Among various past notable residents, Sir Samuel Garth stands for
physic in the Haymarket; his house, from 1699 to 1703, being the
sixth door from the top, on the east side; and histrionic art is well
represented by Mrs. Oldfield, who was residing close by, from 1714 to
1726. Garth was a poet besides being a physician, and in the former
_rôle_ ridiculed apothecaries, about whom he must have known more
than most men, in his well-known “Dispensary,” a poem which appeared
in the year he came to live here. Nance Oldfield, if not of blameless
life, was indisputably a great actress, and I believe the only one who
lies in the Abbey, where her remains were buried with much pomp and
circumstance.
Painting, as is appropriate in a street which to-day boasts a number
of well-known picture shops, is represented by George Morland, who was
born here in 1763. The inequality of his work is characteristic of
the ups and downs of his reckless life; at one time he was producing
masterpieces, at another he was dashing off pot-boilers and tavern
signs. One wonders if among the latter was that sign which Broughton,
the pugilist, hung outside his public-house between the Haymarket and
Cockspur Street, and which represented the champion boxer himself “in
his habit as he lived.”
Nearly at the top of the street on the east side is an old
tobacconist’s shop (who does not know Fribourg’s?) which, in
appearance, carries us back to Georgian days, and shows how much has
been lost in picturesqueness by the modern methods of shop-building.
Wishart’s, another tobacconist’s, which has, however, unfortunately
disappeared, must have looked very much then as Fribourg’s continues
to do to-day. But the Haymarket has undergone such a metamorphosis
that the latter is the only survival of a past day, if we except the
portico of the Haymarket Theatre; and now that a Tube Railway Station
has invaded the street, the last touch has been given to it in the way
of modernity.
It is, however, appropriate that the spot in which Nance Oldfield
once lived should be so associated with the “vagabonds” as is this
thoroughfare, for here are the Haymarket Theatre, and His Majesty’s,
which latter stands partly on the site of that Haymarket Opera House,
Queen’s Theatre, King’s Theatre, and Her Majesty’s Theatre--to give it
all its various names--which most of us remember.
[Sidenote: THE HAYMARKET THEATRE.]
I will say a word about the Haymarket Theatre first, because it still
exists, and by its porticoed front helps to recall the Haymarket itself
of earlier days.
The present theatre, as we shall see, followed an earlier one which
stood not actually on its site, but on ground adjoining it, as may be
seen from an old view of this portion of the Haymarket.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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