Another of Johnson's taverns was the Crown and Anchor, No. 37 Arundel Street, Strand, which extended in the rear to Mitford Lane. The Whittington Club met at this tavern many years later (see JERROLD, p. 155); as did Bobus Smith's 'King of Clubs' (see ROGERS).

He frequented also the Turk's Head, No. 142 Strand, near Somerset House, afterwards the house of Chapman the publisher, and the first London home of 'George Eliot' (see MARY ANN EVANS, p. 98). In 1885 it was a tourist's ticket-office.

Boswell's Johnson, 1763, Æt. 54.

At night [July 21, 1763] Mr. Johnson and I supped in a private room at the Turk's Head Coffee House, in the Strand. 'I encourage this house,' said he; 'for the mistress of it is a good civil woman, and has not much business.'

In 1763 Johnson is described as reading 'Irene' to Peter Garrick, at the Fountaine Tavern, No. 103 Strand, but no longer in existence. Strype describes it as 'a very fine tavern, very conveniently built,' and as fronting on the Strand 'close to the alley leading to Fountain Court.' Simpson's was erected on its site. The name of Fountain Court was changed to Savoy Buildings in the summer of 1884. He was often to be found at Clifton's, in Butcher Row, behind St. Clement Danes, and on the site of the front of the New Law Courts; at Tom's Coffee House, No. 17 Russell Street, Covent Garden, taken down in 1865 (see CIBBER, p. 55); at Will's, corner of Bow and Russell Streets (see ADDISON, p. 7); at the British Coffee House, Cockspur Street (see SMOLLETT); at the Old Red Lion Tavern, St. John Street Road, Islington (see GOLDSMITH, p. 125); and at the Old Baptist Head Tavern, St. John's Lane, Clerkenwell (see GOLDSMITH, p. 126). There is a general impression that Johnson was a frequenter of the Cock, No. 201 Fleet Street11 (see PEPYS), and of the Cheshire Cheese, No. 16 Wine Office Court, Fleet Street (see GOLD

SMITH, p. 120); but although both of these existed before his day, a careful reading of his Life by Boswell has failed to discover any allusion to them.

BEN JONSON.

1573-74-1637.

MUCH of the story of Jonson's life rests upon mere tra

dition. Contemporary authorities differ in many respects in their meagre accounts of him; and the later biographers seem to agree only in doubting the statements made by his contemporaries.

All that is related of Jonson in the History of the Worthies of England, Endeavored by Thomas Fuller, D.D.,' and in The Lives of Eminent Persons, by John Aubrey,' is quoted here in full.

"

Fuller lived from 1608 to 1661; Aubrey, from 1626 to 1700. Fuller says ('Westminster,' vol. ii. ) : —

Benjamin Johnson [sic] was born in this City [Westminster]. Though I cannot, with all my industrious inquiry, find him in his cradle, I can fetch him from his long coats. When a little child he lived in Hartshorne Lane, near Charing Cross, where his mother married a bricklayer for her second husband. He was first bred in a private school in St. Martin's Church [in the Fields], then in Westminster School [see CHURCHILL, p. 51]. He was suitably admitted into St. John's College, in Cambridge, where he continued but a few weeks for want of further maintenance, being fain to return to the trade of his father-in-law. And let them blush not that have, but those who have not, a lawful calling. He helped in the structure of Lincoln's Inn, where, having a trowel in his hand, he had a book in his pocket.

Hartshorne Lane has since been called Northumberland Street (Strand), and entirely rebuilt.

Malone, in his 'Shakspere,' says that he found in the register of St. Martin's that a Mrs. Margaret Jonson was married in November, 1575, to Mr. Thomas Fowler,' and this Margaret Jonson he believes to have been the mother of Ben. The old Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields was taken down in 1720.

Aubrey's
Lives of
Eminent

Persons:
Jonson.

His mother [Ben Jonson's] after his father's death, married a bricklayer, and 't is generally sayd, that he wrought some time with his father-in-lawe, and particularly on the garden wall of Lincoln's Inne, next to Chancery lane, and that . . a bencher walking thro' and hearing him repeat some Greeke verses out of Homer, discoursing with him, and finding him to have a witt extraordinary, gave him some exhibition to maintaine him at Trinity College in Cambridge. . . . Then he came over into England, and acted and wrote, but both ill, at the Green Curtaine, a kind of nursery, or obscure play house, somewhere in ye suburbs (I think towards Shoreditch or Clerkenwell). . . . Long since, in King James's time, I have heard my Uncle Denver say (who knew him) that he lived without Temple Barre at a Combe-maker's shop about the Elephant and Castle. In his later time he lived in Westminster, in the house under wch you passe as you goe out of the Churchyard into the old palace, where he dyed. He lies buryed in the North aisle in the path of Square Stone (the rest is lozenge) opposite to the scutcheon of Robertus de Ros, with this inscription only on him, in a pavement square, blew marble, about 14 inches square, O, Rare Ben Jonson.

