Sweet Hampstead and Its Associations

by Caroline A. White

The Spaniards was, perhaps is still, famous for its curiously laid-out garden, in which designs in coloured pebbles appear to have anticipated floral tapestry beds; and also for the fine views from the mound in it, from which the most salient objects in six counties could be seen. It was to the Spaniards, if I remember aright, that Oliver Goldsmith was wont to take his ‘Jolly Pigeon friends’ for what he called ‘a shoemaker’s holiday’ on the Heath; and it was to the Spaniards Tea-gardens that Mrs. Bardell and her friends betook themselves on that eventful summer afternoon when Dodson and Fogg took the widow in execution ‘on cognovit and costs.’[133] The memory of Charles Dickens, like that of the author of the ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’ is thus indelibly associated with the Spaniards.[134]

A visit to this tavern was not always so unadventurous a proceeding as at present, for a notice in the Grub Street Journal of October, 1736, informs us that on the previous Sunday evening, between seven and eight, when Mr. Thomas Lane, a farrier of Hampstead, was coming home from the Spaniards, upon the Heath, near the house called Mother Huffs[135] three men in mean apparel jumped out of the bushes, and laying hold of him, robbed him of forty-five shillings. They afterwards stripped him, tied him neck and heels, and made him fast to a tree, in which condition he lay more than an hour, till a woman coming by, he cried out, and she released him. A warning to farriers and others to avoid tippling at the Spaniards till eight o’clock on Sunday evenings.

It was to the astuteness of the landlord of the Spaniards that Lord Mansfield owed the saving of his house at Caen Wood from the fury of the mob in the Gordon Riots, who, after sacking and setting fire to the Earl’s town-house in Bloomsbury Square, started for Caen Wood with the intention of destroying that also. The course of the rioters lay through Gray’s Inn Lane to Hampstead. The afternoon was exceedingly sultry, and the men and boys composing the mob, heated and weary from their previous exertions and the march out, rejoiced at the sight of the well-known inn, and longed for its foaming tankards of ripe ale. The landlord, who knew of their intentions, affected rabble sympathies, and encouraged them to refresh themselves. While they did so, he secretly gave information to Lord Mansfield’s steward, who supplied additional barrels of ale from the Caen Wood cellars, and in the meantime sent off a messenger for the military. They fortunately were already on their way out, and quickly surrounded the house, made the ringleaders prisoners, and as many of their wretched followers as they could well secure.

Erskine House.

It is said Lord Mansfield never forgot his indebtedness to his publican neighbour. And now—for this talk of the inn has lured us straight to it—we must turn back if we mean to keep within the precincts of Hampstead. The house—the end one of three at the east corner of the Heath as we enter it from the Spaniards—with a deep portico projecting to the road, was once the residence of the famous Lord Erskine, ‘an inconsiderable-looking home for the great Lord Chancellor, but in which, with his domestic tastes and love of Nature, he probably spent some of the happiest years of his life.’ Originally neither house nor garden appears to have been of much importance, but both were capable of improvement, and Lord Erskine delighted in improving them. The ground comprised several acres lying in natural undulations, and lent itself to ornamental planting; while the eye was not confined to the enclosure, but ‘ranged over views diversified and beautiful.’ The garden in his day, be it remembered, lay on the opposite side of the road, and was connected with the house by a subway, but this has long since been taken by Lord Mansfield. Erskine himself is said to have planted the famous holly-hedge. Here, with his old gardener, his lordship worked by way of refreshment after his professional toils, and at last the place became noted for the number and beauty of the trees and shrubs about it, and took the name of the Evergreens, or Evergreen Hill, which it retained till his lordship’s death, since when it is properly distinguished as Erskine House.

For the story of Lord Erskine’s life—a grand one, though with the last pages of it a little blurred—I must refer my readers to Campbell’s ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’ It is not often that the army proves the vestibule to the Bar, but the training was of use there, and we read that the effect of his eloquence was not a little heightened by the dignity of his fine person and stately bearing. Crabb Robinson tells us he could never forget the figure and voice of Erskine. There was a charm in his voice, he says, ‘a fascination in his eye.’ His eloquence was at once powerful and persuasive. We only remember it was used on the side of truth and right. He was best known in connection with Hampstead as a humane and amiable man, with a great love of gardening and flowers.

Apropos of this, there is a story told of an anxious client calling on him in Serjeants’ Inn, and finding the table of his consulting-room occupied by thirty or forty small vials, in each of which was a slip of geranium, and when the great man came in, instead of talking of the case, he began to tell him of the many kinds of geraniums there were.[136] He made no secret that he attached little or no importance to consultations, but chose rather to rely upon himself.

There is an anecdote told of him which, though it appeared in all the magazines of the period subsequent to his death, and is repeated in Howitt’s ‘Northern Heights,’ as it relates to the Heath, may very well appear here. That good angel to animal existence, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, had not yet appeared, nor was there a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, though to Lord Erskine belongs the honour of having first proposed the measure in Parliament which Martin of Galway succeeded in carrying,[137] and which resulted in the founding of the society. Crossing the Heath, he saw one of the donkey-drivers beating a poor brute with more than ordinary cruelty, and hurried up to expostulate with the man, who rudely answered him ‘that he had a right to do what he liked with his own.’ ‘Very well,’ said Erskine, ‘so have I. This stick is my own;’ and he lost no time in practically illustrating the force of the unfortunate argument by giving the fellow a sound thrashing.

When Hardy, Horne Tooke, and others, were, through his manly pleading, acquitted of high treason, his name became a household word in England. Tokens, two of which are before me, were struck commemorative of the event, with the portraits and names of the accused gentlemen on the obverse, and the words ‘Tried for high treason, 1794’; and on the reverse, ‘Acquitted by his jury and counsels, Hon. Thos. Erskine and W. Gibbs, Esq.’