Foote, the comedian, one day, dining at the house, with Johnson and others, finding nothing to his liking, for some time sat in expectation of something better. A neck of mutton being the last thing, he refused it, as he had the others. As the servant was taking it away, however, understanding that there was nothing more, Foote called out to him, “Holloa! John, bring that back again, for I find it’s neck or nothing.”
Prior to 1794, a low public house, called the Half-Moon, stood out prominently and fronted down the street immediately below Bunker’s Hill. It was the general resort of gipsies and beggars, who so continued to throng the house during the Summer months, that on their taking their leave at the termination of the previous Autumn, the owner, Mr. Patching, demolished the old premises and constructed the present building, known as the Brighton Sauce Warehouse, to afford the wandering customers better accommodation upon their return. The Winter of 1793–4 was very severe; to facilitate, then, the progress of the building during the frost, the boulders of which the front is principally composed, were heated at the malt-kiln of the West Street Brewery, the men employed in the work being principally the soldiers of the militia regiments quartered in the West Street Barracks. The new building proved to be a great mistake; as the migratory tribes, on their return in the Summer, thinking that extra charges would be made upon them to assist in defraying the expenses of the new erection, betook themselves to other quarters, and hence, from lack of custom, the license was transferred to a smaller house, the present Half-Moon, at the corner of Boyce’s Street, just below which, in Ashby Court, lived an old matchman, a well-known character of the town.
Although “Lucifers” have almost rendered null and void the flint, steel, and tinder-box, yet in villages the brimstone-tipped bunches of flat matches are even now extant, and age picks up a scant existence in vending them from door to door, to dames who pride themselves upon their antiquated notions and doing what their good mothers did before them; their almost sacred observance being always to have hot embers on their social hearth, from which by means of a common match, a light may always be obtained.
In Brighton, the most celebrated of the match-vending craft, was John Standing, familiary known as “Old Rosemary Lane,” from the following song which he incessantly uttered while pursuing his daily avocation:—
There was an old ’oman
In Rosemary Lane,
She cuts ’em and dips ’em
And I do the same.Come, buy my fine matches
Come, buy ’em of me,
They are the best matches
’Most ever you see.For lighting your candle
Or kindling your fire
They are the best matches
As you can desire.
Standing was a native of Hurstperpoint, where for some years he followed the occupation of a bricklayer, and was considered a good workman; but having had the misfortune to fall from a scaffold when about 30 years old, he was disabled from his usual employment, as he by the accident received a severe injury to the spine, which ever after prevented him from assuming an erect posture; and one of his eyes was knocked out, his thumb was broken and reversed, and he was otherwise much mutilated.
At first his business circuit with matches was through the villages under the hill, where he was very well known; but other venders, of the gipsey tribe, combining to drive him off their ground by underselling him, he moved on to Brighton, where his injured bodily condition and the novelty of his ditty obtained him a good trade, and in a very short time many regular customers. In fact, to the outward world his prospects appeared so thriving, that many persons asserted he was, miser-like, accumulating a fortune; for although he never asked alms, his lame, blind, and aged condition excited sympathy amongst strangers, who rather gave to him than purchased of him.
John was married; but his wife, who was also aged, was not without her share of misfortunes. She was the manufacturer of the establishment, and being exposed to hard work and the rigour of a severe winter, the cold so affected her limbs that it was found necessary to amputate one of her legs, and, also remove nearly all the toes from the other foot, from their becoming frostbitten; added to which, she by an accident lost an eye. In January, 1833, Standen was taken suddenly ill in East Street, during one of his morning perambulations, and in a few days, on the 9th of February, he terminated his life, after having for nearly 40 years traversed the town, singing his unvaried song, day by day, through all weathers. His wife survived him but three days, the shock, occasioned by his death, being too severe for her shattered constitution to withstand. They were borne together to their grave in the Old Churchyard, by some kind neighbours, their coffins having been provided by the parish.
The house, the Albany Tavern, at the top of Duke Street, commanding the view of the sea, down West Street, was for many seasons during the abode of George IV. in Brighton, the residence in lodgings, of Johnny Townsend, the noted Bow Street Runner, who was in constant attendance for a long series of years, upon the Royal Personage when he was Prince of Wales and King. West Street at that period was a place of fashionable resort, especially for equestrians, Royal blood daily frequenting it, and often paying a visit to Townsend, with whom they frequently essayed to luncheon, the viands for the occasion being sent up from the Royal Pavilion. Townsend was a shrewd but illiterate man, a staunch politician of the Tory school, kind-hearted, generous, and charitable, an agreeable companion with his equals, a man who commanded the respect of his superiors and his inferiors; but he was a sore terror of refractory boys and girls.
In the house immediately above Duke Street, and directly opposite Cranbourne Street, lived, on his retirement from business, Mr. Beach Roberts, a Brighton celebrity, who, at the commencement of the present century was a tinman, carrying on a respectable and lucrative business upon the premises now occupied by Mr. B. Lewis, silversmith, Ship Street. In his latter days he was termed the “Walking Newspaper,” inasmuch as he was acquainted with all—and sometimes more than all, of the news of the day. On the 13th March, 1810, some person, by way of a hoax, inserted in the London papers, the following:—“Died, yesterday, Beach Roberts, Esq.,—a gentleman who had enjoyed a wider sphere of connexion in the County of Sussex than most men, who had been elected to the office of High Constable of this Parish seven different times; for the last twelve years been foreman of the Grand Jury at the Quarter Sessions at Lewes; and who has left one hundred thousand pounds; ten thousand of which are to be applied to charitable purposes within the limits of the town; one thousand towards the support of the Magdalen Hospital, and the remainder to be equally divided between his son and daughter.” The hoax became the current topic of the day, and subjected Mr. Roberts to several congratulatory addresses from his friends; as he was at the time about forty-five years of age, in the enjoyment of good health, and of a promising constitution. It may be added that he never served the office of High Constable, and that he had no children.