Haydon was accustomed in the early days of his fitful career, to dine here with Wilkie. In his _Autobiography_, in the year 1808, Haydon writes: "This period of our lives was one of great happiness: painting all day, then dining at the Old Slaughter Chop-house, then going to the Academy until eight, to fill up the evening, then going home to tea--that blessing of a studious man--talking over our respective exploits, what he [Wilkie] had been doing, and what I had done, and then, frequently to relieve our minds fatigued by their eight and twelve hours' work, giving vent to the most extraordinary absurdities. Often have we made rhymes on odd names, and shouted with laughter at each new line that was added. Sometimes lazily inclined after a good dinner, we have lounged about, near Drury-lane or Covent Garden, hesitating whether to go in, and often have I (knowing first that there was nothing I wished to see) assumed a virtue I did not possess, and pretending moral superiority, preached to Wilkie on the weakness of not resisting such temptations for the sake of our art and our duty, and marched him off to his studies, when he was longing to see Mother Goose." J. T. Smith has narrated some fifteen pages of characteristic anecdotes of the artistic visitors of Old Slaughter's, which he refers to as "formerly the rendezvous of Pope, Dryden, and other wits, and much frequented by several eminently clever men of his day." Thither came Ware, the architect, who, when a little sickly boy, was apprenticed to a chimney-sweeper, and was seen chalking the street-front of Whitehall, by a gentleman, who purchased the remainder of the boy's time; gave him an excellent education; then sent him to Italy, and, upon his return, employed him, and introduced him to his friends as an architect. Ware was heard to tell this story, while he was sitting to Roubiliac for his bust. Ware built Chesterfield House and several other noble mansions, and compiled a Palladio, in folio: he retained the soot in his skin to the day of his death. He was very intimate with Roubiliac, who was an opposite eastern neighbour of Old Slaughter's. Another architect, Gwynn, who competed with Mylne for designing and building Blackfriars Bridge, was also a frequent visitor at Old Slaughter's, as was Gravelot, who kept a drawing-school in the Strand, nearly opposite to Southampton-street. Hudson, who painted the Dilettanti portraits; M'Ardell, the mezzotinto-scraper; and Luke Sullivan, the engraver of Hogarth's March to Finchley, also frequented Old Slaughter's; likewise Theodore Gardell, the portrait painter, who was executed for the murder of his landlady; and Old Moser, keeper of the Drawing Academy in Peter's-court. Richard Wilson, the landscape painter, was not a regular customer here: his favourite house was the Constitution, Bedford-street, Covent Garden, where he could indulge in a pot of porter more freely, and enjoy the fun of Mortimer, the painter.