Alderman Kelly, Lord Mayor at the accession of her Majesty in 1837, was horn at Chevening, in Kent, and lived, when a youth, with Alexander Hogg, the publisher, in Paternoster-row, for 10l. a year wages. He slept under the shop-counter for the security of the premises; but was reported to his master to be “too slow” for the situation: Mr. Hogg, however, thought him “a biddable boy,” and he remained: this incident shows upon what apparently trifling circumstances a man’s future prospects in life depend. Kelly succeeded Mr. Hogg in the business, became alderman of the ward, and lived upon the spot sixty years: he died in his eighty-fourth year.[[110]] He was a man of active benevolence, and reminded one of the pious Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Abney.
Sir Chapman Marshall, Lord Mayor 1839-40, was also of humble origin, as he narrated in 1831, when Sheriff, in replying to the toast of his health: “My Lord Mayor and gentlemen, you now see before you a humble individual who has been educated in a parochial school. I came to London in 1803, without a shilling—without a friend. I have not had the advantage of a classical education; therefore you will excuse my defects of language. But this I will say, my Lord Mayor and gentlemen, that you witness in me what may be done by the earnest application of honest industry; and I trust my example may induce others to aspire, by the same means, to the distinguished situation which I now have the honour to fill.” Here is a similar instance.
Sir John Pirie, Lord Mayor 1841-2, received his baronetcy on the christening of the Prince of Wales: at his inauguration dinner Sir John said: “I little thought, forty years ago, when I came to the City of London, a poor lad from the banks of the Tweed, that I should ever arrive at so great a distinction.”
Alderman Wire, Lord Mayor 1858-9, was born 1801, and was one of the large family of a tradesman at Colchester; yet he had the advantage of a liberal education. He came to London and articled himself to a City solicitor, and by his intelligence and industry was advanced to be partner in the business, and ultimately became the head of the firm. He was elected Alderman of his Ward (Walbrook), served Sheriff in 1853, and then Lord Mayor. Early in his year of office he was afflicted with paralysis, of which he recovered; but died on Lord-Mayor’s-day 1860! He was an active advocate of sanitary and educational movements, a liberal politician, and a man of cultivated taste, and made an able chief magistrate.
Alderman Mechi deserves a niche among these civic worthies, by the superior enterprise of his career. He is the son of a citizen of Bologna, was brought to England by his father, and, obtaining a clerkship in a house in the Newfoundland trade, he remained there eleven years. Whilst in this service, he turned the hour allowed for dinner to profitable account by selling, among his friends and acquaintance in the City, a small and inexpensive article, of which he had bought the patent. Mainly by these exertions, when in his twenty-fifth year, he commenced business as a cutler, with the success we have already intimated. He then studied how to remedy the defects of English farming by scientific processes; rose to be Sheriff and an Alderman; took an active part in the affairs of the Society of Arts, and was specially sent by her Majesty’s Government to the Industrial Exhibition at Paris in 1854.
Addison, we know, says, “the City has always been the province for satire; and the wits of King Charles’s time jested upon nothing else during his whole reign.” Nevertheless, “the Merry Monarch” dined with the citizens no fewer than nine times in their Guildhall. Here also Whittington had feasted Henry V. and his Queen, when he threw the King’s bonds for 60,000l. into a fire of spice-wood. But a still more memorable feast was that in 1497, when at the table of the Lord Mayor, William Purchase, Erasmus first met Sir Thomas More; whence sprung one of the most interesting friendships in literary history.
It has been well said that a dinner lubricates business; and it does more—it fosters charity and good works. The annual banquet on Lord-Mayor’s-day, in the Guildhall, is mostly to be viewed as a festival of civic state: “the loving-cup and the barons of beef carrying the mind back to medieval times and manners.”[[111]] The banquets at the Mansion House—one of the most palatial edifices in the kingdom—are of a like stately description; and for the more direct benefits of civic festivity we must look to the Ward dinners, and the meetings of public officers at table, when they forget the cares and heartburnings incident to every grade of office, and enjoy with the feast the higher luxury of doing good.
[109]. Birch excelled in his art; and his cuisine was unrivalled in the City. Kitchiner immortalised his soups in print, and the Mansion-House banquets and Court dinners of the Companies attested the alderman’s practical skill in his business. The shop in Cornhill was established in the reign of King George I. by Horton, who was succeeded by the father of Alderman Birch, whose successors, in 1836, were the present proprietors, Ring and Brymer. The premises present a curious specimen of the decorated shop-front of the early part of the last century.
[110]. See Life of Alderman Kelly, by the Rev. R. C. Fell. 1856.