Russell Street

Russel street, betn Covent garden square SW, and Drury lane NE, that end next the Garden, is very broad, and pleasant. L. 340 Yds, and from Cha+ [Charing Cross] NEly, 740 Yds.

Russel street, Covent Garden; so called from the Duke of Bedford, upon whose estate it is built.

Russell Street, Covent Garden, built 1634, and so called after the Russells, Earls and Dukes of Bedford, the ground landlords. In 1720 "it was a fine broad street, well inhabited by tradesmen;"¹ it is now rather poorly inhabited. Remarkable Places in.—Will's Coffee-house, on the north side of the west-end corner of Bow Street. Button's Coffee-house, "on the south side, about two doors from Covent Garden;"² Tom's Coffee-house, on the north side; Rose Tavern, next Drury Lane Theatre. [See these names.] The candidates for being touched for the King's Evil, July 1660, were required first to repair "to Mr. Knight the King's Surgeon, living at the Cross Guns in Russell Street, Covent Garden, over against the Rose Tavern." Eminent Inhabitants.—Carr, Earl of Somerset, implicated in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury; he was living here, on the north side, in 1644, the year before his death. Joseph Taylor, 1634–1641, one of the original performers in Shakespeare's plays. [See Piazza.] John Evelyn, the Diarist.

October 18, 1659. I came with my wife and family to London: tooke lodgings at the 3 Feathers in Russell Street, Covent Garden, for all the winter, my son being very unwell.

There is a token of "John Hatten at the Three Feathers in Russell Streete," in the Beaufoy Collection, Guildhall.³ Evelyn was at this time acting as a secret agent in London for Charles II. Major Mohun, the actor, on the south side; in 1665 he was assessed at 10s., the highest rate levied in the street. Thomas Betterton, the actor; he died here in 1710, and here, "at his late lodgings," his "books, prints, drawings, and paintings" were sold after his death.⁴ Tom Davies, the bookseller, on the south side, "over against Tom's Coffee-house," later the Caledonian Coffee-house. Tom Davies had originally a shop in Duke's Court. He began at Russell Street in 1762, and became a bankrupt in 1778.

The very place where I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the illustrious subject of this work deserves to be particularly marked. It was No. 8. I never pass by without feeling reverence and regret.—Boswell, by Croker, p. 133, note.

This [1763] is to me a memorable year; for in it I had the happiness to obtain the acquaintance of that extraordinary man whose memoirs I am now writing. ... Mr. Thomas Davies, the actor, who then kept a bookseller's shop in Russell Street, Covent Garden, told me that Johnson was very much his friend, and came frequently to his house, where he more than once invited me to meet him; but by some unlucky accident or other, he was prevented from coming to us. ... At last, on Monday, the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies' back parlour, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies having perceived him through the glass door in the room in which we were sitting, advancing towards us he announced his awful approach to me somewhat in the manner of an actor on the part of Horatio when he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's ghost, "Look, my Lord, it comes!" ... Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting his prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, "Don't tell where I come from." "From Scotland," cried Davies roguishly. "Mr. Johnson," said I, "I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it." ... This speech was somewhat unlucky, for with that quickness of wit, for which he was so remarkable ... he retorted, "That, Sir, I find is what a great many of your countrymen cannot help."—Boswell, by Croker, pp. 131–133.

Another bookseller in Russell Street is remembered by association with a great English writer. When Edward Gibbon, at sixteen years of age, by solitary study of the writings of Father Parsons, had made up his mind to embrace the Roman Catholic faith, he sought counsel of "Mr. Lewis, a Roman Catholic bookseller in Russell Street, Covent Garden," who recommended him to a priest of whose name and order the great historian was ignorant when he wrote his Memoirs. It has since been ascertained that he was a Jesuit named Baker, one of the chaplains to the Sardinian Ambassador. The conversion of a Gentleman Commoner of Magdalen made a great stir in 1753, and the Russell Street bookseller was called before the Privy Council. The offence committed by Gibbon and Baker amounted to high treason in the statute book of those days. Baker remained unnoticed; against Gibbon "the gates of Magdalen were for ever shut." Dr. Armstrong the poet died at his house in Russell Street, September 7, 1779. Charles Lamb (Elia) took lodgings in October 1817 at "Mr. Owen's, Nos. 20 and 21 Great Russell Street, Drury Lane." The house was the west corner of Bow Street, "delightfully situated," says Talfourd, "between the two theatres:" "the house belonged," writes Procter, "to an ironmonger (or brazier) and was comfortable and clean, and a little noisy."¹ Lamb himself describes his lookout as follows: "Drury Lane Theatre in sight from our front and Covent Garden from our back-room windows."

November 21, 1817.—We are in the individual spot I like best in all this great city. The theatres with all their noises. Covent Garden dearer to me than any gardens of Alcinous, where we are morally sure of the earliest peas and 'sparagus. Bow Street where the thieves are examined within a few yards of us. Mary had not been here four and twenty hours before she saw a thief. She sits at the window working; and casually throwing out her eyes, she sees a concourse of people coming this way, with a constable to conduct the solemnity. These little incidents agreeably diversify a female life.—Lamb to Miss Wordsworth (Letters, p. 103).

