Unfortunately, Soho, unlike the nearby posh development of St James‘ off Piccadilly, was never quite able to keep up its social pretensions, and, horror of horrors, foreigners soon be- gan to filter in – especially the French! Now admittedly the first French in Soho were Huguenots fleeing from Louis XIV‘s revoca- tion of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 which threatened death to every Protestant, but soon it was French Catholics as well that flocked to Soho – and by the 1730‘s there were parts of the area where you might just as well be in France from hearing the locals talking!
One could see that Dick was leading his group into quite insalubri- ous waters – made worse when he took them to the House of St Barnabas in Soho Square, which while the most impressive 1740‘s house to remain in Soho, with plaster ceilings just like marvellous wedding cake icing, was by the mid 19th century a refuge for desti- tute and fallen women.
Worse was to follow when Dick steered his group, not into a salad bar where weight could be lost and consciences salved, but into a small public house – the ‗The Dog & Duck‘ – situated in Bateman Street, a small Soho back passage. Inevitably, the usual drinking and laughter and stories that seem to accompany all Ro- tary outings occurred, and hopes of a sober discussion on the moral condition of Soho past and present was lost.
After lunch things did not improve: Dick pointed out where Karl Marx had eked out a meagre living in Dean Street while writ- ing his (admittedly unreadable) masterpiece ‗Das Kapital‘ in the 1850‘s, and we all know where that writing led us to! Then Dick took the group to Frith Street where he claimed to show us the house where the infant prodigy, the nine-year-old Mozart, lodged with his father and sister in 1764-5 – but there was nothing there but an ugly art-deco house of the 1930‘s!
Worse was to follow when Dick took us into Meard Street, just off Dean Street, when he wittered on about the street‘s former local residents, including an architectural writer with the improbable name of Batty Langley, who penned such immortal works such as ‗The Young Builder‘s Rudiments‘ (1730) and ‗The Builder‘s Compleat Chest-Book‘ (1738) – both these titles sound somewhat ‗iffy‘ and should not be dwelt on too long.
Then Dick went into a full description of the doings of another resident of Meard Street, one Betty Flint, who, in the 1750‘s, was a self-proclaimed slut, drunkard, whore, thief and per- verter of justice, as none other than the redoubtable Samuel Johnson noted, reporting that: ‗Poor Bet was taken up on a charge of stealing a counterpane, and was tried at Old Bailey. The Chief Justice at Bailey, Mr Willes, who loved a wench, summed up favourably and she was acquitted. After which, Bet said, with a gay and satisfied air, ‗Now the counterpane is my own, I shall make a petticoat of it!‘
Whatever Dick thinks about London‘s past, these tales of Batty and Betty are definitely not the stuff to give to sensitive people like Rotarians!
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