The Green Curtain was the Curtain Theatre, Shoreditch. Its exact site it is quite impossible to determine now, although Halliwell Phillipps, in his 'Illustrations of the Life of Shakspere' (London, 1874), places it 'on the south side of Holywell Lane, in or near the place called Curtain Court, which was afterwards called Gloucester Row and now Gloucester

Street.' It does not appear on any of the maps of London of its day, and Stow simply describes it as 'standing on the S. W. side [of Shoreditch] towards the Fields.'

Of the Elephant and Castle there is no trace left. It was on the south side of the Strand, between Temple Bar and Essex Street. The gateway to Lincoln's Inn was still standing in 1885 in Chancery Lane, nearly opposite Cursitor Street, and bore the date 1518.

Eminent
Persons:

note.

This account I received from Mr. Isaac Walton (who wrote Dr. Jo Donne's Life, etc.) December 2, 1680, being then eightyseven years of age; 'I only knew Ben Jonson, but Aubrey's my Lord of Winton knew him very well, and sayes he Lives of was in the 6th degree, that is the upermost fforme, in Westminster scole, at which time his father dyed, Jonson, footand his mother married a bricklayer, who made him (much against his will) to help in his trade. . . . My Lord of Winton told me he told him he was (in his long retyrement and sickness, when he saw him, which was often) much afflickted, that hee had profained the scripture in his playes, and lamented it with horror; yet at that time of his long retyrement his pentions, (so much as came in) was given to a woman that governed him, with whom he lievd and dyed nere the abie in Westminster; and that nether he nor she took much care for next weike, and wood be sure not to want wine, of which he vsually tooke too much before he went to bed if not oftner and soner. My Lord tells me he knows not, but thinks he was born in Westminster.'

If Jonson was in the sixth form at Westminster School when his father died, his mother could not have been the Margaret Jonson the record of whose marriage in 1575 Mr. Malone saw in the register of St. Martin's, unless Jonson was born earlier than 1573-74, the generally accepted date.12 The Biographia Britannica' and other authorities say that he was a posthumous child.

"

In 1598 Jonson killed 'Gabriel Spenser, the player' in a duel in Hoxton Fields, Shoreditch, now marked by Hoxton

Square; and he is said to have been living in 1607 in
Blackfriars, where the scene of the 'Alchymist' is laid.
He died in 1637.

Jonson's grave was 'dug not far from Drayton's.' According to the local tradition, he asked the king (Charles I.) to grant him a favor. 'What is it?' said the king. Give me 'Where?' asked

Dean Stan

ley's West- eighteen inches of square ground.'

minster Abbey, chap. iv.

6

the king. 'In Westminster Abbey.' This is one explanation given of the story that he was buried standing upright. Another that it was with a view to his readiness for the Resurrection. . . . This [original] stone was taken up when in 1821 the nave was repaved, and was brought back from the stoneyard of the clerk of the works, in the time of Dean Buckland, by whose order it was fitted into its present place in the north wall of the nave. Meanwhile the original spot had been marked by a small triangular lozenge, with a copy of the old inscription. When, in 1849, Sir Robert Wilson was buried close by, the loose sand of Jonson's grave (to use the expression of the clerk of the works, who superintended the operation) 'rippled in like a quicksand,' and the clerk 'saw the two leg-bones of Jonson fixed bolt upright in the sand, as though the body had been buried in the upright position; and the skull came rolling down among the sand, from a position above the leg-bones to the bottom of the newly made grave. There was still hair upon it, and it was of red color.' It was seen once more on the digging of John Hunter's grave, and it had still traces of red hair upon it.

The name is spelled 'Johnson' on the tombstone.

Jonson was also associated with the Globe Theatre, 'near the Bear Gardens,' Southwark, on the grounds afterwards occupied by the Brewery of Barclay and Perkins (see SHAKSPERE); and with its neighbor the Rose Theatre, the site of which was at the north end of the short alley called Rose Street in 1885. It ran from Park Street towards the Bankside, and lay between the Bear Gardens and the Southwark Bridge Crossing.