A story is told of one of Haynes’s pupils, which, like many other stories, has had different individuals for its hero. It is to this effect. A very proud and an intolerably ignorant gentleman was constantly boasting that he enjoyed the advantage of having been a member of both Universities. “You remind me,” said the old Merchant Tailors’ pupil, “of a circumstance worth narrating. I have two cows at home which calved at the same time. One calf died, but I let the other calf suck both the cows.” “Well,” said the member of two Universities, “what was the consequence?” “A prodigiously great calf indeed, Sir.”
For many years the scholastic portion of Merchant Tailors’ appears to have suffered by repeated visitations of the Plague. Then came the Great Rebellion, with a modifying of the rules, which were made excessively stringent, and under which the pupils were converted to as sour a series of classes as if they were enrolled in Dotheboys Hall. But then came the Restoration, and therewith relaxation; and the young “tailors” pushed up their beavers from off their eyes, turned up their lank hair into seductive curls, put their hands on their hips, and looked saucily at the maids of Cheapside. In the midst of it all burst forth the Great Fire; and the “tailors,” for a time houseless, got their lessons by fits and starts, till they were once more tabernacled, in high spirits, within a comfortable dwelling.
One would have thought that all would have been harmony in the new house; but such was not the case. For some time, indeed, nobody could discover a grievance; but having looked everywhere to find one, and all in vain, recourse was had to religion, and of course a few were created instanter. Good, the master, continued to pray as heretofore in Latin. The boys roared out for plain English precations. The City took various sides of the question,—for, against, and a little of both languages. The Latinists at last prevailed, and the orthodox declared that the heel of the Apocalyptic Beast was on the brow of the scholars, and that the sun of England had set for ever. It is a sun however that hitherto has exhibited a great alacrity in rising again.
Of course the zealous party ousted Good in time. The members of it held that daily prayers and much devotion after a ceremonious manner savoured of Popery, and poor Good was turned out as a Papist; the boys marvellously improved, and became very remarkable for their habits of “profane swearing and debauchery, and misdemeanours.” St. Lawrence Pountney was imitating Whitehall. A good deal of irregularity prevailed throughout the periods of James II. and William and Mary. One instance may be cited, namely, that of treating the boys who missed their election to St. John’s College with canary and cake. It was like teaching them that drink was a solace for disappointment. To be sure they had a sermon first from the chaplain; but chaplains in those days were particularly addicted to punch.
See the consequence! The school-kitchen was enlarged; the boys were divided into the “table” and the “bench;” and, as an illustration of these jolly juvenile “tailors,” it may be stated that Sam Phillips, a “tailor” of the “table,” seduced little Will Nash, a “tailor” of the “bench,” and took him to taverns, and playhouses, and gaming-houses, and was tried for the same before the school authorities, who found him guilty indeed, but construed mild of human frailty, and condoned him on promise of his mending his naughty ways,—which he, like a gallant “tailor,” scorned to do, and turned out a reprobate accordingly.
Not that the pupils were generally reprobate, but the masters unwise, and regardless of their own regulations. Thus, when young Buckingham, who was a very worthy juvenile “Merchant Tailor,” wrote the play of Scipio Africanus, and had it represented, the masters, who denounced stage representations, suspended the duties of the school, and sent all the boys into the pit to clap the piece. It was like the British Senate solemnly adjourning, as both Houses once did, in order to see Master Betty play Hamlet.
But let me do all justice to the masters. If they turned their Christian pupils into the pit of a very licentious theatre (Lincoln’s Inn Fields), they exhibited their anxiety for pure morality by again turning all the Jewish pupils out of the school. Israel was their scapegoat.
Quin’s ‘Scipio’ inoculated the boys and masters too with a scenic furor; and the latter individuals consistently upheld the morals of the alumni by permitting them to perform the most beastly of the beastly pieces of Terence,—the ‘Eunuchus.’ Thus Merchant Tailors’ sank or rose to the nasty practice of Westminster; and again I say, “See the consequence!” Garrick, who used to patronize the performances, enticed Silvester, who played in the epilogue to the ‘Phormio,’ to a wider stage; and Silvester’s readiness to play anything, from Hamlet to harlequin, was subsequently immortalized by Bannister, Junior, in the character of Sylvester Daggerwood.
Nor can excuse be taken under the plea that the masters only patronized the classic drama in a tongue defunct. One of the masters, himself a clergyman, the Rev. P. Townley, wrote one of the most lively farces in the English language, namely, ‘High Life below Stairs.’ This, too, was long before the Terence period of the Merchant Tailor plays. It has had two very lively results. Mrs. Abington’s Lady Bab fired many a “tailor” youth, and the whole piece caused an insurrection among the liveried gentlemen in the free list who waited for their masters in the Edinburgh gallery. As for Dublin, when the Abington went there and played Kitty, the fashion of her cap set the whole town in a fever; and nothing else was seen on fashionable heads but one made after that illustrious fashion.
The matter was not mended at Merchant Tailors’ when musical performances were subsequently introduced, and the satires in Ruggles’s ‘Ignoramus’ were sung by the boys to sacred airs by Soper, by Hasse, and by Handel. The mothers of some of these lads had to regret, like Niobe, that the gods had made their children vocal. These operatic displays were ultimately suppressed.