Tom Brown also alludes to it; Peter Pindar (Dr Woolcot) commemorates a vestry dinner there:—
“At Knightsbridge at a Tavern called the Swan,
Churchwardens, Overseers, a jolly clan,
Order’d a dinner for themselves,
A very handsome dinner,” &c.
The old house was pulled down in 1788, and its name transferred to a public-house in Sloane Street, which, with three other houses, occupies the site of the old Swan.
The Swan tavern in Exchange Alley, Cornhill, was well known among the musical world in the last century. In this house, some celebrated concerts were given, at a time when there were no proper concert-rooms; they commenced in 1728, under the management of one Barton, formerly a dancing-master, and continued for twelve years, when the place was burnt down; at the rebuilding, it was christened the King’s Head.
In 1825, the landlord of the Swan tavern at Stratford, near London, recommended the charms of his place in the following poetical strain:—
“At the Swan Tavern kept by Lound
The best accommodation’s found,—
Wine, Spirits, Porter, Bottled Beer,
You’ll find in high perfection here.
If in the Garden with your lass
You feel inclin’d to take a glass,
There Tea and Coffee of the best,
Provided is for every guest.
And females not to drive from hence,
The charge is only fifteen pence.
Or if disposed a Pipe to smoke,
To sing a song or crack a joke,
You may repair across the Green,
Where nought is heard, though much is seen.
There laugh, and drink, and smoke away,
And but a mod’rate reckoning pay.
Which is a most important object
To every loyal British subject.
In short,
The best accommodation’s found
By those who deign to visit Lound.”
The Black Swan, though formerly considered a rara avis in terris, may now be seen in every town and village, swinging at the door of mine host, the picture painted just as fancy may have suggested, long before the actual bird was brought over from Australia. At the Black Swan tavern in Tower Street, the Earl Rochester, when banished from the Court, took lodgings under the name of Alexander Bendo, his profession that of an Italian quack, and there he had those comical adventures with the waiting-maids of the Court. Hamilton says in his “Memoires de Grammont,” that the adventures Rochester had in this disguise are by far the most amusing given in his works. Another Black Swan alehouse is named in a broadside of 1704:—
“A most strange but true account of a very large sea monster that was found last Saturday in a common-shore in New Fleet Street in Spittlefields, where at the Black Swan alehouse thousands of people resort to see it,” &c.
This dreadful monster was simply “a dead Porpoise of a very large size, it being above Four Foot in length, and Three Foot about,” and the fact of it “leaving the deep to rove up into Fresh Water Rivers, and more especially to crawl up so far a common-shore,” prognosticated, it was thought, some dire calamities, which are told in not very parliamentary language.