It is a modish pigtail wig.”
[405] Horwood’s map of London (1799) shows the river walk from Abingdon Street almost to Chelsea Bridge between willows, along the water-edge, and nursery gardens. A good idea of Millbank as it was at this period may be obtained from the Earl of Albemarle’s Fifty Years of my Life (vol. i. cap. vi.), where we see the boys of Westminster School roaming these spaces, hiring guns from Mother Hubbard, and obtaining dogs and badgers from their obliging friend, William Heberfield, “Slender Billy,” who was mercilessly hanged in 1812 for passing forged notes. See a curious account of Palmer’s village in Charles Manby Smith’s Curiosities of London Life (1853). Smith has an etching of the Willow Walk in his Remarks on Rural Scenery (1797).
[406] William Collins, a modeller of mantelpieces and friezes, was an intimate friend of Nathaniel Smith (J. T. S.’s father), and is described by Smith, in his Antient Topography of London, as a fascinating modeller in clay and wax, and carver in wood. He took many of his subjects from Æsop’s Fables, and was much employed by Sir Henry Cheere, the statuary, who then had workshops near the south-east corner of Henry the Seventh’s Chapel. Roubillac worked here when he first came to England. Collins died in Tothill Fields, May 31, 1793. His mantelpiece in Ancaster House remains.
[407] Belgrave House stood at the west end of Millbank Row, the continuation of Abingdon Street. The Millbank of Gainsborough’s days extended from this point southward and westward (as it rounded the obtuse promontory) as far as the White Lead Mills, whence Turpentine Lane led north to the Jenny’s Whim Tavern and bridge. This picturesque wooden bridge spanned a reservoir of the Chelsea water-works.
[408] Albert van Everdingen (1621-1725), a Dutch painter of landscapes and sea-pieces.
[409] Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) was born at Leyden. His favourite subjects were river banks with peasants. Three of his pictures are in the National Gallery.
[410] Jacob van Ruysdael (1628-82), the greatest of Dutch landscape painters.
[411] Cornelius Gerritz Dekker (died 1678) painted at Haarlem; one of his landscapes is in the National Gallery.
[412] The Neat House Gardens added much to the pleasantness of the river walk at Millbank. They were held by gardeners who grew fruit and vegetables here for the London markets. About 1831 the soil taken to form St. Katherine’s Docks was brought up the river and laid upon them; after which Lupus Street and many other Pimlico streets were built on their site. It is a pity that no local name-relic exists of gardens which Massinger knew as a place for musk-melons (City Madam, Act iii. sc. 1), which Pepys visited with his wife, and which “would have pleased Ruysdael.”
[413] On August 3, 1802, Garnerin, or Garnerini, ascended in a balloon from Vauxhall Gardens with his wife and Mr. Glasford. A cat, which they dropped in a parachute, fell safely in a garden at Hampstead, and the balloon itself, after passing over the Green Park, Paddington, etc., descended in a paddock at Lord Rosslyn’s, at the top of Hampstead Hill. Mrs. Garnerin afterwards lost her life through ascending from Paris with fireworks.