FOOTNOTES
[1] One find I specially remember in connection with this neighbourhood of peculiar interest with reference to the great forest that once covered the site: When making the railway through Gospel Oak Fields, a hillock had to be cut through; some gigantic roots of trees, hard as ebony and black as bog-oak, were unearthed, bearing witness to the ancient woodlands that had covered it.
[2] Written 1855-60.
[3] Built in 1845-46.
[4] Quoted by Park.
[5] No cause is mentioned for the great increase of deaths.
[6] ‘Pomander’: a round, perforated box, filled with musk, ambergris, civet, or other sweet-scented ingredients. It was used to perfume apartments, and was frequently made of some precious material. Doctors used them for the head of the cane they usually carried as a prophylactic.
[7] Park’s ‘History of Hampstead.’
[8] The present sign, the copy of an older one, represents her in a red conical hat, with a glass of ale in her hand. Her modern memorialist says:
‘She was an old camp-follower through the campaignes of the Duke of Marlborough, and set up a hedge alehouse after the Peace of Utrecht, with her own portrait as a sign.’—Ante ‘The Anecdote Library.’
[9] Blake.
[10] Mr. Rhodes died at a house on Muswell Hill. Rhodes of Rhodesia is said to be a near descendant.
[11] This house appears in Hogarth’s ‘March to Finchley.’
[12] For some years Portland Place was used as a fashionable promenade by the rank and fashion of the town.
[13] Gray’s ‘Letters.’
[14] Romilly’s childhood’s home was in the High Street, Marylebone, then a small village about a mile and a half from London, with the cheerful country close to it. Sir Samuel was born 1757; he died 1818.
[15] At the present time it is said to contain 2,245 acres.
[16] The charter of Ethelred II. (who began to reign 979) to St. Peters, Westminster, A.D. 986: ‘Starting from Sandgate east to Bedgar’s “Stywei” (? lea); then south to Dermod’s house; from Dermod’s house to middle Hamstead: so forward along the hedge to the rushes; from the rushes west by the side of the marsh to the barrow west along the boundary to the stone pit; from the stone pit to Watling Street, so north along Watling Street to the boundary brook, back east by the boundary to Sandgate.’
This last document has only lately become accessible. It is one of the Stowe MSS. recently secured by the British Museum. This charter has, I believe, never before been printed, except in Mr. Maude Thompson’s catalogue of the Stowe MSS. It is No. 10 in that catalogue.—Article by Professor J. W. Hales, M.A., F.S.A., in Baines’ ‘Records of Hampstead.’
[17] ‘The Common-place Book’ of the late Miss Catherine Fry.
[18] ‘Planché, who has gone deeper into the subject of the Peverels than either Eyton, the Shropshire historian, or Mr. E. Freeman (who rejects this supposition with contempt and indignation), puts it in this wise: “During all the battles and commotions in Normandy preceding the Conquest, we hear nothing of the Peverels. No land is called by their name, nor do we hear of it till that of Ranulph, in Domesday Book, when he figures as the lord of sixty-four manors. Planché suggests what Mr. Eyton has overlooked that the Saxon lady of rank might have visited Normandy before 1051, a circumstance that would remove the only serious difficulty in the story. The latter Ranulph Peverel was the founder of Hatfield Peverel, in Essex, as shown by Camden, Glover, Dugdale, Sandford, Weever and others.”’ The author of the ‘Roman de la Rose’ makes no mention of Peverel.
[19] Norden.
[20] London was a city long before the Romans entered it. Ammianus Marcellinus says that 1200 years before his time it was a city, i.e., about 900 B.C., which, if correct, would make it 200 years older than Rome itself.—C. A. W.
[21] Unfortunately, when copying this account, having no idea of using it, I neglected to note the date or number of the magazine, but I believe it was during Mr. Ainsworth’s editorship.
[22] Where was Roman Lane, which Dr. Hughson must have known?
[23] ‘Bordarii,’ I think, Park scarcely understood for a Domesday Book word. These would not be bordarii before, but Saxon churls; and ‘hame stead’ is ‘home station,’ i.e., the outhouses or cots to the big lord’s residence.—C. A. W.
[24] Hughson thinks that it possibly referred, by way of pre-eminence, to the residence of the Lord of the Manor.
[25] Sanctus Albanus Verolamiensis.
[26] Park’s ‘History of Hampstead.’
[27] In the reign of Henry VI., in the fifteenth century.
[28] See Park’s ‘History of Hampstead,’ pp. 100, 101.
[29] ‘Eccles. Hist.,’ ii. 324, quoted by Park, ‘History of Hampstead,’ p. 21.
[30] Lysons.
[31] The Heath was generally so called. Lord Erskine speaks of his house on Hampstead Hill, The Evergreens, near the Spaniards.
[32] Park.
[33] Daily Advertiser, July 19, 1748: ‘To-morrow, the 20th inst., will be run for on Hampstead Course, a considerable sum, between two poneys, at the Castle on Hampstead Heath. There are great bets depending. The poneys will be rubbed down at the Castle aforesaid.’ In reference to this race we read: ‘On Wednesday a race was run on Hampstead Heath between a bay poney belonging to Lord Blessington, and a gray poney of Mr. Woods, of Jack Straw’s Castle, for a considerable sum of money, which was won by the former.’
[34] Horace Walpole’s Letters.
[35] Hampstead, July, 1810. It is stated in the Morning Post that the Hampstead Volunteers, who had been practising firing at a large target on the Heath, ‘had fired many excellent shots, some of which nearly entered the bull’s eye.’ They have improved upon this since then, as have also their firearms.
