Upon the ground which was occupied by the gibbet where the kind-hearted postboy was strung up, a solitary cottage stood some years ago; and tradition asserted, that both the murderer and his gibbet were buried beneath it.
Proceeding on our road towards Fulham, the next point which claims attention is the extensive inclosure of the West of London and Westminster Cemetery Company,—a company incorporated by act of parliament 1st of Victoria, cap. 180. The burial-ground was consecrated on the 12th of June, 1840, and extends from the Fulham Road to what is called, generally, “Sir John Scott Lillie’s Road,” and sometimes “Brompton Lane Road,” which, in fact, is a continuation, to North End, Fulham, of the line of the Old Brompton Road,—the point, as the reader may recollect, that we turned off from at the Bell and Horns, in order to follow the main Fulham Road to Little Chelsea. The public way on the east of the burial-ground is called Honey Lane, and on the west the boundary is the pathway by the side of the Kensington Canal. The architect of the chapel and catacombs is Mr. Benjamin Baud. The cemetery is open for public inspection, free of charge, from seven in the morning till sunset, except on Sundays, when it is closed till half-past one o’clock. The first interment took place on the 18th of June, 1840, from which time, to the 22nd of November, there were thirty-four burials, the average number being then four per week. It is scarcely necessary to add, that a considerable average increase has taken place; but the first step in statistics is always curious.
One of the most interesting instances of longevity which the annals of the West of London and Westminster Cemetery Company present occurs on a stone in the north-east corner of the burial-ground, where the age recorded of Louis Pouchée is 108; but this does not agree with the burial entry made by the Rev. Stephen Reid Cattley—“Louis Pouchée, of St. Martin’s in the Fields, viz., 40 Castle Street, Leicester Square, buried Feb. 21, 1843, aged 107.”
This musical patriarch, however, according to a statement in the ‘Medical Times,’ [128] was admitted as a patient to St. George’s Hospital November 24, 1842. January 4, went out, and died, about three months afterwards, of diarrhoea and dysentery.
Another instance of longevity, though not so extraordinary, is one which cannot be contemplated without feeling how much influence the consciousness of honest industry in the human mind has upon the health and happiness of the body. A gravestone near a public path on the south-east side of the burial-ground marks the last resting place of Francis Nicholson, landscape-painter, who died the 6th March, 1844, aged 91 years.
Mr. Nicholson originally practised as a portrait-painter, but the simplicity and uprightness of his heart did not permit him to tolerate or pander to the vanities of man (and woman) kind. To flatter was with him an utter impossibility; and, as he could not invariably consider the “human face divine,” he was incapable of assuming the courtly manners so essential in that branch of the
profession. He never, indeed, quite forgave himself for an approach to duplicity committed at this time upon an unfortunate gentleman, who sat to him for his portrait, and who squinted so desperately, that in order to gain a likeness it was necessary to copy moderately the defect. The poor man, it seemed, perfectly unconscious of the same, on being invited to inspect the performance, looked in silence upon it a few moments, and, with rather a disappointed air, said—
“I don’t know—it seems to me—does it squint?”
“Squint!” replied Nicholson, “no more than you do.”