The Town: Its Memorable Characters and EventsHunt, Leigh
History
The Town: Its Memorable Characters and Events
Hunt, Leigh
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
To complete the history of this man, he struck medals for his tickets,
with a star rising to the meridian; over it the motto, _Ad summa_ (to
the height), and below, _Inveniam viam aut faciam_ (I will find a way
or make one). As might be expected, he found no way at last, but that
of falling into contempt. He appears to have been too imprudent to
make money by his vagaries; and his manners, probably in consequence,
became gross and ferocious. He died in 1756. His person makes a
principal figure in two humorous plates, attributed to Hogarth.
Duke Street and Little Wild Street have had an inhabitant, as
illustrious afterwards as he was then obscure, in the person of
Benjamin Franklin, who, when he was first in England, worked in the
printing office of Mr. Watts, in the latter street, and lodged in the
former. When he came to England afterwards, as the agent of
Massachusetts, he went into this office, "and going up," says his
biography, "to a particular press [now in America], thus addressed the
two workmen: 'Come, my friends, we will drink together: it is now
forty years since I worked like you at this press, as a journeyman
printer.'" The same publication gives an account of him during this
period, which, besides containing more than one curious local
particular, is highly worth the attention of those who confound
stimulus with vigour.
"After the completion," says the writer, "of twelve months at
Palmer's" (in Bartholomew Close), "Franklin removed to the
printing-office of Mr. Watts, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he
continued during the whole of his subsequent stay in the
British metropolis. He found a contiguous lodging with a widow
lady in Duke Street, opposite the Catholic chapel, for which
he paid at his old rate of three and sixpence weekly, and
received no new impressions in favour of Christians from his
occasional notices of the Romish superstitions in this family
and neighbourhood. His landlady was a clergyman's daughter,
who, marrying a Catholic, had abjured Protestantism, and became
acquainted with several distinguished families of that
persuasion. She and Franklin found mutual pleasure in each
other's society. He kept good hours, and she was too lame
generally to leave her room; frugality was the habit of both;
half an anchovy, a small slice of bread and butter each, with
half a pint of ale between them, furnished commonly their
supper. So well pleased was the widow with her inmate, that
when Franklin talked of removing to another house, where he
could obtain the same accommodation as with her for two
shillings per week, she became generous in his favour, and
abated her charge for his room to that sum. He never paid her
more during the rest of his stay with her, which was the whole
time he continued in London. In the attic, was a maiden
Catholic lady, by choice and habit a nun. She had been sent
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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