“Saturday, January 17, 17356.
“Sir,
You’re desired on Monday next to meet,
At Salutation Tavern, Newgate Street,
Supper will be on table just at eight.
(Stewards) one of St John, [Bowyer,] t’other of St John’s Gate, [Cave.]”
Richardson the novelist was one of the invités. He returned a poetical answer, too long to quote at length: the following is part of it:—
“For me, I’m much concern’d I cannot meet
At Salutation Tavern, Newgate Street.
Your notice, like your verse, (so sweet and short!)
[266] If longer I’d sincerely thank’d you for it.
Howev’r, receive my wishes, sons of verse!
May every man who meets your praise rehearse!
May mirth as plenty crown your cheerful board!
And every one part happy, —— as a lord!
That when at home by such sweet verses fir’d,
Your families may think you all inspir’d.
So wishes he, who, pre-engag’d can’t know
The pleasures that would from your meeting flow.”
In this tavern Coleridge the poet, in one of his melancholy moods, lived for some time in seclusion, until found out by Southey, and persuaded by him to return to his usual mode of life. Sir T. N. Talfourd, in his Life of Charles Lamb, informs us that here Coleridge was in the habit of meeting Lamb when in town on a visit from the University. Christ’s Hospital, their old school, was within a few paces of the place:—
“When Coleridge quitted the University and came to town, full of mantling hopes and glorious schemes, Lamb became his admiring disciple. The scene of these happy meetings was a little public-house called the Salutation and Cat, in the neighbourhood of Smithfield, where they used to sup, and remain long after they had ‘heard the chimes of midnight.’ There they discoursed of Bowles, who was the god of Coleridge’s poetical idolatry, and of Burns and Cowper, who of recent poets—in that season of comparative barrenness—had made the deepest impression on Lamb; there Coleridge talked of ‘fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,’ to one who desired ‘to find no end’ of the golden maze; and there he recited his early poems with that deep sweetness of intonation which sunk into the heart of his hearers. To these meetings Lamb was accustomed, at all periods of his life, to revert, as the season when his finer intellects were quickened into action. Shortly after they had terminated, with Coleridge’s departure from London, he thus recalled them in a letter:—‘When I read in your little volume your nineteenth effusion, or what you call “The Sigh,” I think I hear you again. I imagine to myself the little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat together through the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with poesy.’ This was early in 1769, and in 1818, when dedicating his works—then first collected—to his earliest friend, he thus spoke of the same meetings:—‘Some of the sonnets, which shall be carelessly turned over by the general reader, may happily awaken in you remembrances which I should be sorry should be ever totally extinct—the memory “of summer days and of delightful years,” even so far back as those old suppers at our old inn—when life was fresh and topics exhaustless—and you first kindled in me, if not the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness.’”
The Angel was derived from the Salutation, for that it originally represented the angel appearing to the Holy Virgin at the Salutation or Annunciation, is evident from the fact that, even as late as the seventeenth century on nearly all the trades tokens of houses with this sign, the Angel is represented with a scroll in his hands; and this scroll we know, from the evidence of paintings and prints, to contain the words addressed by the angel to the Holy Virgin: “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.” Probably at the Reformation it was considered too Catholic a sign, and so the Holy Virgin was left out, and the angel only retained. Among the famous houses with this sign, the well-known starting-place of the Islington omnibuses stands foremost. It is said to have been an established inn upwards of two hundred years. The old house was pulled down in 1819; till that time it had preserved all the features of a large country inn, a long front, overhanging tiled roof, with a square inn-yard having double galleries supported by columns and carved pilasters, with caryatides and other ornaments. It is more than probable that it had often been used as a place for dramatic entertainments at the period when inn-yards were customarily employed for such purposes. “Even so late as fifty years since it was customary for travellers approaching London, to remain all night at the Angel Inn, Islington, rather than venture after dark to prosecute their journey along ways which were almost equally dangerous from their bad state, and their being so greatly infested with thieves.”[388] On the other hand, persons walking from the city to Islington in the evening, waited near the end of John Street, in what is now termed Northampton Street, (but was then a rural avenue planted with trees,) until a sufficient party had collected, who were then escorted by an armed patrol appointed for that purpose. Another old tavern with this sign is extant in London, behind St Clement’s Church in the Strand. To this house Bishop Hooper was taken by the Guards, on his way to Gloucester, where he went to be burnt, in January 1555. The house, until lately, preserved much of its ancient aspect: it had a pointed gable, galleries, and a lattice in the passage. This inn is named in the following curious advertisement:—
“TO BE SOLD, a Black Girl, the property of J. B——, eleven years of age, who is extremely handy, works at her needle tolerably, and speaks French perfectly well; is of excellent temper and willing disposition. Inquire of W. Owen, at the Angel Inn, behind St Clement’s Church, in the Strand.”—Publick Advertiser, March 28, 1769.
Older than either of these is the Angel Inn, at Grantham. This building was formerly in the possession of the Knights Templars, and still retains many remains of its former beauty, particularly the gateway, with the heads of Edward III. and his queen Philippa of Hainault on either side of the arch; the soffits of the windows are elegantly groined, and the parapet of the front is very beautiful. Kings have been entertained in this house; but it seemed to bring ill luck to them, for the reigns of those that are recorded as having been guests in it, stand forth in history as disturbed by violent storms—King John held his court in it on February 23, 1213; King Richard III. on October 19, 1483; and King Charles I. visited it May 17, 1633.
Ben Jonson, it is said, used to visit a tavern with the sign of the Angel, at Basingstoke, kept by a Mrs Hope, whose daughter’s name was Prudence. On one of his journeys, finding that the house had changed both sign and mistresses, Ben wrote the following smart but not very elegant epigram:—
“When Hope and Prudence kept this house, the Angel kept the door,
Now Hope is dead, the Angel fled, and Prudence turned a w——.”