[36] Howitt’s ‘Northern Heights of London.’
[37] Morden’s Map of Middlesex, 1593, shows this road, which skirts the Fleet for a short distance in the neighbourhood of old St. Pancras, and runs up Tottenhall or Tottenham Court Road, passing by Lower Chalcot and Upper Chalcot to Pond Street.
[38] Burnet’s ‘History of his own Times.’
[39] See Macaulay’s ‘Essays.’
[40] Steele had his office at the Cockpit, in Whitehall. He held the post of Gazetteer and Commissioner of Stamps.
[41] There has been a question as to the burial-place of Steele, which the following note, kindly forwarded me through a friend, sets at rest: ‘Sir R. Steele was buried in the church at Carmarthen, and only in August, 1876, was there a memorial tablet placed over his remains by a gentleman of the name of Davies. It bears the inscription:
‘“Sir Richd. Steele, Knight,
Author, Essayist, and first chief promoter of the periodical press
of England.
Born in Dublin, March 12, 1671.
Buried in this church, and below this tablet.”’
[42] ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’
[43] ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’
[44] A contributor to Baines’ ‘Records of Hampstead’ states: ‘Under an old thorn-tree, near the house, on the north side of the avenue, there was within the memory of living people a dipping-well for public use.’ Is this, I wonder, the small fountain of delicious water, the footpath to which from the High Street Lord Rosslyn tried to stop? But, though on the Woolsack, he failed to do so. The case appeared in a Times newspaper of 1878.
[45] At the present (1899), only one of the beautiful trees is standing.
[46] Subsequently Sir Rowland Hill resided at Bartrum Park, a little to the east of the green, on the same side of the way.
[47] Where the small-pox sheds stood, the Hampstead Hospital for Fever and Small-pox stands now (1899).
[48] There is an engraving of this house in Mr. Gardener’s collection, copied in Mr. Howitt’s ‘Northern Heights of London.’
[49] An engraving of this picture appeared in the European Magazine.
[50] See Appendix.
[51] The father of this gentleman, the second Thomas Norton Longman, resided here. He was unfortunately killed by a fall from his horse about 1842. Soon after his daughters came to live at Frognal Rise.
[52] ‘The Presbyterian Chapel on Rosslyn Hill was built by Isaac Honeywood, Esq., who inhabited the adjoining mansion, and died there, November 8, 1740. He was cousin-german to Sir Edward Honeywood, the first baronet. Frazer Honeywood and Sir John Honeywood, of the same family, were subsequently resident at Hampstead.’—Baines, ‘Records of Hampstead.’
[53] ‘Worthies of Middlesex.’
[54] James I., in his speech to Parliament, 1609, says that on his entrance to England he made knights by hundreds and barons in great numbers.
[55] This was called Hicks’s Hall; many of the milestones were reckoned from it.
[56] Stowe.
[57] This family held the Manor of Hampstead for nearly a century.
[58] See Notes and Queries, s.s. viii. 511.
[59] Park, 1813.
[60] Spencer Perceval, who was shot by Bellingham, and is buried at Charlton in Kent, had married the youngest of the three daughters of Sir Thomas Spencer Wilson.
[61] Howitt.
[62] W. Howitt.
[63] ‘There are periods in which the human mind seems to slumber, but this is not one of them. A keen spirit of research is abroad, and demands reform. Perhaps in none of the nations of Europe will their articles of faith, or their Church establishments, or their models of worship, maintain their ground for many years in exactly the same position in which they stand at present. Religion and manners act upon one another. As religion, well understood, is a most powerful agent in ameliorating and softening our manners; so, on the other hand, manners, as they advance in cultivation, tend to correct and refine our religion. Thus, to a nation in any degree acquainted with the social feelings, human sacrifices and sanguinary rites could never long appear obligatory. The mild spirit of Christianity has, no doubt, had its influence in softening the ferocity of the Gothic times; and the increasing humanity of the present period will, in its turn, produce juster ideas of Christianity, and diffuse through the solemnities of our worship, the celebrations of our Sabbaths, and every observance connected with religion, that air of amenity and sweetness which is the offspring of literature and the peaceful intercourse of society. The age which has demolished dungeons, rejected torture, and given so fair a prospect of abolishing the iniquity of the slave-trade, cannot long retain among its articles of belief the gloomy perplexities of Calvinism, and the heart-withering perspective of cruel and never-ending punishment.’ This is very clever writing for her, but how absurdly wrong she is in the total!
[64] Miss Aikin published her ‘Life of Queen Elizabeth,’ 1813.
[65] A great man, and student of Swedenborg.
[66] In 1461 we find the Abbot and Convent of Westminster instituting John Barton to the Rectory of Hendon cum capella de Hamsted eidum annexa.—Park.
In the time of Edward VI., the curacy of Hampstead was valued at £10 per annum; but up till that time the inhabitants chiefly consisted of laundresses and their families.
[67] Park’s ‘History.’
[68] He built St. Giles’s Church.
[69] For a portrait of Harrison, see the European Magazine, October, 1789.
[70] I regret that on my recent visit to the churchyard I found this description no longer true. An air of neglect, very painful to one who remembers its appearance thirty years ago, pervades it now; and all the neatness and care seems to be transferred to the newer portion of the graveyard on the opposite side of the church.
[71] On the last occasion of my visiting the graveyard (1896), I could not find this tomb.
[72] Copied for me by Mrs. Godfrey Turner.
