Bull and Bush, Hampstead.
In all probability, the weather-boarded cottages opposite Wildwood Lodge, and the cosy little inn, the Bull and Bush, are about the oldest habitations in North End. The latter flourished when Addison wrote, and it is said that it shared his favour, and that of his friends, in common with the Upper Flask. In its yew-tree arbour he may have enjoyed himself after the simple fashion of Sir Roger de Coverley, and drunk ripe ale, and smoked his churchwarden on summer afternoons. It has its arbour and garden still—a carefully-kept one—which makes a pretty feature of the unpretentious but comfortable house.
In later times, Gainsborough, Garrick and Foote, Sir Joshua Reynolds (at rare seasons), Cibber, Booth, Hogarth, and Laurence Sterne are said to have been amongst its summer visitors. The room—an upper one—in which their feasts, to which the company brought ‘attic salt,’ were held looks out upon a smooth-clipped lawn with flowery borders, and commands the little eminence overlooking Wildwood, where Blake would first appear to the vigilant eyes of the eldest Linnell’s little daughter on Saturday afternoons, who sat watching for the anticipated appearance of her favourite. Upon the green lawn is the yew-bush or bower to which the inn owes half its name, a whimsey to which rustic landlords in the eighteenth century appear to have been much addicted. Being furnished with a table and seats, it afforded a quiet retirement or smoking-box.[175]
Hither, in the Addison days, came the companionable Dr. George Sewell, with some or other of his many friends, friends who, at his death in 1726, neglected even the common duties of humanity, and permitted this accomplished gentleman and scholar to pass unhonoured to an almost pauper grave, unfollowed but by one attendant, and with the mean obsequies of one ‘whom nobody owns.’ He was a bachelor, and kept no house, but boarded at Hampstead, and we are told ‘he was so much esteemed, and so frequently invited to the tables of the neighbouring gentry, that he had seldom occasion to dine at home.’ He contributed many papers to the supplemental volumes of the Tatler and Spectator, wrote the tragedy of ‘Sir Walter Raleigh,’ and other works, and various poems. His writings impress one with the feeling that he was not only a clever and versatile writer, but a good and amiable man. No memorial was raised above his grave, but a boundary-tree—a holly—in the hedge of the churchyard for some time marked the place of his interment. This has long since been removed.
Coming down the years, we find that literary people, either as residents or visitors, more and more affected Hampstead and the Heath. No matter of surprise to us who have tasted the exhilaration of its fresh breeziness and summer beauty, and witnessed the cold splendour of its wintry landscapes, with a sky such as Danby delighted to paint reddening the west, and making wider the fields of snow stretching around; the still woods wrapped in rime, each tree crystallized, as it were; the tall groups of elm, ash, and pine trees with each reticulated branch and spray standing out with photographic accuracy against the clear atmosphere, whose sharpness stings the pedestrian and warms.
It was under such conditions that Lovell Edgeworth saw the Heath when he visited his philosophical but eccentric friend Day, the author of ‘Sandford and Merton,’ who had ‘lodged his newly-married wife in “inconvenient lodgings” at Hampstead.’ Edgeworth found him walking on the Heath with her, though the snow covered the ground. But then the lady was sensibly attired in a frieze cloak and thick shoes. She surprised the visitor, who had been led to imagine her an exceedingly delicate person, by an appearance of rude health. But this is beside North End.
About the year 1748 Dr. Akenside, divided between the love of poetry and duty to his profession, endeavoured, with the assistance of his friend the Hon. Jeremiah Dyson, who had purchased a house for him in this neighbourhood, to establish himself as a physician at Hampstead.
We have somewhere read that the house which Akenside occupied was really at Golder’s Hill.[176] The two statements are not irreconcilable, as in the directory of this year Golder’s Hill is included in North End. Horace Walpole, writing in 1750, says of him: ‘Here is another of those tame geniuses, a Mr. Akenside, who writes odes. In one he has lately published he says, “Light the tapers ... urge the fire!” Had not you rather make gods jostle in the dark than light the candles, for fear they should break their heads?’
But in criticising the poet’s ‘Pleasures of Imagination,’ he allows that at its first appearance it attracted much notice, from the elegance of its language and the warm colouring of the descriptions. Akenside appears to have been a proud, cold, uncomfortable man, with an overweening opinion of his abilities, a dictatorial habit, a morbid sensitiveness on the score of his connections, and a susceptibility of offence, which seldom left him long without one. He seems to have passed a rather disagreeable time at Hampstead.