1790.
Many a rural walk have I and my beloved enjoyed, accompanied by our uninvited, playful, tailed butterfly-hunter, through the lonely honeysuckled lanes to the “Widow Colley’s,” whose nut-brown, mantling home-brewed could have stood the test with that of Skelton’s far-famed Elyn—the ale-wife of England, upon whose October skill Henry VIII.’s Poet Laureate sang.[241] Sometimes our strolls were extended to old Matthew Cook’s Ferry, by the side of the Lea, so named after him, and well known to many a Waltonian student. Matthew generally contrived to keep sixteen cats, all of the finest breed, and, as cats go, of the best of tempers, all of whom he had taught distinct tricks; but it was his custom morning and evening to make them regularly, one after the other, leap over his hands joined as high as his arms could reach: and this attention to his cats, which occupied nearly the whole of his time, afforded him as much pleasure as Hartry, the cupper in May’s Buildings,[242] and his assistant could receive in phlebotomizing, in former days, above one hundred customers on a Sunday morning, that being the only leisure time the industrious mechanic could spare for the operation.
Melancholy as Cook’s Ferry is during the winter, it is still more so in the time of an inundation, when it is almost insupportable; and had not Matty enjoyed the society of his cats, who certainly kept the house tolerably free from rats and mice, at the accustomed time of a high flood he must have been truly wretched. In this year, during one of these visitations, in order to gratify my indefatigable curiosity, I visited him over the meadows, partly in a cart and partly in a boat, conducted by his baker and Tom Fogin, his barber. We found him standing in a washing-tub, dangling a bit of scrag of mutton before the best fire existing circumstances could produce, in a room on the ground floor, knee-deep in water, whilst he ever and anon raised his voice to his cats in the room above, where he had huddled them for safety.
The baker, after delivering his bread in at the window, and I, after fastening our skiff to the shutter-hook, waited the return of Fogin, who had launched himself into a tub to shave Matthew, who had perched himself on the coroneted top of a tall Queen Anne’s chair, and drawn his feet as much under him as possible, and then, with the palms of his hands flat upon his knees to keep the balance true, was prepared to suck in Fogin’s tales in the tub during his shave. Tom retailed all the scandal he had been able to collect during the preceding week from the surrounding villages; how Dolly alias Matthew Booth, a half-witted fellow, was stoutly caned by old John Adams, the astronomical schoolmaster, for calling him “a moon-hauler,”—how Mr. Wigston trespassed on Miss Thoxley’s waste,—of the sisters Tatham being called the “wax dolls” of Edmonton, whose chemises Bet Nun had declared only measured sixteen inches in diameter,—of old Fuller, the banker, riding to Ponder’s End with a stone in his mouth to keep it moist, in order to save the expense of drink,—upon Farmer Bellows’s and old Le Grew’s psalm-singing,—of Alderman Curtis and his Southgate grapery, and of his neighbour, a divine gentlem—man, I had very nearly called him, who had horsewhipped his wife.
1791.
I remember on a midsummer morn of this year making one of a party of pleasure, consisting of the worthy baronet Sir James Lake, the elder John Adams,[243] schoolmaster of Edmonton, Samuel Ireland,[244] author of the Thames, Medway, etc. We started from my cottage at Edmonton, and took the road north. The first house we noticed was an old brick mansion at the extreme end of the town, erected at about the time of King Charles I., opposite butcher Wright’s. This dilapidated fabric was let out in tenements, and the happiest of its inmates was a gay old woman who lived in one of its numerous attics. She gained her bread by spinning, and as we ascended she was singing the old song of “Little boy blue, come blow me your horn” to a neighbour’s child, left to her care for the day. “Well, Mary,” quoth the a-b-c-darian, “you are always gay; what is your opinion of the lads and lasses of the present time, compared with those of your youthful days?” “I’ faith,” answered Mary, “they are pretty much the same.” She was then considerably beyond her eightieth year. We then proceeded to Ponder’s End, where I conducted my fellow-travellers to a field on the left, behind the Goat public-house, to see “King Ringle’s Well,” but why so called even Mr. Gough has declared he was unable to discover.[245]
The next place we visited consisted of extensive moated premises, called “Durance,” on the right of the public road. This house, as tradition reported, had been the residence of Judge Jeffreys; and here it is said that he exercised some severities upon the Protestants.[246]
We then returned through Green Street; and at a cottage we discovered an Elizabethan door, profusely studded with flat-headed nails. This piece of antiquity Samuel Ireland stopped to make a drawing of, which circumstance I beg the reader will keep in mind, as it will be mentioned hereafter. We then, after descanting upon the beauties of Waltham Cross, proposed to visit the father of the Tulip-trees, an engraving of which appeared in Farmer’s History of Waltham Abbey.[247] We looked in vain for a portion of King Harold’s tomb. There were remains of it in Strutt’s early days: he made a drawing of them. Our next visit was to a small ancient elliptic bridge in a field a little beyond the pin-manufactory; this bridge has ever been held as a great curiosity, and one of high antiquity. As we returned through Cheshunt, we rummaged over a basket of old books placed at the door of the barber’s shop, where Sir James Lake bought an excellent copy of Brooke’s Camden’s Errors for sixpence, and also an imperfect copy of Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, for the sake of a remarkably fine impression of a portrait of its author on the title-page. After dining at the Red Lion, we visited another old moated mansion, the property of Dr. Mayo, said to have been originally a house belonging to Cardinal Wolsey, or in which he had at one time resided.[248] After crossing a drawbridge, and passing through the iron gates, the gardener ushered us into a spacious hall, and showed us a curiously constructed chair, in which he said the Cardinal’s porter usually sat. Of this singular chair above mentioned I made a drawing, and had the honour to furnish the late Marquis of Lansdowne with a copy, to enable his Lordship to have a set made from it. In an adjoining room was a bedstead and furniture, considered to be that in which the Cardinal had slept; it was of a drab-coloured cloth, profusely worked over with large flowers in variously coloured silks. We were then conducted to an immense room filled with old portraits. I recollect noticing one in very excellent preservation of Sir Hugh Myddelton, with an inscription on the background totally differing from the one by Cornelius Janssen, engraved by Vertue.[249] Thus ended this pleasant excursion.