[73] The toll is still exacted. Several attempts have been made by the parish authorities to extinguish the right, but they have never come to terms with the successor of Miss Sullivan (1899).—G. W. P.
[74] The church now St. John’s. Rebuilt in 1745.
[75] Lysons, ‘Environs of London.’
[76] The Rev. Samuel White, at that time resident at Frognal.
[77] ‘At the above date Hampstead, with many other parishes, took advantage of a statute passed in the reign of George I., which, with the consent of the major part of the parishioners, empowered the churchwardens and overseers of parishes to purchase or hire any house in the parish, or to contract with any person to lodge and keep and employ the poor ... hiring them, in fact, to contractors. The system, for a while, appeared to work well, but after a time ceased to be useful.’—Howitt, ‘Northern Heights.’
[78] It was he who built the magnificent Chesterfield House, Mayfair.
[79] Park, p. 342.
[80] Obituary, European Magazine, 1804. Haydn says 1805, which is wrong.
[81] Howitt, ‘Northern Heights of London.’
[82] Every ticket was sold before the drawing took place.
[83] Obituary, European Magazine, of this month and year. Haydn says 1805.
[84] Fenton House has had many tenants in modern times, amongst them the Honourable Miss Murrays and the Baroness Grey. It has been called the Clock House, a resident, some thirty years ago, having placed a sham dial-plate on the front of the entrance porch.
[85] Park, the historian of Hampstead, so often referred to in these pages.—C. W.
[86] I have a clinging impression that much of the ‘Vanity of Human Wishes’ was composed in Greenwich Park without being committed to paper, but I cannot refer now.—Note by C. A. Ward, Esq.
[87] Mrs. Desmoulins had lived with Mrs. Johnson for some before her marriage with the Doctor.
[88] Mr. G. W. Potter reminds me that a very interesting discussion and much correspondence has recently (May, 1899) taken place as to the house inhabited by Dr. Johnson, the result being that Park’s account is believed to be quite correct, viz., that it was the last house south in Frognal. Park’s father had lived for years in Hampstead, and at the same time as Dr. Johnson; he must, therefore, have given his son accurate information on the point. The house in question is now called Priory Lodge, and the difficulty arose from its being a large house with a very large garden and stabling. ‘I was enabled,’ continues my correspondent, ‘to point out that the large garden and stables were taken from Frognal Hall only some thirty-five years since, and that at the same time large additions were made to the house itself. A Mr. Watson, whose father I well remember, saw my letter in the Hampstead Express, and corroborated it, saying that his father, who had lived in it—i.e., Priory Lodge—some fifty years ago, had also enlarged it. An inspection of the house shows that it has grown from a very moderate-sized house to a much larger building.’
[89] Howitt.
[90] In 1868 Frognal House was used as the Sailors’ Daughters Orphan School, and continued for some twelve years to be so used, till the house on Green Hill was ready for their occupation.
[91] The original house was known as North Court, and a public well which existed on Branch Hill, Park tells us, was known as North Hole.
[92] Lord Burlington was the friend of Handel, who lived in his house for three years. ‘He used to drive down to the Foundling Hospital with Gay in his coach-and-four, to hear Leveridge sing there—“Leveridge, with his voice of thunder.”’ Lord Burlington patronized music, literature, painting, and architecture.
[93] Exactly opposite Montagu House is the modern North London Consumption Hospital, on Mount Vernon.
[94] Park, ‘History of Hampstead.’
[95] The first charity school was established in St. Margaret’s, Westminster, 1688.
[96] Henry James, Harper’s Magazine, September, 1897.
[97] At one period Miss Jane Porter occupied Grove House.
[98] Constable painted it, and subsequently exhibited his picture, ‘A Romantic House, Hampstead.’
[99] Hone, of the ‘Table-Book,’ has given an account of Thompson.
[100] It was said that Soho Square and many streets in its neighbourhood belonged to him.
[101] A Jacobean porch said to have belonged to an old Shropshire manor-house.
[102] I believe Thompson did bequeath to the Queen a beautiful bedstead of ivory or some costly material.—C. A. Ward.
[103] Vide Howitt’s ‘Northern Heights.’
[104] T. Norton Longman, who died at Hampstead, February 5, 1797, aged sixty-six, and was buried at Barnet. Nichols gives an account of him in ‘Literary Anecdotes,’ vi. 439. Vide Park.
[105] The sketch referred to is now in the collection of Landseer’s early drawings in the South Kensington Museum. It is said to be wonderfully lifelike.
[106] Park.
[107] I am informed by Mr. G. W. Potter, who was a member of the court for thirty years, that the manorial courts are still held at Manor Lodge, which is in the lane near Frognal, and which is said to stand on the site of the old manor-house.
[108] It now stands an empty and desolate building. The tenant, for some breach of the law, forfeited his license about three years ago, and the disreputable old inn is now (1899) advertised for sale as a building site.—G. W. P.
[109] This year (1896) it is said that this is to make room for a new road.
[110] Mr. Joseph Hoare died at Child’s Hill House in 1886.
[111] This house is now let as a school for young gentlemen.
[112] Her real name was Mrs. Hemet, Lessingham being the name she adopted for the stage.
[113] In January, 1773, Mrs. Lessingham was playing Lucy in ‘The Rivals,’ at Covent Garden.
[114] This gentleman died some twenty years ago, and the house is now occupied by its owner, Mr. Gross.
[115] Mrs. Miles, widow of John Miles, Esq., was buried in the family vault in Hampstead Parish Church, which was specially opened for the purpose.
