"The manner of drawinge of the said lot shall be thus: Two equal small rowleses of paper to be indifferently made and rolled up, in one of which rolls the wordes 'Godd's Guift' are to be written, and the other rowle is to be left blank and so put into a boxe; which boxe shalbe thrice shaken up and downe, and the elder person of those two that are elected to drawe the first lot, and the younger person the second; and whiche of them draweth the lott wherein the wordes 'God's Guift' are written shalbe forthwith admitted."
Another gift followed Allen's. When Sir Francis Bourgeois died early in the last century he left his fine collection of pictures to the school. The gallery is open to the public; but a description, in the space I have here, could be no more than a list of names.
Dulwich still has some of its fields and buttercups; the playing fields are a pleasant oasis which is the last vision of sunlight and grass for the traveller on the Chatham and Dover railway before plunging into the murk of the Penge tunnel. Of its neighbours to the west, Streatham clusters about a tangle of railways; Streatham, which was deep country for Dr. Johnson, knocked down, in 1863, the house and cut up the park that Dr. Johnson knew when they belonged to the Thrales. He would not recognise the church—the church to which he bade farewell with a kiss—it has been rebuilt. The library, which, if it were standing to-day with the books that Johnson read, would be the most sought for room in Surrey, went, of course, with the house. Eighty years before it fell Johnson had parted from it with a prayer. "Help me," he prayed, "that I may, with humble and sincere thankfulness, remember the comforts and conveniences which I have enjoyed at this place; and that I may resign them with holy submission, equally trusting in Thy protection when Thou givest, and when Thou takest away." That was the library which was destroyed only forty-five years ago. But Streatham, when it knocked down the Thrales' house, had very good authority for parting with all it had of Dr. Johnson. Mrs. Thrale would not have minded. She sold all the letters Dr. Johnson wrote her for a matter of five hundred pounds.
Between Streatham and Wimbledon London strides out in patches. It has not yet taken in Mitcham, which has a fine green with memories of great Surrey cricket, and which grows all manner of scented flowers, lavender and mint and rosemary and everything old-fashioned for herbalists and perfumers and ladies' sachets and linen-chests. But Merton, north-west towards Wimbledon, has been caught fast. Merton church, in which Nelson used to worship, and which has his hatchment on the wall, above fine cross beams of oak, stands among brand-new roofs and roads. Opposite the church is the forlornest thing; a house which once was Sheridan's, and which is now the warehouse of a shop, and hangs in its hall and rooms printed calico. The windows are broken and cobwebby, the garden is a ruin, but the calico, which you may buy at a shop in the town, is fresh and very brightly printed. Francis Nixon, the founder of Merton's calico-printing, which is quite an industry, lies in the churchyard.
And so, by a ring from east to west, where London joins the Surrey countryside, we come to Wimbledon; Wimbledon old and new, as old as a camp which may have been Saxon, as young as yesterday's new villa. The camp, it is true, exists no longer. It has had more learned essays written over it than any in Surrey; it has been claimed as belonging to Cassivelaunus, it has been argued to be a Roman camp, and it has been urged that it marks the site of a battle between Saxon and Saxon for the possession of Surrey. It was a war camp, pretty certainly, from its shape, which was almost exactly circular. But you can see the shape no longer. Wimbledon was unfortunate enough to see its famous camp fall into the hands of a Mr. Sawbridge Erle Drax, and he, in 1875, dared to level its dykes with the ground, to cut down its mound, and fill in its ditch. Of acts of wanton and insolent destruction, this stands supreme in the history of the county.
Wimbledon has held a great house, and has seen royal progresses which cost the lord of the manor a fortune. Thomas Cromwell was one of the lords of the manor, and after him came Catherine Parr: but the great days were those of the Cecils. Lord Burghley, Elizabeth's treasurer, lived at intervals at the Rectory House, and some of Elizabeth's summer excursions came to Wimbledon; she stayed with her treasurer and with his son. But the Cecil who belongs most to Wimbledon is not the treasurer whose nod summed up the wisdom of a Parliament, nor any Lord of Burghley; but a younger son who was a soldier and a sailor. He was Admiral and Marshal-General of the forces sent by James I. and Charles I. against the Spaniards; he was made Lord Wimbledon, and his memory on the records of the army of his day is that his name of Cecil was punned into General Sit-still when he was a soldier of almost foolhardy personal daring, and that he re-introduced into the army the "old English march." There was "one certaine measure," a royal warrant informs us, which had been lost "through the negligence and carelessness of drummers," although it had been "by the approbation of strangers themselves, confessed and acknowledged the best of marches." This march, at the instance of Lord Wimbledon, was beaten in the king's presence at Greenwich in 1610 and ordered to be exactly and precisely observed by all drummers in the kingdom of England and principality of Wales, without any addition or alteration whatsoever. We do not hear it in these days of battles without drums and colours; but we do not fight much better, perhaps, without the drums.
The old Wimbledon church was demolished; the new church was built in 1786. It has many monuments, but the grave which fascinates is the tomb neither of a great statesman nor a good man. It is apart in a far corner; over it is laid a huge slab of black stone, perhaps half a foot thick, and the stone tells you that under it lies the body of "John Hopkins, Esquire, familiarly known as Vulture Hopkins." Misers have had hard things said of them often enough; of Hopkins Pope wrote that "he lived worthless, but died worth three hundred thousand pounds," and, reflecting on the "Use of Riches," Pope made a couplet on his funeral:—
"When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend
The wretch who living saved a candle's end."
But those legends belong to paper and books. They are less easily destroyed than an epithet engraved on a stone; but who of deliberation would carve an insult, as this is carved, for a dead man?
