Unfortunately this was the only published portrait of Milton during his life, and gave strangers at home and abroad the impression that his face was as grim as his pamphlets were caustic.
By strange coincidence this house, where Milton lived when “Comus” was first published, was but a few yards distant from the town house of the earl in whose honour the masque had been composed a dozen years or more before this. With him was the “Lady Alice,” now nearly twenty-four years old, who, as a girl of eleven, had sung Milton’s songs in Ludlow Castle. The earl loved music, and his children’s music teacher, Lawes, and others who had acted in the merry masque comforted his invalidism with concourse of sweet sounds, almost within hearing of the old scrivener and organist and his poet-son. Milton loved Lawes, and wrote a sonnet to him; doubtless during these days they were much together.
About the time that Milton’s first baby daughter appeared, the Barbican house was crowded with the disconsolate Powell family, who had nearly lost their all, and fled to Mary’s husband for protection. Mother Powell seems to have been a woman of strong personality, and the new baby was christened “Anne” for her. Within two months, both the Milton and Powell grandfathers were buried from the house in Barbican. In the burials at St. Giles’s Cripplegate appears, in March, 1646, the record: “John Milton, Gentleman, 15.”
While worrying over the settlement of the Powell estates and brother Christopher’s as well, Milton continued his teaching; his pupil writes: “His manner of teaching never savoured in the least anything of pedantry.” Cyriack Skinner, grandson of the great Coke, to whom he wrote two sonnets in later years, was his pupil in the Barbican.
In 1647, just after the march of Fairfax and Cromwell through the city, Milton removed to a smaller house in High Holborn, “among those that open backward into Lincoln’s Inn Fields,” which had been laid out by Inigo Jones. Here he ceased playing the schoolmaster, became definitely a republican at heart, and busied himself with the writing of a history of England, and compiling of a Latin dictionary and a System of Divinity. The new home was among pleasant gardens, and near the bowling green and lounging-place for lawyers and citizens. Its exact site is unknown. In 1648 a second baby girl, called Mary, was born to the Miltons in the new home.
By his bold tractate on the “Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,” which was written during the terrible days of the king’s trial and execution, Milton put himself on the side of the regicides. Exactly a month after its appearance he was waited on at High Holborn by a committee from the Council of State, who asked him to accept the position of “Secretary for Foreign Tongues.” His eyesight was already failing; he could no longer read by candle-light; but here was a great opportunity for public service, and he did not long hesitate. On March 20th, when he entered upon office, he learned that all letters to foreign states and princes were to be put into dignified Latin form, so as to be instantly read by government officials in all countries, and not into the “wheedling, lisping jargon of the cringing French,” as his nephew calls it. His salary was a trifle over £288—worth about five times that sum to-day. Sometimes an early breakfast at High Holborn was necessary in order to meet the council at seven A.M. in Whitehall, but usually it met at eight or nine. It seemed, however, best for the Miltons to move nearer Whitehall, and while he waited for his apartments to be ready, Milton took lodging at Charing Cross, opening into Spring Garden, where now is the meeting-place of the London County Council. This was on the royal estate, and was so named from a concealed fountain which spurted forth when touched by the unwary foot. It must have been a pleasant spot, with its bathing pond and bowling green and pheasant yard, which led from what is now Trafalgar Square into St. James’s Park. Opposite, at Charing Cross, was the palace of the Percys, later called “Northumberland House,” and next to it, where now stands the Grand Hotel, was the home of Sir Harry Vane. Queen Eleanor’s Cross had been taken down in 1647 and the statue of Charles I., which on the year of Milton’s death replaced it on its site, was at this time kept in careful concealment.
St. Martin’s Lane was a genuine shady lane, bordered with hedges. The church which Milton saw upon the site of the present one was erected by Henry VIII., and was even then in reality St. Martin’s in the Fields.
Upon the north side of what is now Trafalgar Square, which is occupied by the National Gallery, stood the Royal Stables. Pall Mall, which leads westward, was so named from the Italian outdoor game, resembling croquet, which was played upon a green in the vicinity. It was then a resort for travellers and foreigners, who, like the Londoners Pepys and Defoe, frequented the chocolate and coffee houses in the neighbourhood and for a shilling an hour were carried about in sedan-chairs. The latter tells us that “the chairmen serve you for porters to run on errands, as your gondoliers do at Venice.”
St. James’s Palace, with its picturesque brick gateway, had but just seen the last hours of the monarch whom Milton had helped dethrone. Here Charles II. had been born in 1630, and here the Princess Mary was born in 1662, and was married to William, Prince of Orange, fifteen years later.
