Swift, in his "Ballad on the South Sea Scheme," 1721, did not forget Garraway's:--
"There is a gulf, where thousands fell, Here all the bold adventurers came, A narrow sound, though deep as hell, 'Change alley is the dreadful name.
"Subscribers here by thousands float, And jostle one another down, Each paddling in his leaky boat, And here they fish for gold and drown.
"Now buried in the depths below, Now mounted up to heaven again, They reel and stagger to and fro, At their wits' end, like drunken men.
"Meantime secure on Garway cliffs, A savage race, by shipwrecks fed, Lie waiting for the founder'd skiffs, And strip the bodies of the dead."
Dr. Radcliffe, who was a rash speculator in the South Sea Scheme, was usually planted at a table at Garraway's about Exchange time, to watch the turn of the market; and here he was seated when the footman of his powerful rival, Dr. Edward Hannes, came into Garraway's and inquired, by way of a puff, if Dr. H. was there. Dr. Radcliffe, who was surrounded with several apothecaries and chirurgeons that flocked about him, cried out, "Dr. Hannes was not there," and desired to know "who wanted him?" the fellow's reply was, "such a lord and such a lord;" but he was taken up with the dry rebuke, "No, no, friend, you are mistaken; the Doctor wants those lords." One of Radcliffe's ventures was five thousand guineas upon one South Sea project. When he was told at Garraway's that 'twas all lost, "Why," said he, "'tis but going up five thousand pair of stairs more." "This answer," says Tom Brown, "deserved a statue."
As a Coffee-house, and one of the oldest class, which has withstood, by the well-acquired fame of its proprietors, the ravages of time, and the changes that economy and new generations produce, none can be compared to Garraway's. This name must be familiar with most people in and out of the City; and, notwithstanding our disposition to make allowance for the want of knowledge some of our neighbours of the West-end profess in relation to men and things east of Temple Bar, it must be supposed that the noble personage who said, when asked by a merchant to pay him a visit in one of these places, "that he willingly would, if his friend could tell him where to change horses," had forgotten this establishment, which fostered so great a quantity of dishonoured paper, when in other City coffee-houses it had gone begging at 1_s._ and 2_s._ in the pound.[2]