in the
parlour of the Bedford ; when Hogarth used some very insulting language towards
Churchill, who resented it in the Epistle. This quarrel showed more venom than
wit : — " Never," says Walpole, " did two angry men of their abilities throw mud
with less dexterity."
Woodward, the comedian, mostly lived at the Bedford, was intimate with Stacie,
the landlord, and gave him his (W.'s) portrait, with a mask in his hand, one of
the early pictures by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Stacie played an excellent game at
whist. One morning, about two o'clock, one of his waiters awoke him to tell him
that a nobleman had knocked him up, and had desired him to call his master to
play a rubber with him for one hundred guineas. Stacie got up, dressed himself,
won the money, and was in bed and asleep, all within an hour.
Of two houses in the Piazza, built for Francis, Earl of Bedford, we obtain some
minute information from the lease granted in 1634, to Sir Edmund Yerney, Knight
Marshal to King Charles I. ; these two houses being just then erected as part of
the Piazza. There are also included in the lease the "yardes, stables, coach
houses, and gardens now layd, or hereafter to be layd, to the said messuages,"
which description of the premises seems to identify them as the two houses at
the southern end of the Piazza, adjoining to Great Russell street, and now
occupied as the Bedford Coffee-house and Hotel. They are either the same
premises, or they immediately adjoin the premises, occupied a century later as
the Bedford Coffee-house. (Mr. John Bruce, Archaeologia, xxxv. 195.) The lease
contains a minute specification of the landlord's fittings and customary
accommodations of what were then some of the most fashionable residences in the
metropolis. In the attached schedule is the use of the wainscot, enumerating
separately every piece of wainscot on the premises. The tenant is bound to keep
in repair the " Portico Walke "
underneath the premises ; he is at all times to have " ingresse, egresse and
regresse " through the Portico Walk ;
and he may " expel, put, or drive away out of the said walke any youth or other
person whatsoever which shall eyther play or be in the said Portico Walke in
offence or disturbance to the said Sir Edmund Verney."
The inventory of the fixtures is curious. It enumerates every apartment, from
the beer-cellar, and the strong beer-cellar, the scullery, the pantry, and the
buttery, to the dining and withdrawing-rooms. Most of the rooms had casement
windows, but the dining-room next Russell-street, and other principal
apartments, had "shutting windowes." The principal rooms were also " double
creasted round for hangings," and were wainscoted round the chimney-pieces, and
doors and windows. In one case, a study, " south towards Russell-street, the
whole room was wainscoted, and the hall in part." Most of the windows had
"soil-boards" attached; the room-doors had generally "stock locks," in some
places " spring plate locks " and spring bolts. There is not mentioned anything
approaching to a fire-grate in any of the rooms, except perhaps in the kitchen,
where occurs " a travers barre for the chimney."
References :
Lots of references are made to two sources on the
internet archive
:
Edward Callows, Old London Taverns &
John Timbs, Club life of London Volume 2
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