Shepherd’s Well, Hampstead.
Shepherd’s Well, Hampstead.
The verdant lawns which rise above the rill
Are not unworthy Virgil’s past’ral song.
On the west side of Hampstead, in the middle of one of the pleasant meadows called Shepherd’s fields, at the left-hand of the footpath going from Belsize-house towards the church, [this arch], embedded above and around by the green turf, forms a conduit-head to a beautiful spring: the specific gravity of the fluid, which yields several tuns a day, is little more than that of distilled water. Hampstead abounds in other springs, but they are mostly impregnated with mineral substances. The water of “Shepherd’s well,” therefore, is in continual request, and those who cannot otherwise conveniently obtain it, are supplied through a few of the villagers, who make a scanty living by carrying it to houses for a penny a pail-full. There is no carriage-way to the spot, and these poor things have much hard work for a very little money.
I first knew this spring in my childhood, when domiciled with a relation, who then occupied Belsize-house, by being allowed to go with Jeff the under-gardener, whose duty it was to fetch water from the spring. As I accompanied him, so a tame magpie accompanied me: Jeff slouched on with his pails and yoke, and my ardour to precede was restrained by fear of some ill happening to Mag if I did not look after the rogue. He was a wayward bird, the first to follow wherever I went, but always according to his own fashion; he never put forth his speed till he found himself a long way behind, so that Jeff always led the van, and Mag always brought up the rear, making up for long lagging by long hopping. On one occasion, however, as soon as we got out of the side-door from the out-house yard into Belsize-lane, Mag bounded across the road, and over the wicket along the meadows, with quick and long hops, throwing “side-long looks behind,” as if deriding my inability to keep up with him, till he reached the well: there we both waited for Jeff, who for once was last, and, on whose arrival, the bird took his station on the crown of the arch, looking alternately down to the well and up at Jeff. It was a sultry day in a season of drought, and, to Jeff’s surprise, the water was not easily within reach; while he was making efforts with the bucket, Mag seemed deeply interested in the experiment, and flitted about with tiresome assiduity. In a moment Jeff rose in a rage, execrated poor Mag, and vowed cruel vengeance on him. On our way home the bird preceded, and Jeff, to my continual alarm in behalf of Mag, several times stopped, and threw stones at him with great violence. It was not till we were housed, that the man’s anger was sufficiently appeased to let him acquaint me with its cause: and then I learned that Mag was a “wicked bird,” who knew of the low water before he set out, and was delighted with the mischief. From that day, Jeff hated him, and tried to maim him: the creature’s sagacity in eluding his brutal intent, he imputed to diabolical knowledge; and, while my estimation of Jeff as a good-natured fellow was considerably shaken, I acquired a secret fear of poor Mag. This was my first acquaintance with the superstitious and dangerous feelings of ignorance.
The water of Shepherd’s well is remarkable for not being subject to freeze. There is another spring sometimes resorted to near Kilburn, but this and the ponds in the Vale of Health are the ordinary sources of public supply to Hampstead. The chief inconvenience of habitations in this delightful village is the inadequate distribution of good water. Occasional visitants, for the sake of health, frequently sustain considerable injury by the insalubrity of private springs, and charge upon the fluid they breathe the mischiefs they derive from the fluid they drink. The localities of the place afford almost every variety of aspect and temperature that invalids require: and a constant sufficiency of wholesome water might be easily obtained by a few simple arrangements.
*
March 19, 1827.
Garrick Plays.
No. X.
[From the “Fair Maid of the Exchange,” a Comedy, by Thomas Heywood, 1637.]
Cripple offers to fit Frank Golding with ready made Love Epistles.
Frank. Of thy own writing?
Crip. My own, I assure you, Sir.
Frank. Faith, thou hast robb’d some sonnet-book or other.
And now would’st make me think they are thy own.
Crip. Why, think’st thou that I cannot write a Letter,
Ditty, or Sonnet, with judicial phrase,
As pretty, pleasing, and pathetical,
As the best Ovid-imitating dunce
In the whole town?
Frank. I think thou can’st not.
Crip. Yea, I’ll swear I cannot.
Yet, Sirrah, I could coney-catch the world,
Make myself famous for a sudden wit,
And be admired for my dexterity,
Were I disposed.
Frank. I prithee, how?
Crip. Why, thus. There lived a Poet in this town,
(If we may term our modern writers Poets),
Sharp-witted, bitter-tongued; his pen, of steel;
His ink was temper’d with the biting juice
And extracts of the bitterest weeds that grew;
He never wrote but when the elements
Of fire and water tilted in his brain.
This fellow, ready to give up his ghost
To Lucia’s bosom, did bequeath to me
His Library, which was just nothing
But rolls, and scrolls, and bundles of cast wit,
Such as durst never visit Paul’s Church Yard.
Amongst ’em all I lighted on a quire
Or two of paper, fill’d with Songs and Ditties,
And here and there a hungry Epigram;
These I reserve to my own proper use,
And Pater-noster-like have conn’d them all.