He remained here till the middle of 1823.² No. 19 was the shop of Barker the bookseller, at which Lamb purchased the folio Beaumont and Fletcher, over which as Elia he gossiped so pleasantly in his essay on "Old China." There is much wit in Wycherley's play of The Country Wife about Mr. Horner's lodgings in this street: that kind of wit, however, which suffers from transplanting. Russell Street was the name given to both Great and Little Russell Street in 1859. Previously Great Russell Street extended from Covent Garden Market to Brydges Street (now Catherine Street), and Little Russell Street from Brydges Street to Drury Lane.

---

¹ Strype.
² Johnson's Life of Addison.
³ Burn, p. 203.
⁴ Advert, in No. 213 of 1st ed. of The Tatler.

¹ H. Crabb Robinson, vol. ii. p. 79.
² Proctor, p. 249.

Russell Street

The part of this street lying within the parish of St. Paul, Covent Garden, was built under leases granted in 1631 and 1632, which are tabulated on pages 308–9. It was fully inhabited by about 1637. A splendidly broad street, it commanded a fine view of the church directly opposite across the Piazza, and afforded access to the latter from Drury Lane via the narrower (Little) Russell Street, which had been built a few years earlier beyond the third Earl of Bedford's brick wall of c. 1610.² Both parts bore the name of Russell from the beginning.

Almost as soon as it was built all the south side of the street, between the Piazza and Brydges Street, and some of the north side east of Bow Street, was settled on the fourth Earl's younger son Edward by the family agreement of 1640–1.³ He sold these parts to John Athy, a haberdasher, probably in 1663,⁴ and they were only partially regained for the Bedford estate by purchases in the nineteenth century.

An early resident in the street in 1644–5 (probably at one of the corners with Bow Street) was the notorious Earl of Somerset, father-in-law of the fourth Earl of Bedford's daughter, in the last year or so of his life.⁵ But despite its good position and generous width Russell Street did not prove attractive to Covent Garden's more aristocratic residents and hardly any other people of title appear among its ratepayers.

The first occupants probably included at least three victuallers or vintners. One had the house later numbered 6: another, William Clifton, was in c. 1633–4 the proprietor of the Goat tavern at the north-west corner with Bow Street,⁶ which was at that time sufficiently well known to be made the resort of riotous characters in Richard Brome's topical comedy, The Weeding of the Covent Garden (see page 322). A longer-lived tavern, the Rose, was situated at the east corner of Brydges Street, where it also became very well known (see page 200). The north side of the street near the Piazza contained some lodging-houses of good reputation. The Verneys had favourable reports of Mrs. Dubber's house at No. 18 in the 1650's; and next door at No. 17 (the Three Feathers) Evelyn took rooms for the winter of 1659–60,⁷ when John Cosin, Bishop of Durham, was evidently a fellow-lodger. The bishop, however, although prepared to stay there again in the following autumn, would have preferred somewhere about Tothill Street as 'more private and more commodious for me than this in Russell street wilbe, which is a thoroughfare for all company',⁸ and perhaps it was the stir and bustle of its location between the Piazza and Drury Lane that told against Russell Street as a place of settled residence. In 1668 it had twelve shops assessed in the ratebooks, a higher proportion than in most of the Covent Garden streets.²

The western and more consequential part of the street contained a coffee house by this time, the Turk's Head at or near No. 20,⁹ and it was with its coffee houses that the name of the street was to be most closely associated. Apart from the Rose on the corner of Brydges Street (see page 200), and Will's on the corner of Bow Street (see page 185), the two most famous were Tom's and Button's. The former was established at No. 17 between 1698 and 1703 and continued (after about 1768 as a subscription club) until 1814.¹⁰ Button's was established about 1712 and appears to have died out by the 1730's. Its location is not certain, except that it was on the south side more or less opposite Tom's: Johnson in his life of Addison said it was 'about two doors from Covent-garden',¹¹ which would correspond well enough with No. 10, where Daniel Button, who had formerly kept Button's coffee house, died in 1731 in a penurious condition: Button was not, however, the ratepayer here before 1720.¹²

Strype spoke of Russell Street as 'a fine broad Street, well inhabited by Tradesmen'¹³ and Mortimer's Universal Director of trades in 1763 listed nine residents—an engraver (William Ryland),¹⁴ a music-master, a printer, a clockmaker, a distiller, a metal-button maker, two apothecaries and a grocer. The eastern end of the street, towards the boundary of St. Martin's parish, was more disreputable: the ratebooks list a 'gaiming house' at No. 24 in 1722, and it was at this end of the street that the late eighteenth-century parish officers contended with disorderly taverns, and ratepayers who absconded or retired to gaol.¹⁵

