Paddington was long noted for its old Taverns. The White Lion, Edgware-road, dates 1524, the year when hops were first imported. At the Red Lion, near the Harrow-road, tradition says, Shakspeare acted; and another Red Lion, formerly near the Harrow-road bridge over the Bourn, is described in an inquisition of Edward VI. In this road is also an ancient Pack-horse; and the Wheatsheaf, Edgware-road, was a favourite resort of Ben Jonson.[47]
Kilburn Wells, a noted tea-drinking tavern and garden, sprang up from the fame of the spring of mineral water there.
Bayswater had, within memory, its tea-garden taverns, the most extensive of which were the "physic gardens" of Sir John Hill, who here cultivated his medicinal plants, and prepared from them his tinctures, essences, etc. The ground is now the site of noble mansions. The Bayswater springs, reservoirs, and conduits, in olden times, brought here thousands of pleasure-seekers; as did Shepherd's Bush, with its rural name. Acton, with its wells of mineral water, about the middle of the last century, were in high repute; the assembly-room was then a place of great fashionable resort, but on its decline was converted into tenements. The two noted taverns, the Hats, at Ealing, were much resorted to in the last century, and early in the present.
[47] Robins's _Paddington, Past and Present_.
Kensington, on the Great Western road, formerly had its large inns. The coffee-house west of the Palace Road was much resorted to as a tea-drinking place, handy to the gardens.
Kensington, to this day, retains its memorial of the residence of Addison at Holland House, from the period of his marriage. The thoroughfare from the Kensington Road to Notting Hill is named Addison Road. At Holland House are shown the table upon which the Essayist wrote; his reputed portrait; and the chamber in which he died.
It has been commonly stated and believed that Addison's marriage with the Countess of Warwick was a most unhappy match; and that, to drown his sorrow, and escape from his termagant wife, he would often slip away from Holland House to the White Horse Inn, which stood at the corner of Lord Holland's Lane, and on the site of the present Holland Arms Inn. Here Addison would enjoy his favourite dish of a fillet of veal, his bottle, and perhaps a friend. He is also stated to have had another way of showing his spite to the Countess, by withdrawing the company from Button's Coffee-house, set up by her Ladyship's old servant. Moreover, Addison is accused of having taught Dryden to drink, so as to hasten his end: how doubly "glorious" old John must have been in his cups. Pope also states that Addison kept such late hours that he was compelled to quit his company. But both these anecdotes are from Spence, and are doubted; and they have done much injury to Addison's character. Miss Aikin, in her _Life of Addison_, endeavours to invalidate these imputations, by reference to the sobriety of Addison's early life. He had a remarkably sound constitution, and could, probably, sit out his companions, and stop short of actual intoxication; indeed, it was said that he was only warmed into the utmost brilliancy of table conversation, by the time that Steele had rendered himself nearly unfit for it. Miss Aikin refers to the tone and temper, the correctness of taste and judgment of Addison's writings, in proof of his sobriety; and doubts whether a man, himself stained with the vice of intoxication, would have dared to stigmatize it as in his 569th _Spectator_. The idea that domestic unhappiness led him to contract this dreadful habit, is then repudiated; and the opposite conclusion supported by the bequest of his whole property to his lady. "Is it conceivable," asks Miss Aikin, "that any man would thus 'give and hazard all he had,' even to his precious only child, in compliment to a woman who should have rendered his last years miserable by her pride and petulance, and have driven him out from his home, to pass his comfortless evenings in the gross indulgence of a tavern." Our amiable biographer, therefore, equally discredits the stories of Addison's unhappy marriage, and of his intemperate habits.