"Then, madam, permit me to bring perfection to the flower!"
Again, when Mrs. Siddons, the great English tragedienne, called upon him in his chambers and the servant did not promptly bring her a chair, his quick wit made capital of the incident by the remark:
"You see, madam, wherever you go there are no seats to be had!"
John Thomas Smith in his Antiquarian Rambles in the Streets of London (1846), tells an amusing incident in the life of Sir George Etherege, the playright, who having run up a bill at Locket's ordinary, a coffee house much frequented by dramatists of the period, and finding himself unable to pay, began to absent himself from the place. Mrs. Locket thereupon sent a man to dun and to threaten him with prosecution if he did not pay. Sir George sent back word that if she stirred a step in the matter he would kiss her. On receiving this answer, the good lady, much exasperated, called for her hood and scarf, and told her husband, who interposed, that "she would see if there was any fellow alive who would have the impudence—" "Prithee! my dear, don't be so rash," said her husband; "there is no telling what a man may do in his passion."
Richard Savage, the English poet and friend of Johnson, who included him in his famous Lives of the Poets, was arrested for the murder of James Sinclair after a drunken brawl in Robinson's coffee house in 1727. He was found guilty, but narrowly escaped the death penalty by the intercession of the countess of Hertford. A feature of his trial was the extraordinary charge to the jury of Judge Page, who for his hard words and his love of hanging, is damned to everlasting fame in the verse of Pope. The charge was:
Gentlemen of the jury! You are to consider that Mr. Savage is a very great man, a much greater man than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he wears very fine clothes, much finer than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he has an abundance of money in his pocket, much more money than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; but, gentlemen of the jury, is it not a very hard case, gentlemen of the jury, that Mr. Savage should therefore kill you or me, gentlemen of the jury?
Albert V. Lally[357] has made a collection of old coffee-house anecdotes. Among them are the following:
The story is told of how Sir Richard Steele in Button's Coffee House was once made the umpire in an amusing difference between two unnamed disputants. These two were arguing about religion, when one of them said: "I wonder, sir, you should talk of religion, when I'll hold you five guineas you can't say the Lord's prayer." "Done," said the other, "and Sir Richard Steele shall hold the stakes." The money being deposited the gentleman began with, "I believe in God", and so went right through the creed. "Well," said the other when he had finished, "I didn't think he could have done it."
There is another story of a famous judge, Sir Nicholas Bacon, who was importuned by a criminal to spare his life on account of kinship. "How so," demanded the judge. "Because my name is Hog and yours is Bacon; and hog and bacon are so near akin that they cannot be separated."
"Ay," responded the judge dryly, "but you and I cannot yet be kindred, for hog is not bacon until it is well hanged."