The whole Square, indeed, was ‘intended to have been built all in the same style and taste, but, unfortunately, not finished agreeable to the design of that great architect, because the inhabitants had not taste enough to be of the same mind, or to unite their sentiments for the public ornament and reputation’ (Herbert).
Just as the Templars rented a field adjoining their buildings which they used for tilting, so, beyond the houses of Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, and the Bishop of Chichester, lay a meadow, and beyond it again the Common, still known as Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Before 1602 there were no buildings on the north side of Lincoln’s Inn, and, so late as the reign of Henry VIII., so rural were the surroundings that rabbits abounded there, and had, indeed, to be preserved from the sporting proclivities of the students.
In Great Turnstile and Little Turnstile we have the names of narrow lanes which still recall the days when Lincoln’s Inn Fields were fields indeed, and the Turnstiles gave access to a path which ran under the boundary wall of the Inn, and formed a short cut to the Strand.[56] The enclosing of the Fields with buildings caused much heart-burning among the Benchers and Students of Lincoln’s Inn, and in 1641 the Society presented a petition to Parliament, complaining of the great increase of buildings in their neighbourhood, and ‘the loss of fresh air which the petitioners formerly enjoyed.’ But Parliament turned a deaf ear to the stifling Lawyers, and the building went on unchecked. A century later Gay, in his ‘Trivia,’ recounted the dangers of the neighbourhood:
‘Where Lincoln’s Inn’s wide space is railed around,
Cross not with venturous step; there oft is found
The lurking thief; who while the daylight shone,
Made the wall echo with his begging tone:
That crutch which late compassion moved, shall wound
Thy bleeding head, and fell thee to the ground.’
No. 13, Lincoln’s Inn Fields is one of the most fascinating, as it is one of the richest, of the smaller museums that I know. It is the house of an architectural and artistic genius, filled with the treasures he collected, amidst which he loved to live and work. It is preserved for us as he left it. For this is the home which Sir John Soane built for himself, and in which he died, at the age of eighty-three, in 1837, bequeathing his house and treasures to be preserved as a trust for the Public, and more especially for Amateurs and Students in Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture.
Sir John Soane started life as an office boy at Reading; he was the Architect of the Bank of England and the Dulwich Galleries; he surrounded himself with a school of young architects, and for their instruction and his own delight ransacked Europe for treasures of art, both antiques and of his own day. The scope of this Collection is as striking as its very high level of excellence. Chippendale furniture, French fifteenth-century glass, a noble architectural library, and many historical curios—these are the least of the lovely things he has given to us. Beautiful bronzes and Greek and Etruscan vases are balanced by the work of Wedgwood and Flaxman; superb illuminated manuscripts by the exquisite Mercury of Giovanni di Bologna, and curious ancient gems, upon one of which a head is cut so cunningly that whichever way you turn its gaze follows you. We pass from the marvellous alabaster tomb of Seti I., King of Egypt about 1370 B.C., and Greek and Roman sculptured marbles, to a room in which first editions of ‘Paradise Lost’ and ‘Robinson Crusoe’ confront Tasso’s manuscript, Reynolds’ sketch-book, and the folios of Shakespeare’s plays which Boswell possessed. And yet we have taken no account of the pictures—of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ ‘Snake in the Grass,’ of Canaletto’s ‘Venice’ and Turner’s ‘Van Tromp’s Barge,’ of Watteau’s ‘Les Noces,’ of Raffael’s Cartoons—of a score of pictures and portraits by first-rate artists; and yet there remains that wonderful little room, which is lined by the masterpieces of Hogarth—‘The Election Scenes’ and the ‘Rake’s Progress.’ It is a wonderful place, this London, in which such a treasure-house can lie, unnoticed and almost unvisited, in the centre of an old square in the City.
It is somewhat outside the scope of this book to deal with the dwellers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, but mention may be made of Thomas Campbell, the poet, who had chambers at No. 61, whilst No. 58 was the House of Forster, the biographer of Dickens, which is described in ‘Bleak House’: ‘Formerly a house of State ... in these shrunken fragments of its greatness lawyers lie, like maggots in nuts.’
More fascinating than all is that ‘Old Curiosity Shop’ which still survives upon a tiny triangular plot amidst the ruin of tenements that have been lately razed to the ground. It proclaims itself the house immortalized by Dickens, and may very well have been the shop which suggested to him the scene of his ‘Old Curiosity Shop.’ It is an ancient building—an old red-tiled cottage, possibly as old as those superb houses of Inigo Jones, ornamented with the Rose of England and the Fleur-de-Lys of France, on the west side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which were put up a year before Charles laid his head upon the block in Whitehall.
A legend, however, says that it is of later date, a relic of a dairy once belonging to that famous Louise Renée de Perrincourt de Queronaille, favourite of Charles II., who was created by him Duchess of Portsmouth. Portsmouth House stood opposite, and was believed to have been purchased by the Duchess from the proceeds of a ship and cargo presented to her by King Charles. But whether this was so or not, and whether the little shop in question is the actual begetter of Dickens’s vision, we cannot say with certainty. We need at least say nothing to discourage the belief which guides the feet of the lover of Dickens to Portsmouth Street, there to purchase souvenirs and conjure up the vision of the dark little shop, with its low ceiling and odd, unexpected corners, once more littered with knick-knacks and second-hand furniture in all stages of breakage and decay, and little Nell and her tender old grandfather sitting there again in the candlelight.[57]