About 1820, Mr. Croker resigned Munster House as a residence, after having externally decorated it with various Cockney embattlements of brick, and collected there many curious works of art, possibly with a view of reconstruction.
In the garden were two marble busts, one of which is figured on previous page. The other a female head, not unlike that of Queen Anne.
There was also a fragment of a group, representing a woman with a child at her side, obviously the decoration of a fountain, and a rustic stone seat, conjectured to have been the bed of a formidable piece of ordnance.
A recent tenant of Munster House, the Rev. Stephen Reid Cattley, who is known to the reading public as the editor of an issue of Fox’s ‘Book of Martyrs,’ was unacquainted with the history of the relics in the garden, and can only remember the removal of two composition lions from the gate-piers of Munster House,—not placed there, it must be observed, by Mr. Croker, but which had the popular effect, for some time, of changing the name to Monster House. It is now a Lunatic Asylum. Opposite Munster House is Dancer’s extensive garden for the supply of the London market, by the side of which a road runs leading by a turning on the left direct back to Parson’s Green, or if the straight road is kept, the King’s Road is reached opposite Osborn’s Nursery; adjoining which
nursery is Churchfield House, the residence of Dr. Burchell the African traveller.
“August 16, 1822.
“Dear Colman,—It may be some five-and-thirty years since we met, and I believe as near forty years as may be since I was promoted from my garret, No. 3 Peckwater, into your ci-devant rooms in the old Quad, on which occasion I bought your things. Of all your household furniture I possess but one article, which I removed with myself to my first house and castle in Essex, as a very befitting parsonage sideboard, viz., a mahogany table, with two side drawers, and which still ‘does the state some service,’ though not of plate. But I have an article of yours on a smaller scale, a certain little flat mahogany box, furnished partially, I should say, with cakes of paint, which probably you over-looked, or undervalued as a vade-mecum, and left. And, as an exemplification of the great vanity of over-anxious care, and the safe preservation per contra, in which an article may possibly be found without any care at all, that paint-box is still in statu quo, at this present writing, having run the gauntlet, not merely of my bachelor days, but of the practical cruelties of my thirteen children, all alive and merry, thank God! albeit as unused and as little disposed to preserve their own playthings or chattels from damage as children usually are, yet it survives! ‘The reason why I cannot tell,’ unless I kept it ‘for the dangers it had passed.’
“Though I have been well acquainted with you publicly nearly ever since our Christ Church days, our habits, pursuits, and callings, having cast us into different countries and tracts, we have not, I think met since the date I speak of. I have a house at Chiswick, where I rather think this nine-lived box is, and, whether it is or no, I shall be very glad if you will give me a call to dine, and take a bed, if convenient to you; and if I cannot introduce you to your old acquaintance and recollections, I shall have great pleasure in substituting new ones,—Mrs. Lowth and eleven of our baker’s dozen of olive-branches, our present complement in the house department, my eldest boy being in the West Indies, and my third having returned to the military college last Saturday, his vacation furlough having expired. As the summer begins to borrow now and then an autumn evening, the sooner you will favour me with your company the surer you will be of finding me at Grove House, the expiration of other holidays being the usual signal for weighing anchor and shifting our moorings to parsonage point. I remember you, or David Curson, had among your phrases, quondam, one of anything being ‘d---d summerly;’ I trust, however, having since tasted the delights of the sweet shady side of Pall Mall, that you have worn out that prejudice, and will catch the season before it flies us, or give me a line, naming no distant day, that I may not be elsewhere when you call, and you will much oblige, yours sincerely,
“Robert Lowth.”
“P.S.—In your address to me you must not name Chiswick, but Grove House, Turnham Green, as otherwise it goes into another postman’s walk, who walks it back again to the office, and it does not reach me, per Turnham Green, peripatetic, till the next day, which is toute autre chose.”
Colman seems to have been sincerely delighted at the receipt of this letter; he answered it immediately, expressing to his old friend how much he had gratified him, and how readily he accepted the invitation.
“After refreshing my friend’s memory,” says Colman, “by touching on some particulars which have already been mentioned, I informed him that I was of late years in the habit of suburban rustication, and that I had passed a considerable part of my summers in a house where I was intimate at Fulham, whither I desired him to direct to me, as much nearer Chiswick than my own abode, being within a few hundred yards of his old family residence, where we last parted. Whenever I was at this place, I told him the avenue and bishop’s walk by the river side, the public precincts of the moated episcopal domain, had become my favourite morning and evening lounge. I told him, indeed, merely the fact, omitting all commentary attached to it, for often had I then, and oftener have I since, in a solitary stroll down the avenue, thought of him, regretting the wide chasm in our intercourse, and musing upon human events.”