John's Arch. In the rooms above the gateway dwelt, a hundred and
fifty years ago, one Edward Cave, publisher of the _Gentleman's
Magazine_, and there many a time has sat a journeyman author of his,
by name Samuel Johnson, too often _impransus_. There it was that the
said Samuel once had his dinner handed to him behind a screen,
because of his unpresentable costume, when Cave was entertaining an
aristocratic guest. In the course of the meal, the guest happened to
speak with interest of something he had recently read by an obscure
Mr. Johnson; whereat there was joy behind the screen, and probably
increased appreciation of the unwonted dinner. After a walk amid the
squalid and toil-infested ways of Clerkenwell, it impresses one
strangely to come upon this monument of old time. The archway has a
sad, worn, grimy aspect. So closely is it packed in among buildings
which suggest nothing but the sordid struggle for existence, that it
looks depressed, ashamed, tainted by the ignobleness of its
surroundings. The wonder is that it has not been swept away, in
obedience to the great. law of traffic and the spirit of the time.
St. John's Arch had a place in Sidney Kirkwood's earliest memories.
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