[116] Neither Park nor Abrahams mentions Heath Street, though many of the houses look very old.
[117] This is now the middle of Heath Street, and divides old or Upper Heath Street from Lower Heath Street, leading to Fitzjohn’s Avenue.
[118] It has been suggested to me that it was so called from Kit’s cates.
[119] Cunningham says circa 1700.
[120] ‘Dunciad.’
[121] ‘Mirror.’
[122] It was Dr. Garth who, being present on an occasion when the Duchess of Marlborough was pressing the Duke to take a medicine, and, with her accustomed warmth, added, ‘I’ll be hanged, Duke, if it do not prove serviceable!’ exclaimed, ‘Do take it, my Lord Duke, for it must be of service in one way or the other!’
[123] Lately blown down and destroyed (1895).
[124] Park.
[125] Edward Coxe.
[126] Mr. Steevens left the greater part of his property to his niece, Miss Steevens, who died at Hampstead.
[127] Locally memorable as the last person who wore a pigtail at Hampstead.
[128] Park.
[129] C. Deane was another artist who loved and painted Hampstead Heath. He exhibited a scene from Hampstead at the British Gallery in 1823—a most perfect representation of local scenery. I owe this note to an odd number of the Literary Gazette.
[130] Alfred Edward Chalon proposed to give, in 1859, to the inhabitants of Hampstead his own large collection of sketches, and his brother’s unsold works, and some endowment to uphold the collection, if they would provide suitable premises; but it fell through by their default, and he died on October 3, 1860.
[131] Varley was very chary of drawing horoscopes. He was often terrifically right.
[132] ‘A copy of the ancient customs used in the Manor of Hampstead was made, February 14, 1753, from a paper found by Mr. Tims at Jack Straw’s Castle, where several of the bailiffs of the manor had lived, and, from the style of the writing, appeared to have been written eighty or ninety years before.’—Baines, ‘Records of Hampstead.’
[133] ‘Pickwick Papers.’
[134] There is a quaint detached tea-room at the Spaniards, approached by an outside flight of wooden steps. Until about thirty years ago there was inscribed on one of the panes of glass in the end window the autograph of the late Emperor of the French. He is said to have cut this inscription with a diamond ring, about 1845-46, when in exile here as Prince Louis Napoleon. The window has been altered, and the pane has disappeared.—G. W. P.
[135] When Gibson wrote his additions to Camden, 1695, Mother Huffs was a house of entertainment on Hampstead Heath. I have recently learned that in an old map of 1630 a small house near the Elms is marked ‘Mother Houghs.’
[136] ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’
[137] It was Martin who inaugurated the idea.
[138] This house was occupied for many years by Captain Sir Edward Parry, the Arctic explorer, who was connected by marriage with the Hoare family.—G. W. P.
[139] ‘Sylvan Sketches,’ by the author of ‘Flora Domestica,’ 1825.
[140] ‘Collins’ and Tooly’s Farm were two adjoining but separate grass-farms; now they are one, in the occupation of the late Mr. Tooly’s son. Mr. Collins was the occupant of the other, and lived in the farmhouse, or cottage, where Dickens and so many other famous men have lived. This cottage is now occupied by Mr. Arthur Wilson, the son of the late Rev. Daniel Wilson. He has added to the cottage without in any way spoiling it.’—G. W. P.
[141] The new paling at the end of the holly hedge shows the place where the nine elms and the old seat stood.
[142] Said by some writers to have been married in 1776—a statement disproved by the magazines of the day, and by the fact of Mrs. Crewe’s magnificent masquerade in 1775. There is a portrait of Mrs. Crewe painted by Reynolds.
[143] The members of this celebrated club included the Dukes of Roxburghe and Portland, the Earl of Strathmore (whose encounter with the highwaymen on Finchley Common I have alluded to), Mr. Crewe, Fox, Sheridan, Lord Carlisle, and others. The club was established in Pall Mall in 1764, and the proprietor in 1775 founded the present Brooks’s, in St. James’s Street.
[144] Mirabeau, in one of his letters, tells of two ladies just arrived from Paris with tall feathers in their hats, who, as he was conducting them from the Bell Inn, Holborn, to Hatton Garden, were surrounded by a mob, from whom they were only rescued by some English gentlemen on horseback, who used their whips on the crowd, and thus dispersed it.
[145] Sir Aston Lever, who had just made a present of his collection to the British Museum.
[146] Fox’s verses to Mrs. Crewe were printed at Strawberry Hill.
[147] On his death-bed Fox observed: ‘There are two things I wish heartily to see accomplished—peace with Europe, and the abolition of the slave-trade; but of the two, I wish the latter.’
[148] While rewriting this chapter, a sale of Romney’s engravings took place at Christie’s, when Lady Hamilton as ‘Nature,’ engraved in colours by Meyer, sold for 100 guineas (May, 1894).
[149] This picture, I am told, is not by Romney.
[150] It must be patent to everyone that, had the Assembly House been originally built for that purpose, a proper entrance would have formed an essential part of it, whereas, as I have said, it was without one till quite modern times.
[151] I am indebted to Mr. G. W. Potter for the above information.
[152] The birch-tree, with its light sprays and silvery bark, is very frequently styled the ‘Lady of the Woods.’ Constable used the appellation in connection with the beautiful ash metaphorically.
