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Updated: May 29, 2025
Tavistock-street was then, we believe, the Bond-street of the fashionable world; as Bow-street was before. The change of Bow-street from fashion to the police, with the theatre still in attendance, reminds one of the spirit of the Beggar's Opera. Button's Coffee-house, the resort of the wits of Queen's Anne's time, was in Russell-street we believe, near where the Hummums now stand.
Johnson's cousin, the Parson Ford "in whom both talents and good dispositions were disgraced by licentiousness," and the story was told to Boswell by Johnson himself. "A waiter at the Hummums," Johnson said, "in which house Ford died, had been absent for some time, and returned, not knowing that Ford was dead.
Stretching out his neck towards him, the gay grin left his features; and exclaiming, in an impatient voice, "Confound him," he hastened once more into the house. This rencontre with his Hummums' acquaintance affected Thaddeus as slightly as the former; and without annexing even a thought to his figure as it flitted by him, he remained watching in the lobby until half-past eleven.
This strange rencontre was of service to him, by diverting his mind from the intense contemplation of his situation; and as the dusk drew on, he turned his steps towards the Hummums. On entering the coffee-room, he was met by the obsequious Jenkins, who, being told by Thaddeus that he wanted his baggage and a carnage, went for the things himself, and sent a boy for a coach.
But the taverns of greater note, such as Chatelaine's, the Fleece, the Rose, the Hummums, and Macklin's ill-fated ordinary, belong to more recent times. Which of these houses was first established it would be hard to say.
It was a fine, mild morning, and in the queer light of the false dawn we betook ourselves to the Old Hummums for breakfast. Other couples had done the same. The steps of the Hummums facing the market harboured already a waiting crowd. The doors were to be opened at five. We also found places on the stone steps.
Baths are called Hummums in the East, and thence these hotels in Covent Garden, where there were baths, were called by that name. Beauclerk. Bolingbroke. Ante, ii. 246. Lord Clive. Ante, p. 334. Hamlet, act i. sc. 2. Johnson, or Boswell in reporting him, here falls into an error. Mag. for July, 1737, p. 409, nine months before his first contribution to that paper.
'And where is that wretch, Glascock, and that double murderer Archer; where is he? 'Well, Glascock's making clay. 'What do you mean? 'Under ground, this many a day. Listen: Mr. Archer went up to London, and he was staying at the Hummums, and Glascock agreed with me to leave the "Pied Horse."
"I thanked him," says Edison, "and hoped to reciprocate somehow. I knew I was in a hole. I had been staying at a little hotel in Covent Garden called the Hummums! and got nothing but roast beef and flounders, and my imagination was getting into a coma. What I needed was pastry. That night I found a French pastry shop in High Holborn Street and filled up. My imagination got all right.
And is it not a more real, as well as notorious thing to us, than the London Tavern, or the Crown and Anchor, or the Hummums, or White's, or What's-his-name's, or any other of your contemporary and fleeting taps? The Temple must have had many eminent inmates.
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