I could now, when I am in company,
At ale-house, tavern, or an ordinary,
Upon a theme make an extemporal ditty
(Or one at least should seem extemporal),
Out of the abundance of this Legacy,
That all would judge it, and report it too,
To be the infant of a sudden wit,
And then were I an admirable fellow.
Frank. This were a piece of cunning.
Crip. I could do more; for I could make enquiry,
Where the best-witted gallants use to dine,
Follow them to the tavern, and there sit
In the next room with a calve’s head and brimstone,
And over-hear their talk, observe their humours,
Collect their jests, put them into a play,
And tire them too with payment to behold
What I have filch’d from them. This I could do
But O for shame that man should so arraign
Their own fee-simple wits for verbal theft!
Yet men there be that have done this and that,
And more by much more than the most of them.[92]
After this Specimen of the pleasanter vein of Heywood, I am tempted to extract some lines from his “Hierarchie of Angels, 1634;” not strictly as a Dramatic Poem, but because the passage contains a string of names, all but that of Watson, his contemporary Dramatists. He is complaining in a mood half serious, half comic, of the disrespect which Poets in his own times meet with from the world, compared with the honors paid them by Antiquity. Then they could afford them three or four sonorous names, and at full length; as to Ovid, the addition of Publius Naso Sulmensis; to Seneca, that of Lucius Annæas Cordubensis; and the like. Now, says he,
Our modern Poets to that pass are driven,
Those names are curtail’d which they first had given;
And, as we wish’d to have their memories drown’d,
We scarcely can afford them half their sound.
Greene, who had in both Academies ta’en
Degree of Master, yet could never gain
To be call’d more than Robin: who, had he
Profest ought save the Muse, served, and been free
After a sev’n years prenticeship, might have
(With credit too) gone Robert to his grave.
Marlowe, renown’d for his rare art and wit,
Could ne’er attain beyond the name of Kit;
Although his Hero and Leander did
Merit addition rather. Famous Kid
Was call’d but Tom. Tom Watson; though he wrote
Able to make Apollo’s self to dote
Upon his Muse; for all that he could strive,
Yet never could to his full name arrive.
Tom Nash (in his time of no small esteem)
Could not a second syllable redeem.
Excellent Beaumont, in the foremost rank
Of the rarest wits, was never more than Frank.
Mellifluous Shakspeare, whose inchanting quill
Commanded mirth or passion, was but Will;
And famous Jonson, though his learned pen
Be dipt in Castaly, is still but Ben.
Fletcher, and Webster, of that learned pack
None of the meanest, neither was but Jack;
Decker but Tom; nor May, nor Middleton;
And he’s now but Jack Ford, that once were John.
Possibly our Poet was a little sore, that this contemptuous curtailment of their Baptismal Names was chiefly exercised upon his Poetical Brethren of the Drama. We hear nothing about Sam Daniel, or Ned Spenser, in his catalogue. The familiarity of common discourse might probably take the greater liberties with the Dramatic Poets, as conceiving of them as more upon a level with the Stage Actors. Or did their greater publicity, and popularity in consequence, fasten these diminutives upon them out of a feeling of love and kindness; as we say Harry the Fifth, rather than Henry, when we would express good will?—as himself says, in those reviving words put into his mouth by Shakspeare, where he would comfort and confirm his doubting brothers:
Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,
But Harry Harry!
And doubtless Heywood had an indistinct conception of this truth, when (coming to his own name), with that beautiful retracting which is natural to one that, not Satirically given, has wandered a little out of his way into something recriminative, he goes on to say:
Nor speak I this, that any here exprest
Should think themselves less worthy than the rest,
Whose names have their full syllables and sound;
Or that Frank, Kit, or Jack, are the least wound
Unto their fame and merit. I for my part
(Think others what they please) accept that heart,
Which courts my love in most familiar phrase;
And that it takes not from my pains or praise,
If any one to me so bluntly come:
I hold he loves me best that calls me Tom.
C. L.
[92] The full title of this Play is “The Fair Maid of the Exchange, with the humours of the Cripple of Fenchurch.” The above Satire against some Dramatic Plagiarists of the time, is put into the mouth of the Cripple, who is an excellent fellow, and the Hero of the Comedy. Of his humour this extract is a sufficient specimen; but he is described (albeit a tradesman, yet wealthy withal) with heroic qualities of mind and body; the latter of which he evinces by rescuing his Mistress (the Fair Maid) from three robbers by the main force of one crutch lustily applied; and the former by his foregoing the advantages which this action gained him in her good opinion, and bestowing his wit and finesse in procuring for her a husband, in the person of his friend Golding, more worthy of her beauty, than he could conceive his own maimed and halting limbs to be. It would require some boldness in a dramatist now-a-days to exhibit such a Character; and some luck in finding a sufficient Actor, who would be willing to personate the infirmities, together with the virtues, of the Noble Cripple.