The Adelphi at once became fashionable. Garrick, then getting old, left his house in Southampton Street to occupy No. 5, the centre building of the terrace, and lived there till his death in 1779. Singularly enough, this great and versatile actor had, on first coming to London with his friend Johnson, started as a wine merchant below in Durham Yard. Here he must have raved in “Richard,” and wheedled as Abel Drugger; and in the rooms at No. 5 half the celebrities of his century must have met. He died in the “first floor back,” and his widow died in the same house as long after as 1822. The ceiling in the front drawing-room was painted by Antonio Zucchi. A white marble chimney-piece in the same room is said to have cost £300.[180] Garrick died after only nine years’ residence in the new terrace; but his sprightly widow, a theatrical critic to the last, lived till she was past ninety, still an enthusiast about her husband’s genius. The first time she re-opened the house after Davy’s death, Dr. Johnson, Boswell, Sir Joshua, Mrs. Carter, and Mrs. Boscawen were present. “She looked well,” says Boswell; “and while she cast her eyes on her husband’s portrait, which was hung over the chimney-piece, said, that death was now the most agreeable object to her.” Worthy woman! and so she honestly thought at the time; but she lived exactly forty-three years longer in the same house. If there is a spot in London which Johnson’s ghost might be expected to revisit, it is that quiet and lonely Adelphi Terrace. At night no sound comes to you but a shout from some passing barge, or the creak of a ship’s windlass. Here Johnson and Boswell once leant over, looking at the Thames. The latter said, “I was thinking of two friends we had lost, who once lived in the buildings behind us, Beauclerk and Garrick.” “Ay, sir,” replied Johnson, seriously, “and two _such_ friends as cannot be supplied.” This is a recollection that should for ever hallow the Adelphi Terrace to us. The Beauclerk above mentioned was one of the few rakes whom Johnson loved. He was a friend of Langton, and as such had become intimate with the great doctor. Topham Beauclerk was a man of acute mind and elegant manners, and ardently fond of literature. He was of the St. Albans family, and had a resemblance to swarthy Charles II., a point which pleased his elder friend. The doctor liked his gay, young manner, and flattered himself much as women do who marry rakes, that he should reform him in time.