The Night Side of London by James Ewing Ritchie

In the days of the gay and graceless Charles, Bow-street was the Bond-street of London. In the taverns of that quarter were the true homes and haunts of the British poets. That they were much better for all their drinking and worship of the small hours, I more than doubt. Pope tried the pace, but found it killing, and had the wisdom to go and live at Twickenham, and cease to play the part of a man about town. Describing Addison's life at this period, he says, "He usually studied all the morning, then met his party at Button's, and dined there, and stayed there five or six hours, and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me. _I hurt my health_, _and so I quitted it_. " But the wits died off, and Tom's, Will's, Button's became desolate, and in their place the Cyder Cellars grew famous.

You know Maiden-lane, where an old hair-dresser had a son born to him, who, under the name of Turner, won his way to the first rank amongst English painters, -- where Voltaire, "so witty, profligate, and thin," lodged at the house of a French peruke-maker, and corresponded with Swift, and Pope, and the other literary men of the times, -- where Fielding laid the foundation of an eternal fame, -- where Andrew Marvell refused courtly bribes, and in sublime poverty proudly picked his mutton-bone: there, some long time since, stood a mansion, the residence, in a green old age, of that Nell Gwynne of whom, with a strange perversity, the world speaks as kindly as if she were a Grace Darling, or a Florence Nightingale, or a Margaret Fuller, or an Elizabeth Fry. A portion of the old house still remains, with its ancient wainscotting. Well, on the site of this mansion was, and is, the Cyder Cellars, the oldest house of its class in London, actually referred to in a rare pamphlet now extant in the British Museum, entitled "Adventures Under-ground in the Year 1750. " In those days to drink deep was deemed a virtue, and the literary class, after the exhausting labours of the day, loved nothing better than to sit soaking all night in the Cyder Cellars, where all restraints were thrown on one aide, -- where the song was sung and the wine was quaffed, and men were fools enough to think they were getting happy when they were only getting drunk. I can understand why the wits went to the Cyder Cellars then.