[153] ‘Goldsmith’s English, when English comes to be the sole tongue wanted to run the wide world round, as it spins by day and night under the sun, will necessarily be more and more resorted to as the best model to be had of plain and simply effective speech. His “Village” and his “Vicar” will be carefully searched into to help counteract the ever-augmenting virus of vulgar dialectical debasement from oversea offshoots, colonial or enfranchised, that is to-day poisoning the living font of Chaucer. Addison will then be less read than even now he is, and Johnson will never be sought for at all out of Boswell. The huge autocrat of yesterday is with the worms to-morrow, and Oliver, “who talked like poor Poll,” will then sit enthroned as preceptor of English to the universe.’—Mr. C. A Ward.
[154] I am reminded that Mr. Richardson, the friend and correspondent of Sir W. Scott, resided here for several years.
DE MONTFORT: A TRAGEDY.
PLAYED FOR THE FIRST TIME AT DRURY LANE, APRIL 29, 1800.
Characters.
| De Montfort | Mr. Kemble. |
| Rezenvelt | Mr. Talbot. |
| Albert | Mr. Barrymore. |
| Manuel | Mr. Powell. |
| Jerome | Mr. Dowton. |
| Conrad | Mr. Caulfield. |
| Jane de Montfort | Mrs. Siddons. |
| Countess | Miss Heard. |
[156] ‘Life of Sir Walter Scott,’ vol. ii., pp. 267, 268.
[157] Sir Walter Scott paid his last visit to Hampstead and Joanna Baillie in April, 1828. It might have been on this occasion that Mrs. Howitt met him.
[158] To-day the inscription on her tomb needs the tender hand of Old Mortality to remove the lichen that hides it!
[159] Athenæeum, March 20, 1861.
[160] There is but one good portrait of Goldsmith—that painted by his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds, now at Knowle.
[161] Loggan had been dwarf to the Princess of Wales. He kept a hairdresser’s shop on the Pantiles at Tunbridge Wells, and painted fans, which were ornamented with likenesses of all the most important persons who appeared there.
[162] See p. 165.
[163] At this time Miss Aikin had published her ‘Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth,’ and Miss Edgeworth was writing ‘Comic Dramas.’
[164] It will be remembered that the Hoare family allied themselves by marriage with the Norfolk Gurneys, the Buxtons, and the Frys.
[165] This name is now given to a row of poor little modern dwellings at North End.
[166] I find it is a tradition in one of the oldest families on Hampstead Heath that this avenue formerly belonged to Lord North’s House.
[167] Mr. G. W. Potter tells me a very aged walnut-tree still stands in this paddock, and may be the tree referred to.
[168] It shows a want of archæological interest to have altered the name.
[169] Dryden.
[170] North End House is now the residence of Mr. Figgis; and I read in Baines’ ‘Records of Hampstead’ that the room fraught with such sad interest is used as a day-nursery.
This does not appear to be the description of a room that would adapt itself, or be capable of adaptation to the uses of a day-nursery; and we sincerely hope that Mr. Baines has been misinformed, and that the room remains as when Mr. Howitt described it, sacred to the memory of the great orator.
[171] I have several times been in this historic room, and visited it only last summer with the Hampstead Antiquarian Society. The room is a double one: the smaller apartment has the double-hatch door, and the larger room opening from it is quite large enough for a nursery. The tradition is that the Earl of Chatham occupied the double apartment.—G. W. P.
[172] Horace Walpole, who also vindicated Byng, and regarded his fate as a gross injustice, or, rather, we should say, a judicial murder, tells us that, being with Her Royal Highness Princess Amelia at her villa of Gunnersbury, amongst other interesting anecdotes, she told him that while Byng’s affair was depending, the Duchess of Newcastle sent Lady Sophia Egerton (the wife of a clergyman, by the way) to beg her to be for the execution of the Admiral. ‘And, indeed,’ she continued, ‘I was already for it. The officers would never have fought if he had not been executed; nor would Lord Anson have been head of the Admiralty.’
[173] I have seen it this year (1895), and rejoice at its healthy appearance.
[174] Tom Hood.
[175] The bower or seat at the Bull and Bush is about 12 feet from the ground, among the branches of the yew-tree, and is reached by a rude staircase. The tree was a very ancient one, but a ring of young shoots have sprung up from the roots, and are growing vigorously round the spot where the old trunk stood.—G. W. P.
[176] Hughson’s ‘History of London,’ 1809.
[177] This well-known physician has died since these lines were written.
[178] These fields are now covered with houses.
[179] Mrs. Barbauld’s ‘Richardson’s Correspondence.’
[180] I believe the elm has been preserved, but the house has been removed.
[181] Mr. Le Breton, who heard him, says it was the first large elm-tree on the Heath.
[182] The Park, Brussels.
[183] Said to have been one of the most reliable of Charles Kean’s stock pieces.
[184] Leigh Hunt and his brother had been condemned to two years’ imprisonment each, and a fine of £1,000, for having, as he ludicrously phrases it, contrasted the Morning Post’s description of the Regent as an Adonis in appearance, and the Mæcenas of his age, with the old real, fat state of the case, and for having said that H.R.H. had lived for fifty years without doing anything to deserve the admiration of his contemporaries or the gratitude of posterity.
[185] A tradition of the inhabitants of the cottage when I saw it.
[186] These lines do not appear in ‘Sleep and Poetry,’ in Moxon’s edition in the Pocket Series.
[187] Old John Cleave, the publisher, and friend of Douglas Jerrold and William Linton, who visited Leigh Hunt in his Surrey cage, told me that not only were the walls covered with a rose-patterned paper, but that the poet had trained living roses on them.
[188] Vide Mary Cowden Clarke.
