Evening had gathered o’er Saint Giles’s, and Seven Dials. So tranquil was the season, even publishers were touched. Catnach and Pitts sat silent in their shops; placing their hands in breeches-poke, with that serenity which pockets best convey, they looked around their walls—walls more richly decked than if hung with triumphs of Sidonian looms, arrayed with Bayeux stitchings; walls, where ten thousand thousand ballads—strips harmonious, yet silent as Apollo’s unbraced strings,—hung pendulous, or crisply curling, like John Braham’s hair. Catnach and Pitts, the tuneful masters of the gutter-choir, serenely looked, yet with such comprehensive glance, that look did take their stock. Suddenly, more suddenly than e’er the leaves in Hornsey wood were stirred by instant blast, the thousand thousand ballads swung and rustled on the walls; yet wind there was not, not the lightest breath. Still like pendants fluttering in a northern breeze, the ballads streamed towards Catnach, and towards Pitts! Amazing truth—yet more; each ballad found a voice! ‘Old Towler’ faintly growled; ‘Nancy Dawson’ sobbed and sighed; and, ‘Bright Chanticleer’ crowed weakly, dolorously, as yet in chickenhood, and smitten with the pip. At the same instant, the fiddle, the antique viol of Roger Scratch, fell from its garret-peg, and lay shivered, even as glass.
A cloud fell upon Seven Dials; dread and terror chilled her many minstrels: and why—and wherefore?
At that dread moment, a ministrel from the sunny south, with barrel-organ, leapt on Dover beach! Seven Dials felt the shock: her troubadours, poor native birds, were to be out-carrolled and out-quavered, by Italian opera retailed by penn’orths to them, from the barrel-organs: and prompt to follow their masters, they let the English ballad singer sing unheard.
The Ballad-Singer has lost his occupation; yet should he not pass away unthanked, unrecompensed. We have seen him a useful minister in rude society; we have heard him a loud-mouthed advocate of party zeal, and we have seen him almost ground into silence by the southern troubadour. Yet was he the first music-seller in the land. Ye well-stocked, flourishing vendors of fashionable scores, deign to cast a look through plate glass at your poor, yet great original, bare-footed and in rags, singing, unabashed, amidst London wagon-wheels: behold the true decendant of the primative music-seller.”
Charles Dickens, as Boz, long since “sketched” the Seven Dials, and at the same time and place given us his—“Meditations in Monmouth Street”:—
“Seven Dials! the region of song and poetry—first effusions, and last dying speechees: hallowed by the names of Catnach and Pitts—names that will entwine themselves with costermongers, and barrel-organs, when penny magazines shall have superseded penny yards of song, and capital punishment be unknown.”
Several years ago Mr. Albert Smith, who lived at Chertsey, discovered in his neighbourhood part of the Seven Dials—the column doing duty as a monument to a Royal Duchess—when he described the circumstance in a pleasant paper, entitled “Some News of a famous Old Fellow,” in his “Town and Country Magazine.” The communication is as follows:—
“Let us now quit the noisome mazes of St. Giles’s and go out and away into the pure leafy country. Seventeen or eighteen miles from town, in the county of Surrey, is the little village of Weybridge.
One of the lions to be seen at Weybridge is Oatlands, with its large artificial grotto and bath-room, which is said—but we cannot comprehend the statement—to have cost the Duke of Newcastle, who had it built, £40,000. The late Duchess of York died at Oatlands, and lies in a small vault under Weybridge Church, wherein there is a monument, by Chantrey, to her memory. She was an excellent lady, well-loved by all the country people about her, and when she died they were anxious to put up some sort of a tribute to her memory. But the village was not able to offer a large some of money for this purpose. The good folks did their best, but the amount was still very humble, so they were obligated to dispense with the service of any eminent architect, and build up only such a monument as their means could compass. Someone told them that there was a column to be sold cheap in a stonemason’s yard, which might answer their purpose. It was accordingly purchased; a coronet was placed upon its summit; and the memorial was set up on Weybridge Green, in front of the Ship Inn, at the junction of the roads leading to Oatlands, to Shepperton Lock, and to Chertsey. This column turned out to be the original one from Seven Dials.
The stone on which the dials were engraved or fixed, was sold with it. The poet Gay, however, was wrong when he spoke of its seven faces. It is hexagonal in its shape; this is accounted for by the fact that two of the streets opened into one angle. It was not wanted to assist in forming the monument, but was turned into a stepping stone, near the adjoining inn, to assist the infirm in mounting their horses, and there it now lies, having sunk by degrees into the earth; but its original form can still be easily surmised. It may be about three feet in diameter.