[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.