[189] Millfield Lane is said to be a very ancient road. This was the road traversed by the mounted messenger in 1780 who was despatched for the military, while the would-be wreckers of Lord Mansfield’s house were being regaled by the landlord of the Spaniards Inn.
[190] A fungus so called.
[191] Hammond’s house was in Elm Row.
[192] Some persons have asserted that Lord Byron was one of Leigh Hunt’s visitors in the Vale of Health, but Hunt himself tells us that though Lord Byron visited him in Horsemonger Lane Gaol, he did not afterwards. His interviews with Lord Byron took place at his lordship’s town-house.
[193] In the garden of which her three-year-old son celebrated his mother’s birthday by eating laburnum seeds, which nearly killed him.
[194] Those who have had experience of forestry consider the mighty beeches and oaks in Caen Wood to be the real descendants of the primeval giants of the old Forest of Middlesex.
[195] Lloyd’s ‘Caen Wood and its Associations.’ A lecture.
[196] State Calendars of Charles I. and II., April 24, 1630, and September 21, 1660.
[197] There is a tradition that the ponds were enlarged, if not made, by the Monks (Lloyd).
[198] The old mill has still a local tradition in Millfield Lane, by which it was approached from the hamlet of Green Street, Kentish Town (ibid.).
[199] Haydn.
[200] The South Sea Scheme, thus called.
[201] Lloyd.
[202] It was Lord Bute who granted Dr. Johnson a literary pension of £300 a year.
[203] Here are all the letters—Kaen, Caen.
[204] The inscription was as follows: ‘I, Robert Caxton, begun this place in a wild wood ... stubbed up the wood, digged all the ponds, cut all the walks, made all the gardens, built all the rooms with my own hands. Nobody drove a nail here, or laid a brick, or a tile, but myself; and ... thank God for giving me strength at sixty-four years of age, when I began it,’ etc.
[205] Edited by Colley Cibber.
[206] Mr. G. W. Potter informs me, that while a skating pond was being enlarged about seven or eight years ago, traces of this strange building were found.
[207] It was said of Murray, that he had less law than many lawyers, but more practice than any. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, was one of his clients.
[208] Referred to in a speech, at a City banquet, by Sir Bartle Frere, July, 1874.
[209] ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’
[210] Ibid.
[211] That of the claimant to the Tichborne baronetcy.
[212] It is curious to notice the different description of the event which Mrs. Delany (writing at the same time as Horace Walpole) gives us, the latter averring that the Guards, a thousand strong, had been despatched to prevent the intended arson, whilst the lady writes that the mob was met by a regiment of militia on the march, who turned them back. It is plain that Horace Walpole’s description was correct, otherwise there would have been no obligation to the landlord of the Spaniards, which, it is said, Lord Mansfield never forgot.
[213] Abraham states that the Spaniards Tavern paid no poor rate. There may be no relation between the facts, but as cause is wanted for this exemption, one wonders if the saving of Caen Wood had anything to do with it.
[214] More than £30,000 by the burning of his house.
[215] ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’
[216] Lambert tells us that amongst the celebrated cedars of Lebanon at Caen Wood, young when he saw them, was one planted by Lord Mansfield himself.
[217] The ‘Man Milliner,’ as a correspondent of the European Magazine writes himself, suggests in the August number of that year (1781) that Lord Southampton at Fitzroy Farm might with advantage stucco the front of his three rooms to the west. His neighbour Lord Mansfield’s south front will show him the permanent beauty of the new stucco.
[218] I have been told that this portrait is still preserved at Caen Wood House.
[219] The freeholders and copyholders of the manor did not even receive the courtesy of a notice of the intention to bring in the Bill, which was almost surreptitiously passed through the House.
[220] Prints of the handsome arch were treasured in Hampstead homes long after the event. One of them, coloured and gilt, is now before me, rather the worse for sixty-three years’ wear and tear.
[221] The Styrian Hunters were a band of foreign musicians so called, very popular in London just then.
[222] This was written in 1872 before the great hillocks had been levelled, or the pits and hollows filled up.
[223] It is the belief of geologists that the whole of Middlesex was the bed of an estuary of the sea, from which the waters subsided into the Thames.
[224] A lady whose girlhood was spent at Hampstead tells me she used to find bright little stones amongst the gravel, locally known as ‘Hampstead diamonds’; a ring made of them, in her possession, still sparkles very prettily.
[225] These have been found in the gravel-pits, and also a specimen of Concha rugosa.
[226] Authors of the ‘History of Clerkenwell,’ London, 1828.
[227] So called because formed of the united streams which supplied the city and suburbs with clear, sweet, and wholesome water in the west part, whose first decay was owing to certain mills erected thereon by the Knights of St. John, and by degrees gave it the name of Turnmill Brook, which name is still preserved in Turnmill Street, through part of which it took its course. In time this name was lost in that of Fleet Dyke or Ditch.
[228] There is a mystery about this Walk which, when I first knew Hampstead, I often heard spoken of. Now I am told, on very reliable authority, that no such Walk exists; yet the above traditional account of the course of the Fleet was given me as late as 1895 by a very intelligent inhabitant, and he spoke of Willow Walk as if he knew it.
[229] After great falls of snow or heavy rains, the Fleet frequently overflowed the Pancras valley and the Bagnigge Wells Road, rendering them impassable in places.
[230] The Holborn Bars are removed, but the posts stand.
[231] These latter buildings, or part of them, I am told, are still in being, and used for their original purpose.
