Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/592

 486 NOTES AND QUERIES. u. ix. DM. 17. the pounce " for any well-grown fellow who could be persuaded or hocussed into the Guards at Potsdam "' to serve for twenty years." Since his tales regarding the hard fighting in " the High Germanie " it is said were commonly interspersed with stage asides that he was cognizant of a much better military service, and a patriotic one to boot, where there was " little to do and plenty to get," some suspicions were buzzed that stalwart Jan Campbell was really a recruiter of the " Wee, wee German lairdie " who had come to London to be king ; and these ungenerous misgivings were confirmed by the fact that the local justices and the revenue officials were very considerate, riot to say lax, with mine host of the inn by Wapping New Stairs. It was here, so say the local learned, that the long line of British writers of the picaresque school, from Defoe and his imitators to Smollett, and thus to Cap- tain Marryat and Charles Dickens, tapped the " old salts " who loafed daily (and, it may be, " sponged " upon the unwary) at the head of Wapping New Stairs. Accord- ing to the claim of his election committee on the creation of the borough of the Tower Hamlets under the Reform Act of 1832, Captain Marryat was born " close by " and knew the tavern and the stairs very well from a child and thereabout withal, still better in his later schooldays. The local belief has always been that he obtained a good deal of the atmosphere of ' Jacob Faithful,' ' Japhet in Search of a Father,' &c., from these haunts of wanderers from all the Seven Seas. Other now neglected novelists of sea life and adventure in the robust period, such as the author of ' The Old Sailors' Jolly Boat ' and ' Jem Bunt,' emulated Marryat, or even the pachyder- matous ship-surgeon's mate, Tobias Smollett. But they hired respectable lodgings in a Wapping alley and so kept better company than that to which the author of ' Roderick Random ' was, on his own showing, too prone. 3. " OLD DUNDEE " AND THE LOCAL STAGE. With two theatres of some fame in the immediate vicinity Goodman's Fields and the Royalty the " Old Dundee " Free- masons frequently enjoyed the company of actors at the social amenities which alleviated the lodge's ceremonial labours ; and, perhaps, something more than that can be claimed for Edmund Kean (1787- 1833) and for John Braham, who " came- out " at the Royalty Theatre in the year of the great tragedian's birth. It will be- remembered that the English-Jewish scholared community regard both of these geniuses as of their blood, whatever their Profession of faith. Garrick, who made oodman's Fields Theatre the resort of people of fashion, as Richard III. in 1741, not merely knew the " Old Dundee " Lodge, but as a wine merchant was reputed to have had business dealings with the host of the inn. 4. GEORGIAN WAPPING NEW STAERS. It is possible, of course, in a straggling and diverse- hamlet, such as Wapping was in the fighting days of the eighteenth century, to view things from very different angles. Thus Harrison, the incurious, city- minded London antiquary, writing about 1775 of Wapping's " very narrow streets with very indifferent buildings," adds : It is one of the most populous places of its size in or about London, and it is inhabited by sea- men, masters of ships, or such other persons whose business consists in working for the merchants' service. It is amazing to consider the vast number of people in this place, and some idea may be formed from a view of the ships of all sizes and from every mercantile nation in Europe that are constantly coming up, lying at anchor, or going down the river. Yet it is the truth that Wapping then,, despite numberless fires (indeed, it is true now), held many fine houses with specially agreeable gardens and shrubberies ; and country flowers and not a few exotics blossomed amain in many of the front- ages of humble cottages used as sailors r lodgings. The prevalence of music and dancing in Wapping was once deeply deplored by a famous divine ; but really the practice of these arts is not necessarily an evil thing in a port. And, by the by, the " Old Dundee " Freemasons' Lodge according to tradition in Old Wapping en- joyed the membership of many good singers who had practiced their accomplishments under the special patronage of some of the best fighting captains of the British Navy : and some of these found their way on to the stages of the Royalty and other theatres, at the invitation of managers who were brothers of the lodge. See what Captain Marryat says of the singing of Heaving of the Lead " as his battleship warped into port. On the other hand, there are masses of official and unoincial records showing that