Here, Feb. 12, 1742, was held a great meeting, at which near 300 members of both Houses of Parliament were present, to consider the ministerial crisis, when the Duke of Argyll observed to Mr. Pulteney, that a grain of honesty was worth a cart-load of gold. The meeting was held too late to be of any avail, to which Sir Charles Hanbury Williams alludes in one of his odes to Pulteney, invoking his Muse thus:--
"Then enlarge on his cunning and wit; Say, how he harang'd at the Fountain; Say, how the old patriots were bit, And a mouse was produc'd by a mountain."
Upon the Tavern site was a Drawing Academy, of which Cosway and Wheatley were pupils; here also was the lecture-room of John Thelwall, the political elocutionist. At No. 101, Ackermann, the printseller, illuminated his gallery with cannel coal, when gas-lighting was a novelty.
In Fountain-court, named from the Tavern, is the Coal-hole Tavern, upon the site of a coal-yard; it was much resorted to by Edmund Kean, and was one of the earliest night taverns for singing.
Among the four hundred letters of Steele's preserved in the British Museum, are some written from his tavern haunts, a few weeks after marriage, to his "Dearest being on earth:"
"_Eight o'clock, Fountain Tavern, Oct. 22, 1707._
"I beg of you not to be uneasy; for I have done a great deal of business to-day very successfully, and wait an hour or two about my _Gazette_."
In the next, he does "not come home to dinner, being obliged to attend to some business abroad." Then he writes from the Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, January 3, 1707-8, as follows:--
"I have partly succeeded in my business, and enclose two guineas as earnest of more. Dear Prue, I cannot come home to dinner; I languish for your welfare, and will never be a moment careless more.
Within a few days, he writes from a Pall Mall tavern:--
"Mr. Edgecombe, Ned Ask, and Mr. Lumley, have desired me to sit an hour with them at the George, in Pall Mall, for which I desire your patience till twelve o'clock, and that you will go to bed," etc.
When money-matters were getting worse, Steele found it necessary to sleep away from home for a day or two, and he writes:--
"_Tennis-court Coffee-house, May 5, 1708._
"I hope I have done this day what will be pleasing to you; in the meantime shall lie this night at a baker's, one Leg, over against the Devil Tavern, at Charing Cross. I shall be able to confront the fools who wish me uneasy, and shall have the satisfaction to see thee cheerful and at ease.