[232] A celebrated house, much frequented by the wits. This mention of Nando’s Coffee-house reminds me that it figures in one of the amusing papers in the Tatler (No. 180), which Steele had started in 1709. In this paper the public are informed that ‘a coach runs daily from Nando’s Coffee House to Mr. Tiptoe’s Dancing School’; and then is added by way of postscript, ‘Dancing shoes not exceeding four inches height in the heels, and periwigs not exceeding three feet in length, are carried in the coach box gratis,’ a satire upon the high heels and exaggerated wigs then in vogue.
[233] There was, I am told, an old weather-boarded house opposite the Wells Tavern called Willow House, which remained till some twenty years ago, when its site, and that of its large garden, were built upon, and six or more houses were erected there. This was probably the type of the early houses in Well Walk.
[234] There was a coach running in 1708.
[235] See Haydn’s ‘Dictionary of Dates.’
[236] Bank Holidays, though in the near future, had not been inaugurated when this was first written.
[237] Gibson, who published his additions to Camden at the Black Swan, Paternoster Row, 1695, tells us that Mr. Pittiver found what he calls cluster-headed goldy-locks (Ranunculus bulbosus?) in going from Mother Huffs’ to Highgate. Mother Huffs’ would seem to have been situated pretty near the Spaniards Inn, and was in all likelihood a tea-drinking house.
[238] The murderer of a Mr. Posto.
[239] The Bird-in-Hand, like the old post-office, was said to be of the same age as the Chicken House.
[240] This ungraceful adjunct to dress was flourishing when these lines were first written (1852-53).
[241] I respect the unknown hand that appended the above newspaper cutting to Soames’ ‘Treatise on the Hampstead Wells,’ in the reference-room of the Hampstead Library.
[242] In 1721 the tavern in Well Walk was called the White Stone Inn.
[243] Anderson’s ‘Life of Gay.’
[244] In this same year, 1722, I find Gay writing to Swift that he is persuaded Pope had borne his share in the loss of the South Sea—a sentence that says much for the fortitude and unselfish forbearance of the latter who had taught himself in this instance to forget his own loss in endeavouring to strengthen and comfort his friend and fellow-sufferer.
[245] Lady Betty Germain, second daughter to Earl Berkeley, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, to whom Swift was either private secretary or chaplain, or both(?). Visitors to Knowle will remember Lady Betty’s chamber, and the bed-hangings, chair-covers, etc., of the lady’s own embroidering.
[246] This description is repeated in every edition of this work, long after the Assembly-room had ceased to exist, and is given verbatim in several topographical descriptions of Hampstead.
[247] That this too ambidextrous individual visited Hampstead is well known. But so she did Belsize and Ranelagh, as well as the opera, the theatres, and, indeed, the churches—every place, in fact, where well-dressed persons congregated. Many years ago an old inhabitant of Hampstead lent me a scrap-book in which was a likeness of Jenny Diver, a by no means unpleasant-looking woman. She was represented with an ostentatious display of pearls and other ornaments round her neck and waist. She held a watch in one hand, and a purse in the other, and under a cap wore her hair turned back from a rather clever forehead; the remainder, while tied behind with a ribbon, fell in loose curls upon her neck. Gay introduces her in the ‘Beggars’ Opera.’ According to the text, she was demure-looking. March, 1740, closed Jenny’s career at Tyburn.
[248] The daughters of Mrs. Hervey.
[249] It could not have been the Marriage Act that put an end to it, as that was not passed till 1753, and Sion Chapel had ceased to be before 1725.
[250] Connoisseur.
[251] Dr. Arbuthnot died in March, 1734-35.
[252] He was a Scotchman. Letter of Mr. Pulteney to Swift. See ‘Correspondence.’
[253] I am told that this custom is still maintained.
[254] This is precisely the language of Jonas Hanway, the traveller, and introducer of that useful article, the umbrella. This was also the favourite argument of the clergy, when preaching against the use of tea, as they also did against vaccination.
[255] I am told by an old resident that as late as 1830 there was but one butcher’s shop in Hampstead.
[256] A ridiculous custom, of which an account will be found in Hone’s ‘Table Book.’
[257] Connoisseur.
[258] Quoted in ‘Hampstead and the Heath,’ which appeared in Sharpe’s Magazine early in the sixties.
[259] Twelve months later, 1736, Turpin rides on the Highgate road, wearing an open gold-laced hat, while his companion (who sometimes passes for his man) has a plain gold-laced hat.
[260] He was Court painter to George II., and the translator of ‘Don Quixote.’ Sir Joshua Reynolds thought so little of his paintings that when asked where they were to be seen he replied, ‘In the garret.’
[261] Tried for bigamy, and found guilty, 1776.
[262] The Duke of Grafton was Lord Chamberlain.
[263] Mrs. Donnellan (the prefix Mrs. was then frequently applied to unmarried ladies) was the daughter of Chief Justice Donnellan, and sister to the Bishop, of Killala. Dr. Clayton married her sister, and gave his wife’s fortune to Mrs. Donnellan, who seems to have passed a great part of her life in England, making Hampstead a frequent place of residence.
[264] The rich and beautiful Widow Pendarves married the Irish Dean Delany, 1732, to the great disgust of John Gay. See his letter to Swift in the correspondence of the latter. ‘As Dr. Delany hath taken away a fortune from us, I expect to be recommended in Ireland. If authors of godly books are entitled to such fortune, I desire you would recommend me as a moral one—I mean in Ireland, for that recommendation would not do in England’ (Swift’s Correspondence).
[265] I have seen it stated that the burial-place of Pope is unknown.
