At this spot, a couple of hundred years ago, a mayor of London had been hanged; for what reason, Elkanah Settle, the city laureate, does not aver, further than that “wise people differed much on the subject,”—some imagining that it was for bigamy; others, that it was for having, at a great banquet given to the king by the corporation of spectacle-makers, mistaken the royal purse for his own; but the chief report being, “that he was hanged for the bad dinners which he gave to the common-councilmen.” The laureate proceeds to say, that at this spot, whenever the mayor of London went down with the Companies in their visitation of the boundaries, the barges all made a solemn stop. The mayor, (he was not yet a lord,) with all the aldermen, knelt on the deck, and the chief chaplain, taking off his cap, repeated this admonition:—
Mister Mayor, Mister Mayor,
Of a sinner’s death beware.
Liveth virtue, liveth sin
Not without us, but within.
Man doth never think of ill,
While he feedeth at his will.
None doth seek his neighbour’s coin,
When he seeth the sirloin.
No man toucheth purse or life,
While he thus doth use his knife.
Savoury pie and smoking haunch
Make the hungry traitor staunch.
Claret spiced, and Malvoisie,
From ill Spirits set us free,
Better far than axe or sword
Is the City’s well filled board.
Think of him once, hanging there,
Mister Mayor, Mister Mayor,
Chorus.—Beware, Beware, Beware!
The various corporate bodies chanted the last line with unanimous devotion; the mayor and aldermen then rose from their knees, and the whole pageant moved on to Blackwall to Dine.
Who has not heard of Blackwall? more fashionable for three months in the year than Almacks itself for the same perishable period; fuller than Bond Street, and with as many charming taverns as Regent Street contains “Ruination shops,” (so called by Lady J. the most riante wit of the day,) those shops where one can purchase every thing that nobody wants, and that few can pay for. Emporiums, as they name themselves, brilliant collections of all that is dazzling and delightful, from a filigree tooth-pick, up to a service of plate for a royal visitation.
Blackwall is a little city of taverns, built by white-bait, as the islands in the South Sea are built by the coral insect. The scenery is a marsh, backed by the waters of a stagnant canal, and lined with whitewashed warehouses. It is in fact a transfer of Wapping, half-a-dozen miles down the Thames. But Blackwall disdains the picturesque; it scorns exterior charms, and devotes itself to the solid merits of the table, and to dressing white-bait with a perfection unrivalled, and unrivalable in the circumference of the terrestrial globe.
Blackwall deserves to be made immortal, and I gave it a passport to posterity, in an Ode.
ODE TO BLACKWALL.
Let me sing thy praise, Blackwall!
Paradise of court and city,
Gathering in thy banquet-hall
Lords and cockneys—dull, and witty.
Spot, where ministers of state,
Lay aside their humbug all;
Water-souchy, and white-bait,
Tempting mankind to Blackwall.
Come, ye Muses, tuneful Nine,
Whom no Civil List can bribe,
Tell me, who come here, to dine,
All the great and little tribe,
Who, as summer takes its rounds,
O’er Whitechapel, or Whitehall,
From five shillings to five pounds,
Club for dinner at Blackwall.
There the ministerial Outs,
There the ministerial Ins,
One an emblem of the pouts,
T’other emblem of the grins;
All, beneath thy roof, are gay,
Each forgetting rise or fall,
Come to spend one honest day,——
All good fellows, at Blackwall.