James Smith, one of the authors of the Rejected Addresses,—a series of parodies rivalled only by those of Bon Gaultier, lived at No. 27. It was on his own street that he wrote the well-known epigram—[246]
“In Craven Street, Strand, the attorneys find place,
And ten dark coal barges are moor’d at its base.
Fly, Honesty, fly! seek some safer retreat:
There’s craft in the river and craft in the street.”
But Sir George Rose capped this in return, retorting in extemporaneous lines, written after dinner:—
“Why should Honesty fly to some safer retreat,
From attorneys and barges?—’od rot ’em!
For the lawyers are just at the top of the street,
And the barges are just at the bottom.”
James Smith, the intellectual hero of this street, the son of a solicitor to the Ordnance, was born in 1775. In 1802 he joined the staff of the Pic-Nic newspaper, with Combe, Croker, Cumberland, and that mediocre poet, Sir James Bland Burgess. It changed its name to the Cabinet, and died in 1803. From 1807 to 1817 James Smith contributed to the Monthly Mirror his “Horace in London.” In 1812 came out the Rejected Addresses, inimitable parodies by himself and his brother, not merely of the manner but of the very mode of thought of Wordsworth, Cobbett, Southey, Coleridge, Crabbe, Lord Byron, Scott, etc. The copyright, originally offered to Mr. Murray for £20, but declined, was purchased by him in 1819, after the sixteenth edition, for £131; so much for the foresight of publishers. The book has since deservedly gone through endless editions, and has not been approached even by the talented parody writers of Punch. Those who wish to see the story of this publication in detail, must hunt it up in the edition of the Addresses illustrated by George Cruickshank.
Mr. Smith was the chief deviser of the substance of the Entertainments of the elder Charles Mathews. He wrote the Country Cousins in 1820, and in the two succeeding years the Trip to France and the Trip to America. For these last two works the author received a thousand pounds. “A thousand pounds!” he used to ejaculate, shrugging his shoulders, “and all for nonsense.”[247]
James Smith was just the man for Mathews, with his slight frameworks of stories filled up with songs, jokes, puns, wild farcical fancies, and merry conceits, and here and there among the motley, with true touches of wit, pathos, and comedy, and faithful traits of life and character, such as only a close observer of society and a sound thinker could pen.
He was lucky enough to obtain a legacy of £300 for a complimentary epigram on Mr. Strahan, the king’s printer. Being patted on the head when a boy by Chief-Justice Mansfield, in Highgate churchyard, and once seeing Horace Walpole on his lawn at Twickenham, were the two chief historical events of Mr. Smith’s quiet life. The four reasons that kept so clever a man employed on mere amateur trifling were these—an indolent disinclination to sustained work, a fear of failure, a dislike to risk a well-earned fame, and a foreboding that literary success might injure his practice as a lawyer. His favourite visits were to Lord Mulgrave’s, Mr. Croker’s, Lord Abinger’s, Lady Blessington’s, and Lord Harrington’s.
Pretty Lady Blessington used to say of him, that “James Smith, if he had not been a witty man, must have been a great man.” He died in his house in Craven Street, with the calmness of a philosopher, on the 24th of December 1839, in the sixty-fifth year of his age.[248] Fond of society, witty without giving pain, a bachelor, and therefore glad to escape from a solitary home, James Smith seems to have been the model of a diner-out.
Caleb Whitefoord, a wine merchant in Craven Street, and an excellent connoisseur in old pictures, was one of the legacy-hunters who infested the studio of Nollekens, the miserly sculptor of Mortimer Street. He was a foppish dresser, and was remarkable for a dashing three-cornered hat, with a sparkling black button and a loop upon a rosette. He wore a wig with five tiers of curls, of the Garrick cut, and he was one of the last to wear such a monstrosity. This crafty wine merchant used to distribute privately the most whimsical of his Cross Readings, Ship News, and Mistakes of the Press—things in their day very popular, though now surpassed in every number of Punch. Some of the best were the following:—“Yesterday Dr. Pretyman preached at St. James’s,—and performed it with ease in less than sixteen minutes.” “Several changes are talked of at Court,—consisting of 9050 triple bob-majors.” “Dr. Solander will, by Her Majesty’s command, undertake a voyage—round the head-dress of the present month.” “Sunday night.—Many noble families were alarmed—by the constable of the ward, who apprehended them at cards.” A simple-hearted age could laugh heartily at these things: would that we could!