[266] Clergymen extolled ‘Clarissa’ in the pulpit, and Pope observed of ‘Pamela’ that it would do more good than all their sermons.
[267] The Daily Advertiser, September 26, 1748.
[268] William Moray, for robbing John Head, a farmer’s boy, of sixpence (Universal Magazine, February 15, 1775).
[269] About nine o’clock on a July morning, Turpin was seen by two gentlemen who knew him, at Tottenham High Cross, mounted on a gray horse, with a boy behind as servant on a brown horse, with a black velvet cap and silver tassel. He rode through the town without molestation.—Grub Street Journal, 1736, No. 397.
[270] Park’s ‘History of Hampstead,’ published when the author was little more than of age.
[271] Mr. Baines, in his ‘Records of Hampstead,’ has remedied this oversight, and has given some interesting particulars of the young historian’s after-life.
[272] Then the Green Man.
[273] I am told upon excellent authority that the house Constable lived in was taken down and rebuilt about six years ago; this house is now 44, Well Walk.
[274] Sion Chapel.
[275] Mr. G. W. Potter.
[276] Now Tooley’s Farm.
[277] Lintot.
[278] Hogarth is said to have painted this picture at Hampstead.
[279] Mrs. Delany was a Granville.
[280] Richardson’s ‘Correspondence’
[281] ‘Gray was a little man of very ungainly appearance.’—Horace Walpole.
[282] The name of one of his poems.
[283] ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’
[284] Wordsworth.
[285] Charles and Mary Lamb were at this time living in Russell Street, over a brazier’s shop.
[286] The fields commonly called the Conduit Fields lie under Fitzjohn’s Avenue, and a fountain at a corner of it represents the conduit.
[287] Keats.
[288] Brewer’s ‘Middlesex.’
[289] Park calls him her second husband, which is wrong. See Pepys’ ‘Diary,’ vol. i., p. 6.
[290] See Lord Braybrooke’s ‘Notes to Pepys’ Diary,’ vol. iv.
[291] Not his son, as a recent writer on Belsize asserts.
[292] These gentlemen were German Lavie, James Abel, Thomas Roberts, and Thomas Forsyth, Esqs., of Hampstead.
‘And on each side the gate a grenadier;
Howe’er, they cannot speak, nor see, nor hear;
But why they’re posted there no mortal knows,
Unless it be to fright jackdaws and crows.’
A modern writer on the neighbourhood appears to have been misled by these lines into the supposition that the gates were guarded by living soldiers.
[294] Belsize House stood at the bottom of the present avenue. One of the last inhabitants was old Mr. Martinez, of the famous firm of port-wine shippers, Martinez, Gassiot and Co, Mark Lane, about 1847.—C. A. Ward, Esq.
[295] When Lysons wrote his ‘Environs of London,’ 1812, Belsize was a subrural place, the house modern.
[296] There was a little stile in the lane, at the south-west corner of the estate, and this was the spot of the murder, just as Delarue was mounting it.
[297] Letter of Lucy Aiken to Mrs. Mallett, Hampstead, September, 1845.
[298] The Kilburne rises near West End, Hampstead, and passes through Kilburn to Bayswater, supplying the Serpentine River, Hyde Park; and in Park’s time it flowed through the fields to the Thames at Ranelagh.
‘In a note sewn into a copy of the “Speculum Britanniæ,” wrought by Travaile, and view of John Norden of Fulham, in the year 1596,’ the name is spelt three different ways—Kylburne, Keylbourne, Kulleburne (quoted from Baines’ ‘Records,’ etc.).
[299] Great-uncles to the present Sir Charles Dilke.
[300] The author of the ‘Saturday Half-Holiday Guide’ mentions a pure white variety of Campanula rotundifolia growing on the Heath, but I never had the good fortune to meet with it.
[301] All the plants enumerated in this catalogue have been found by the writer in the habitats indicated on Hampstead Heath.
[302] In reference to this charity, the following paragraph from the ‘Monthly Chronicle’ of the European Magazine for January, 1790, is interesting: ‘At a meeting held in London of the trustees of John Stock, Esq., of Hampstead, who bequeathed a bounty of £100 a year to be divided amongst ten poor curates of the Church of England, whose incomes should not exceed £40 per annum ... thirty-eight petitions were presented and read from poor curates to partake of his benevolence, many of whose stipends were not more than £25 yearly, with which they have to support numerous and burdensome families. As ten only could receive the gift, twenty-eight were unsuccessful candidates.’
[303] In the winter of 1727 Voltaire was lodging at the White Peruke, Covent Garden, and visiting Pope at Twickenham. It may have been on this occasion that he made the acquaintance of Mr. Pitt.
[304] ‘A Pamphlet on the Unequal and Partial Assessments; or, The Book of Assessments to the Poor Rates of the Parish of St. John, Hampstead, in the County of Middlesex, laid open by A. Abrahams, 1811, with a view to Meliorate the Situation of the Middling and Lower Classes by a New Assessment.’
[305] At this time twenty loads per day passed through Hampstead, besides what went other ways.
[306] Abrahams mentions Miss Baillie at Frognal, and G. Paxon the Flask—the Lower Flask, of course.
[307] The reason for the name of this avenue has been gravely questioned, and the legend attached to it is looked upon as a mere fable. But in 1859 Sir Francis Palgrave, then Deputy-Keeper of the Record Office, discovered a full account of the assize which was held under these memorable trees in the year 1662—Communicated by G. W. Potter, Esq.
[308] ‘Endymion.’