HENRY SILVER'S INITIALS.
In the "Bedford Hotel"—beloved of Thackeray, for in it he wrote much of "Henry Esmond," and stayed there when his house was in the painters' hands—the room occupied was that known as the "Dryden." Here the Staff would make no attempt at self-repression; and I have been told how the idle and the curious would congregate outside upon the pavement and listen to the voices of the wits within, and wait to gape at them as they passed in and out.
The places at Table once occupied by the members of the Staff are nowadays regarded as theirs by right. But in earlier days the places were often shuffled, as at a game of "general post." Proof of it may be had from the following plans of the Table between 1855 and 1865—perhaps the most interesting years in the history of Punch, as demonstrating the transitional stage, when the ancient order of things was rapidly developing into the modern as we know them to-day. In 1855, then, the disposition was as follows:—
| William Bradbury* | |
| Douglas Jerrold | John Leech |
| Tom Taylor | W. M. Thackeray |
| Gilbert à Beckett | Shirley Brooks |
| Horace Mayhew | Mark Lemon |
| Percival Leigh | John Tenniel |
| F. M. Evans* | |
—only two artists and a half (Thackeray being a commixture of writer and draughtsman) to seven writers and a half!
Five years later—in 1860—the places had changed, partly through death, partly through rearrangement:—
| William Bradbury* | |
| W. M. Thackeray (when he came) | John Leech |
| Tom Taylor | Henry Silver |
| Horace Mayhew | Charles Keene |
| Shirley Brooks | John Tenniel |
| Percival Leigh | Mark Lemon |
| F. M. Evans* | |
Here the artistic element is seen to be asserting itself to some extent, the proportion between artist and writer being further readjusted after the lapse of another five years: for in 1865 the constitution of the table became—
| F. M. Evans* | |
| Tom Taylor | G. Du Maurier |
| W. H. Bradbury* (his father seldom came now) | Henry Silver |
| Horace Mayhew | Charles H. Bennett |
| Charles Keene | F. M. Evans, Jr.* |
| F. C. Burnand | Shirley Brooks |
| Percival Leigh | John Tenniel |
| Mark Lemon | |