Although not considered an Adonis by the ladies, yet most of those to whom I had the pleasure to be known, noticed me as a favourite, and by some my appearance in company was cordially greeted. “Friend Thomas,” asked one, “pray what play didst thou see last night?” With this appellation I was frequently addressed, in consequence of my mother having been a member of the Society of Friends. “Love’s Labour Lost,” being my answer to the pre-engaged fair one, uttered perhaps with a smile, she was induced to rejoin, “If you had not hitherto been so blind a son of Venus, you would not have lost my smiles.” After this rebuke, my pursuit became brisker, and I at last fixed my heart upon my first wife.[234] Upon becoming a Benedict, I partly recovered the use of my senses, gave up my clubs, dissolved many connections, and in order to be faithful to my pledge, “to love and to cherish,” I applied myself steadily to my etching-table, and commenced a series of quarto plates, to illustrate Mr. Pennant’s truly interesting account of our great city (entitled Some Account of London), which I dedicated to my patron, Sir James Winter Lake, Bart.
Sir James was a governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company,—a situation, it is well known, he filled with credit to himself as well as the satisfaction of every one connected with that highly-respected body. Sir James most kindly invited me to take a house near him at Edmonton, where I had the honour, for the space of seven years, of enjoying the steady friendship of himself and family. Lady Lake, who then retained much of her youthful beauty, by her elegance of language and extreme affability charmed every one. To clever people of every description she was kind, and benevolent to the poor.
The Lake family consisted of Sir James, his lady, their sons, James, Willoughby, Atwill, and Andrew,—their daughters, Mary, Charlotte, and Anne.[235] Their residence, which had long been their family mansion, was distant about a mile from the Angel Inn, and was called “The Firs,” in consequence of the approach to the house being planted on either side with double rows of that tree.
ELIZABETH CANNING
“For my own part, I am not at all brought to believe her story.”
Horace Walpole
1789.
This year proved more lucrative to me than any preceding, for at this time I professed portrait painting both in oils and crayons; but, alas! after using a profusion of carmine, and placing many an eye straight that was misdirected, before another season came, my exertions were mildewed by a decline of orders, owing not only to the salubrity of the air of Edmonton, but to the regularity of those who had sat to me, for they would neither die nor quit their mansions, but kept themselves snug within their King-William iron gates and red-brick-crested piers, so that there was no accommodation for new-comers; nor would the red land-owners allow one inch of ground to the Tooley Street Camomile Cottage builders.[236] However, I experienced enough to convince me that, had I diverged along the cross-roads towards the Bald-faced Stag, the highway to the original Tulip-tree at Waltham Abbey, or the green lanes to Hornsey Wood House, I might have considerably increased my income; but this would have been impossible without a conveyance. Nevertheless, as it was, the reader will hardly believe that my marches of fame were far more extensive than those of Major Sturgeon;[237] his were confined to marches and counter-marches, from Ealing to Acton, and from Acton to Ealing, next-door neighbours: now, my doves took a circuitous flight from Tottenham to “Kicking Jenny” at Southgate; then to Enfield, ay, even to its very Wash, rendered notorious by Mary Squires and Bet Canning;[238] thence over Walton’s famed river Lea: thence up to Chingford’s ivy-mantled tower; down again, crossing the Lea with the lowing herd, to Tottenham High Cross, finishing where they put up on the embattlements of the once noble Castle of Bruce.
It was in the centre of the above vicinities, at “Edmonton so gay,” the rendezvous of Shakspeare’s merry devil,[239] that I profiled, three-quartered, full-faced, and buttoned up the retired embroidered weavers, their crummy wives, and tightly-laced daughters. Ay, those were the days! my friends of the loom, as Tom King declared in the prologue to Bon Ton, when Mother Fussock could ride in a one-horse chaise, warm from Spitalfields, on a Sunday![240]