[64] Charles Fleetwood threw Drury Lane into confusion both behind and before the scenes, by his unpunctual payment of salaries, and by attempting to introduce pantomimes against the wishes of the old play-goers. This led to noisy scenes in 1744, in one of which Horace Walpole stigmatised Fleetwood as “an impudent rascal” from his box, and was embarrassed by the enthusiastic approval of the audience.
[65] The exact site of the famous Footsteps is not easily determined. Dr. Rimbault (Notes and Queries, February 2, 1850) says that it was reputed to be “at the extreme termination of the north-east end of Upper Montague Street.” It is placed a little farther west by Robert Hill, the water-colour painter, who stated in a letter, quoted by Mr. Wheatley in his London: “I well remember the Brothers’ Footsteps. They were near a bank that divided two of the fields between Montague House and the New Road, and their situation must have been, if my recollection serves me, what is now Torrington Square.” Smith says the Footsteps were “on the site of Mr. Martin’s chapel, or nearly so.” Mr. John Martin, the Baptist minister, had the chapel in Keppel Street. It still exists. This brings the Footsteps a few yards south, but Smith’s indefiniteness must be taken into account. That these markings were visible as late as 1800 is proved by the following entry in the Commonplace Book of Joseph Moser: “June 16th, 1800. Went into the fields at the back of Montague House, and there saw, for the last time, the Forty Footsteps: the building materials are there to cover them from the sight of man.” The feeling with which these curious marks were regarded by educated people may be judged by a letter quoted in the Gentleman’s Magazine of December 1804, in which the writer expresses his conviction that “the Almighty has ordered it as a standing monument of his great displeasure of the horrid sin of duelling,” an opinion in which the poet Southey concurred. In 1828, Miss Jane Porter published her novel, The Field of the Forty Footsteps.
[66] Nearly a hundred years later, a similar superstition survived in London, and is thus noted by Brand in his Popular Antiquities: “In the Morning Post, Monday, May 2nd, 1791, it was mentioned ‘that yesterday, being the first of May, according to annual and superstitious custom, a number of persons went into the fields and bathed their faces with the dew on the grass, under the idea that it would render them beautiful.’”
[67] The occasion was a dinner at Tom Davies’s in 1762. “Boswell: Does not Gray’s poetry, sir, tower above the common mark? Johnson: Yes, sir; but we must attend to the difference between what men in general cannot do if they would, and what every man may do if he would. Sixteen-string Jack towered above the common mark.” Dr. William Bell, whom Rann robbed, was Rector of Christ Church, London, 1780-99, and treasurer of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
[68] Probably a mistake. These nosegays were given to condemned criminals on their way to Tyburn by the St. Sepulchre authorities. Rann was one of the last to receive the gift.
[69] Saunders Welch, the father of Mrs. Nollekens, was educated in Aylesbury workhouse, and for many years was a grocer in Museum Street, then Queen Street. He succeeded Fielding as a Justice of the Peace for Westminster. Smith says in his Nollekens that he met many people who recollected seeing him as High Constable of Westminster, “dressed in black, with a large, nine-storey George the Second’s wig highly powdered, with long flowing curls over his shoulder, a high three-cornered hat, and his black baton tipped with silver at either end, riding on a white horse to Tyburn with the malefactors.” A long and warm friendship existed between Saunders Welch and Dr. Johnson. “Johnson, who had an eager and unceasing curiosity to know human life in all its variety, told me that he attended Mr. Welch in his office for a whole winter, to hear the examinations of the culprits” (Boswell).
[70] To-day, High Street, Marylebone, is perhaps the most perfect High Street left in London. Neither from its north end in Marylebone Road nor from Oxford Street does it receive heavy traffic; its shops exist for the fine streets and squares around it, and it offers them the best of most things, from a tender chicken to a county history.
[71] “In the year 1741, the old church in which Hogarth has introduced his “Rake at the Altar with the Old Maid” was taken down, and the present one built on its site; so that the writers who have stated that the scene took place in the present edifice must acknowledge their error, if they will take the trouble to refer to Hogarth’s fifth plate of the Rake’s Progress, where they will find its publication to have taken place June 25, 1735.”—S.
[72] Probably Christopher Norton, of the St. Martin’s Lane Academy.
[73] Tradition reports that from Elizabeth it came to the Forsyths, and thence to the Duke of Portland. In his Marylebone and St. Pancras, Mr. Clinch writes: “In the year 1703 a large school was established here by Mr. De la Place. That gentleman’s daughter married the Rev. John Fountayne, Rector of North Sidmouth, in Wiltshire, and the latter succeeded Mr. De la Place in the school. The school is said to have obtained a considerable reputation among the nobility and gentry, whose sons there received an educational training previously to their removal to the universities.”