CHAPTER X.
FINCHLEY ROAD, CHILD’S HILL, AND NEW END.
At the hand-post on Golder’s Green—a bit of the original waste in 1859—Hampstead parish ends in this direction. Here Finchley Road, running north and south, divides the road to Hendon from North End Road.
The name of Hendon reminds me that John Taylor, the ‘Water Poet,’ in his curious poetical production ‘The Fearful Summer; or, London’s Calamitie, the Countrie’s Discourtesie, and both their Miserie,’ while including the inhabitants of Hampstead with the other country people around London as ‘beastly, barbarous, cruel countrie cannibals,’ excepts those of Hendon, who did what they could for the plague-stricken Londoners.
With Finchley parish Hampstead has no other connection than that it borders it; but having taken the Finchley Road, it is scarcely fair to leave this once too-famous neighbourhood without a word. The Common had for many years been a terror to travellers, and in 1790-1, when Landmanor wrote his ‘Recollections and Adventures,’ its reputation had not improved. It was still the haunt of footpads and highwaymen, as, indeed, was Hampstead Heath also.
Half a dozen years after the above date, Lord Strathmore, then residing at Hampstead, was attacked by two men when driving over Finchley Common, who rode up to the carriage intending robbery, but his lordship, with the aid of his servants, turned the tables on them, shot one, and made the other prisoner—an evil day for these ‘gentlemen of the road.’ Yet, in spite of such incidents, some hardy householders were bold enough to purchase property and build houses in the neighbourhood; and Mrs. Barbauld tells us that at one time (about 1754), when Richardson was looking about for a country retirement, as became a fortunate bookseller who was his own novelist, he bethought him of the pretty district of Finchley.
While thinking of doing this, his friend Mr. Dunscombe wrote to him that the place would ‘affect his nerves,’ for that all the crimes in the Decalogue were of daily occurrence there, and finished by saying: ‘If you are planted so near the scene of action as to be constantly hearing of highwaymen and viewing of gibbets, in vain will Lady B. [Braidshaigh] send you her sylphs and fairies, in vain will Miss M. [Miss Mulso] terrify with dreams and visions.’[179]
The author of the ‘New and Complete British Traveller’ prosaically confirms this account: ‘A large tract of ground called Finchley Common has long been remarkable as a particular spot for the commission of robberies, and it has been usual to erect gibbets on it, where some of the most notorious malefactors have been hung in chains.’
So, though the village on the west side of the Common had some good houses on it, Richardson’s inclination for a Tusculum at Finchley was probably not very strong, or his friend’s badinage, from the proportion of truth it contained, proved convincing, for we find him settling down in the placid respectability of Parson’s Green, and the enjoyment of that delightful summer-house at the end of the garden, with room enough in it for the literary young ladies who buzzed about him like bees about a bed of borage, with their mild suggestions and criticism, all commendatory, and praises altogether saccharine, till we believe in the truth of Johnson’s remarks to Mrs. Thrale, afterwards Madame Piozzi: ‘You think I like flattery, and so I do, but a little too much disgusts me. That fellow Richardson, on the contrary, could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation without longing to taste the froth from every stroke of the oar.’ An anecdote which Finchley is not concerned in, though apropos to our talk of Richardson.