Maiden Lane

Maiden lane, against that end of Shandois str. which comes into Bedford str. Covent garden.

Maiden-Lane, Southampton-Street, Covent Garden,—at 30, about ten doors on the L. from 388, in the Strand, leading into Chandos-st.

Maiden-Lane.—is in Covent Garden, about ten houses on the left hand in Southampton-street going from the Strand, and leads into Chandos-street.

Maiden lane, Halfmoon street, Covent Garden. ✽

Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, from Southampton Street to Bedford Street, called, in the early rate-books of St Paul's, Covent Garden, "Maiden Lane, behind the Bull Inn." Here is still "Bull Inn Court."

Eminent Inhabitants.—Archbishop Sancroft, both when Dean of York and Dean of St Paul's, the clerical scandal of the day affirming that he was more than "decently intimate with one Mrs. Bembo in Maiden Lane."¹ Andrew Marvell, who dates one of his letters to his constituents in Hull from his lodgings in Maiden Lane, April 21, 1677.² Other letters are dated from Covent Garden. He was lodging in this lane "on a second floor in a court in the Strand," when Lord Danby, ascending his stairs with a message and bribe from the King, found him too proud and honest to accept his offer. It is said he was dining off the pickings of a mutton bone, and that as soon as the Lord Treasurer was gone he was obliged to send to a friend to borrow a guinea. Voltaire, in lodgings "at the White Peruque," as he heads a letter to Swift (December 14, 1727), begging his interest to secure subscribers to The Henriade. Whilst here he wrote (in English) his essay on the "Civil Wars of France."³ Bonnell Thornton was the son of an apothecary in this lane.

A tavern in Maiden-Lane was the meeting-place of the conspirators against the life of William III. in 1696.

While these things were passing at Kensington, a large party of the assassins were revelling at a Jacobite tavern in Maiden Lane. Here they received their final orders for the morrow.—Macaulay, History of England, chap. xxi.

The famous vellum bound copy of Junius was ordered to "be well parcelled up, and left at the bar of Munday's Coffee House, Maiden Lane, with orders to be delivered to a chairman who will call for them in the course of to-morrow evening."⁴

A tavern, No. 20, called the Cider Cellars, was a favourite haunt of Professor Porson, who furnished the motto which was placed over the entrance—Honos erit huic quoque homo. Lord Campbell in his early days was a member of the club, and used to meet there Dr. Matthew Raine, the master of the Charter-house, and other noted personages. The tavern continued to be frequented by young men, and "much in vogue for devilled kidneys, oysters, and Welch rabbits, cigars, 'goes' of brandy, and great supplies of London stout," till it was absorbed in the extensions of the Adelphi Theatre. Singing was cultivated—the comic vein prevailing.

I have heard Professor Porson at the Cider Cellar in Maiden Lane recite from memory to delighted listeners the whole of Anstey's Pleaders' Guide. He concluded by relating that when buying a copy of it and complaining that the price was very high, the bookseller said, "Yes, sir, but you know Law books are always very dear."—Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices, vol. iii. p. 271.

Proctor, the sculptor, died in very reduced circumstances in a house in Maiden Lane opposite the Cider Cellars. Close against this, at No. 26, the north corner of Hand Court, was born, April 23, 1775, Joseph Mallord William Turner, greatest of English landscape painters. His father was a barber, and Turner lived with his father in this house till the year 1800, when he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. The shop, or part of it, lasted till 1861, when all that remained of it was pulled down. In this lane, at the Hand and Pen, was established the first shop in London for the sale of Daffy's Elixir.

Daffy's famous Elixir Salutis by Catherine Daffy, daughter of Mr. Thomas Dafiy, late rector of Redmile, in the valley of Belvoir, who imparted it to his kinsman, Mr. Anthony Daffy, who published the same to the great benefit of the community, and to his own great advantage. The original receipt is now in my possession, left to me by my father. ... To be had at the Hand and Pen, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden.—Post Boy, January 1, 1707–1708.

Here, No. 1, is Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Chapel, built on the site of the laboratory of Godfrey and Cooke the chemists, where Godfrey, the founder of the house, made experiments with phosphorus for the Hon. Robert Boyle. No. 21 is a Jewish synagogue; and No. 18 is the stage entrance to the Adelphi Theatre.

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¹ Every vestige of the house has long disappeared. Dugdale, in 1663, addresses a letter to his "much honoured friend, Dr. Sancroft, Dean of York, at Mr. Clarke's house in Mayden Lane, neere Covent Garden."
² Marvell's Works, 4to ed., vol. i. p. 326.
³ Scott's Swift, vol. xvii. p. 167.
⁴ Junius to Woodfall, March 3, 1702.