A Walk from London to Fulham

by Thomas Crofton Croker

Daniel Egerton—“oh! kingly Egerton”—personified for many years on the stage of Covent Garden all the royal personages about whom there was great state and talk, but who had little to say for themselves. He was respected

as being, and without doubt was, an industrious and an honest man. Having saved some hardly-earned money, Egerton entered into a theatrical speculation with a brother actor, Mr. Abbott, and became manager of one of the minor houses, by which he was ruined, and died in 1835, under the pressure of his misfortunes. His widow, whose representations of the wild women of Scott’s novels, Madge Wildfire and Meg Merrilies, have distinguished her, died on the 10th August, 1847, at Brompton, aged sixty-six, having supported herself nobly amidst the troubles of her latter days. Mrs. Egerton was the daughter of the Rev. Peter Fisher, rector of Torrington, in Devonshire. She appeared at the Bath theatre soon after the death of her father in 1803, and in 1811 made her first appearance at Covent Garden Theatre as Juliet.

On the right-hand side, a little off the main road, is Onslow Square, which was built upon the site of the extensive house and grounds once occupied as a lunatic asylum. The row of large trees now in the centre of the square was formerly the avenue from the main road to this house. Mr. Henry Cole, C.B. lives at No. 17, Onslow Square; he is well known to the public as a member of the Executive Committee of the Crystal Palace, a promoter of art manufactures, and the author of numerous works published under the nom de plume of “Felix Summerly.” No. 31 is the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Martin (better known as Miss Helen Faucit). At No. 34 resides Baron Marochetti, the celebrated sculptor, who settled in England after the French revolution of February, 1848, and has obtained high patronage here. At the back of the house is

the studio, with an entrance from the main road, where the avenue of trees continues. W. M. Thackeray, the popular writer, lives at No. 36, and Rear-Admiral Fitzroy, the distinguished geographer and navigator, is at No. 38.

A few yards beyond Sydney Place (leading into Onslow Square), on the opposite side of the road, is Sydney Street, leading direct to St. Luke’s Church, the late incumbent of which, the Rev. Charles Kingsley, who died on 29th February, 1860, aged 78, was the father of the well-known popular writer, the Rev. Charles Kingsley, of Eversley Rectory, Hants. Sydney Street was originally called Upper Robert Street, as being the continuation of Robert Street, Chelsea; but, under some notion of raising its respectability, the inhabitants agreed to change the name. It happened, however, that the corner house adjoining the Fulham Road, on the western side, was occupied by a surgeon, who imagined that the change in name might be injurious to his practice, and he took advantage of his position to retain the old name on his house. Thus for some time the street was known by both names, but that of Upper Robert Street is now entirely abandoned. The opposite corner house, No. 2, Sydney Street, was for some years occupied by the Rev. Dr. Biber, author of the ‘Life of Pestalozzi,’ and editor and proprietor of the ‘John Bull’ newspaper. On his selling the ‘John Bull,’ it became incorporated with the ‘Britannia.’

No. 24 was for some time the residence of Mr. Thomas Wright, the well-known antiquary and historical writer, who now lives at No. 14.

Robert Street, which connects the main Fulham Road

with the King’s Road, passes directly before the west side of the spacious burial-ground, and immediately opposite to the tower of St. Luke’s Church; at No. 17 formerly resided Mr. Henry Warren, the President of the New Society of Water-Colour Painters.

Returning to the main Fulham Road, and passing the Cancer Hospital, now in course of erection, we come to York Place, a row of twenty-two well-built and respectable houses on the south, or, according to our course, left-hand side of the road.

No. 15, York Place, was, between the years 1813 and 1821, the retirement of Francis Hargrave, a laborious literary barrister, and the editor of ‘A Collection of State Trials,’ [84] and many other esteemed legal works. Here he died on the 16th of August, 1821, at the age of eighty-one.