The street retained in the early nineteenth century an attraction for lovers of the busy life of central London. In 1817 Charles and Mary Lamb took rooms at No. 20, and in letters to Dorothy Wordsworth described the appeal of Russell Street for them: 'We are in the individual spot I like best in all this great city', Charles wrote, 'The theatres with all [their noises; Covent Garden,] dearer to me than any gardens of Alcinous, where we are morally sure of the earliest peas and 'sparagus; Bow Street, where the thieves are examined, within a few yards of us. Mary had not been here four and twenty hours before she saw a Thief. She sits at the window working, and casually throwing out her eyes, she sees a concourse of people coming this way, with a constable to conduct the solemnity. These little incidents agreeably diversify a female life.' Mary called it 'a place all alive with noise and bustle, Drury Lane Theatre in sight from our front and Covent Garden from our back windows. The hubbub of the carriages returning from the play does not annoy me in the least—strange that it does not, for it is quite tremendous ...' They stayed for six years, then moved to Islington.^{16, 1}

The development of the adjacent market in the nineteenth century no doubt enhanced the value of sites here, and a good deal of the property alienated by the fourth Earl in the seventeenth century was re-acquired in the nineteenth.¹⁷ The market's expansion is now very evident in the street, not least on the north-west side where Nos. 13–16 were pulled down in 1887 and the wooden sheds subsequently erected remain to this day.¹⁸ On the south side of the street between Catherine Street and Wellington Street the small and very unpretentious houses at Nos. 1–4 probably date in carcase from a rebuilding of 1775–6,¹⁹ and at No. 9 the site of the Market House public house has, under other names, been in the hands of licensed victuallers since at least 1708.²⁰ The most notable surviving house, however, by reason of its associations, is next door, at No. 8.

Ratepaying occupants in Russell Street include:

Richard Ryder (II), carpenter, 1631–63, in several houses, at least two of which were outside the parish in (Little) Russell Street, the last adjoining the newly building Drury Lane Theatre (see Survey of London, vol. XXXV);

Dr. Nicholas Phiske, 1633–58, astrologer and physician;

Lady Follard (Fulwood), 1635–6;

Dr. Eglyn (Egling), 1636;

Joseph Taylor, 1637–41, ? actor;

Captain Adams, 1638;

Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, 1644–5 (who with his wife had been involved in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury);

Dr. Nesbeth, 1647;

Dr. Bever, 1651;

Lady Beltemon, 1654;

Nicholas Burt, 1663–7, actor;

'Major Moone', 1665, probably Michael Mohun, actor;

John Bancroft, 1691–c. 1694, dramatist;

John Smith, 1693–1717, mezzotint engraver;

George Kelly, 1722, ? Jacobite;

Dr. Butler, 1733–4, 1741–6;

Captain Thomas Baker, 1737–42;

Henry Holcombe, 1748, musical composer;

Thomas Hudson, 1754–6, ? portrait painter;

John Kirk, 1756–68, medallist;

Thomas Davies, 1760–85, bookseller;

William Ryland, 1763–5, engraver;

William Norris, c. 1787–91, ? secretary of the Society of Antiquaries.

---

¹ No. 20 is the house-number both Charles and Mary give in their letters, but their friends refer to their living at the corner house (No. 21, Plate ). Both houses belonged to the same landlord and probably, as in the days of Will's coffee house (see page 185), communicated above ground level. This is borne out by Crabb Robinson, who gives the Lambs' address as 'at Mr. Owen's, No. 20 and 21 Great Russell Street, Drury Lane'.
² R.B.
³ 16 and 17 Car. I c. 8, private (House of Lords Act no. 30).
⁴ P.R.O., C5/236/22, C6/298/96.
⁵ R.B.; G.E.C.
⁶ R.B.; Cal. S.P. Dom. 1634–1635, pp. 423–4; P.R.O., SP 16/254, no. 22.
⁷ The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer, vol. III, p. 233 and note; R.B.
⁸ The Correspondence of John Cosin, D.D., 1869, vol. II (Surtees Society, vol. L11), pp. 30–7.
⁹ Bryant Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses, 1963, pp. 156, 543; R.B.
¹⁰ Wheatley and Cunningham, op. cit., vol. III, pp. 383–4; B.O.L., Annual Report, 1867, vol. 1, pp. 179–81; R.B.
¹¹ Samuel Johnson, The Lives of the English Poets..., vol. II, 1781, p. 47.
¹² R.B.; Wheatley and Cunningham, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 314–16.
¹³ John Strype, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, 1720, vol. II, bk. VI, p. 93.
¹⁴ D.N.B.
¹⁵ W.P.L., H.806, pp. 6–7; R.B.
¹⁶ The Letters of Charles Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas, 1935, vol. II, pp. 217, 394.
¹⁷ B.O.L., Estate Plans, 1795 and 1866; Annual Report, 1861, p. 4; London Reports, vol. 2, pp. 514, 532, 534.
¹⁸ R.B.; B.O.L., Annual Report, 1887, p. 172.
¹⁹ R.B.; B.O.L., Correspondence, D. Beaumont to P. Beaumont, 2 Oct. 1775.
²⁰ R.B.; G.L.R.O.(M), LV(W), 1708.