Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its PlacesThornbury, Walter
History
Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places
Thornbury, Walter
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
Mr. Diprose, in his "History of St. Clement," tells us more of this
black sweeper. "Brutus Billy," or "Tim-buc-too," as he was generally
called, lived in a passage leading from Stanhope Street into Drury Lane.
He was a short, thick-set man, with his white-grey hair carefully
brushed up into a toupee, the fashion of his youth. He was found in his
shop, as he called his crossing, in all weathers, and was invariably
civil. At night, after he had shut up shop (swept mud over his
crossing), he carried round a basket of nuts and fruit to places of
public entertainment, so that in time he laid by a considerable amount
of money. Brutus Billy was brimful of story and anecdote. He died in
Chapel Court in 1854, in his eighty-seventh year. This worthy man was
perhaps the model for Billy Waters, the negro beggar in _Tom and Jerry_,
who is so indignant at the beggars' supper on seeing "a turkey without
sassenges."
In Garrick's time John Hardham, the well-known tobacconist, opened a
shop at No. 106. There, at the sign of the "Red Lion," Hardham's
Highlander kept steady guard at a doorway through which half the
celebrities of the day made their exits and entrances. His celebrated
"No. 37" snuff was said, like the French millefleur, to be composed of a
great number of ingredients, and Garrick in his kind way helped it into
fashion by mentioning it favourably on the stage. Hardham, a native of
Chichester, began life as a servant, wrote a comedy, acted, and at last
became Garrick's "numberer," having a general's quick _coup d'oeil_ at
gauging an audience, and so checking the money-takers. Garrick once
became his security for a hundred pounds, but eventually Hardham grew
rich, and died in 1772, bequeathing L22,289 to Chichester, 10 guineas to
Garrick, and merely setting apart L10 for his funeral, only vain fools,
as he said, spending more. We can fancy the great actors of that day
seated on Hardham's tobacco-chests discussing the drollery of Foote or
the vivacity of Clive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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