A Walk from London to Fulham

by Thomas Crofton Croker

fulham.

In Faulkner’s ‘History of Fulham’ we learn that the earliest mention of that village occurs in a grant of the manor by Tyrhtilus Bishop of Hereford, to Erkenwald Bishop of London, and his successors, about the year 691; in which grant it is called Fulanham. Camden in his ‘Britannia’ calls it Fulham, and derives its name from the Saxon word Fulanham, Volucrum Domus, the habitation of birds or place of fowls. Norden agrees with Camden, and adds, “It may also be taken for Volucrum Amnis, or the river of fowl; for Ham also in many places signifies Amnis, a river, but it is most probable it should be of land fowl, which usually haunt groves and clusters of trees, whereof in this place it seemeth hath been plenty.” In Somner’s and Lye’s Saxon dictionaries it is called Fulanham, or Foulham, supposed from the dirtiness of the place. The earliest historical event relating to Fulham, is the arrival of the Danes there in the year 879. On the right hand side as we enter the village stands Holcrofts’ Hall (formerly Holcrofts’) built about 1708, which is worthy of mention as belonging to John Laurie, Esq., and as having been

the residence of Sir John Burgoyne, where he gave some clever dramatic performances, distinguished not only for the considerable talent displayed by the actors, but remarkable for the scenery and machinery, considering the limited space, the whole of which was superintended by the Honourable Mr. Wrottesley, son of Lord Wrottesley, who afterwards married Miss Burgoyne, an admirable amateur actress: here it was that the celebrated Madame Vestris died, on the 8th August, 1856, in her 59th year. During the time she lived there it was called Gore Lodge. The house has been since tenanted for a short time by Mr. Charles Mathews and his present wife. Holcroft’s Priory, which is opposite, was built upon the site of Claybrooke House, mentioned by Faulkner. In the back lane (Burlington Road) Fulham Almshouses are situated, opposite to Burlington House, formerly Roy’s well-known academy, on the ground attached to which is now a Reformatory School, built about four years ago. This lane leads to the termination of the King’s Road by the Ship Tavern. The Almshouses were originally built and endowed by Sir W. Powell, Bart., and were rebuilt in 1793. The old workhouse (built 1774) still stands on the left-hand side of the High Street. It has been in a dilapidated condition for many years, and is about to be pulled down. The Fulham and Hammersmith Union is now in Fulham Fields. Cipriani lived in a house adjoining the workhouse. Further on in Fulham High Street is the Golden Lion Inn. There is a tradition that Bishop Bonner resided in the Old Golden Lion, and that it had a subterranean communication with the palace. The late Mr. Crofton Croker

read the following paper at the meeting of the British Archæological Association at Warwick in 1847:—

On the probability of the Golden Lion Inn, at Fulham, having been frequented by Shakespeare about the years 1595 and 1596.

It is certainly extraordinary that of the personal history of a man whose writings are of so high an order of genius that they may almost be considered as works of inspiration, we should know so little, and that conjecture should have to supply so much, as in the biography of William Shakespeare.

Pilgrims as are we at this moment to the birth-place and the tomb of the highest name in the literature of this country, we all feel that we now tread the classic ground of England—ground too rich in unquestionable memories of Shakespeare, to admit of any feeling of jealousy in an attempt to connect his fame by circumstantial evidence with any other locality. I therefore venture to call attention to the two following entries in the parish records of Fulham, a village in the county of Middlesex, on the Thames, about four miles west of London, and where the Bishop of London has a seat.

In an assessment made on the 12th October, 1625, for the relief of the poor of Fulham side, John Florio, Esq., was rated at six shillings, for his house in Fulham Street.

And in the same assessment upon the “Northend” of the parish, the name of Robert Burbage occurs.

Meagre as this appears to be, and wide of the date at which I aim by thirty years, it is all that I can produce in the shape of novel documentary evidence for an attempt to connect the name of Shakespeare with Fulham; the other points which I have to offer in evidence being admitted facts, although no result has been deduced from them.

In the High Street of Fulham stands a cleanly-looking brick house, square in form and newly built, called the Golden Lion, where any suburban traveller requiring refreshment may be supplied with a mug of excellent ale and bread and cheese, in a parlour having a sanded floor, the room, it must be confessed, smelling rather strongly of tobacco smoke:—

“You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will—
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still;”—

And so it is, to my mind, with the tobacco smoke of the Golden Lion, which stands upon the site of an old hostelry, or inn, of the Tudor age, which was pulled down in April, 1836, and was described soon afterwards in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine.’ While the work of destruction

was going on, a tobacco pipe of ancient and foreign fashion was found behind the old wainscot. The stem was a crooked shoot of bamboo, through which a hole had been bored, and a brass ornamental termination (of an Elizabethan pattern) formed the head of the pipe.—Why may not this have been the pipe of that Bishop of London who had risen into Elizabeth’s favour by attending Mary on the scaffold at Fotheringay, and who, having fallen into disgrace in consequence of a second marriage at an advanced period of his life, sought, we are told, in the retirement of his house at Fulham, “to lose his sorrow in a mist of smoke,”—and actually died there suddenly on the 15th June, 1596, “while sitting in his chair and smoking tobacco?”

Could this have been the tobacco pipe produced at “Crowner’s ’quest” assembled at the Golden Lion to inquire into the cause of his lordship’s sudden death? It is not even impossible that it may have been produced there by his son, John Fletcher, whose name is associated with that of Francis Beaumont in our literature.

Mr. Charles Knight has set the example of an imaginary biography of Shakespeare, and has brought many probable and some improbable things together on the subject.—Why, then, has he overlooked the Golden Lion in Fulham? The name of John Fletcher naturally leads to this question. At the time of his father’s death, he was in his twentieth year; and who will doubt that, at that period of his life, his father’s (the Bishop’s) house was his home. That he may have resorted to the Golden Lion, and there have met with Shakespeare, is, therefore, quite as probable as that our great dramatist associated with Fletcher at the Falcon or the Mermaid, if good cause can only be shown for Shakespeare’s having had as much reason to frequent Fulham as the Bank-side—or Borough of London.

I have already stated that Florio’s house was assessed for the poor-rate in Fulham Street, on the 12th October, 1625, the year of Florio’s death; and be it remembered that Florio was the translator of Montaigne’s Essays, of which a copy of the original edition, bearing Shakespeare’s very rare autograph, was not very long since purchased by the British Museum, at what was considered to be a very large price. When the genuineness of that autograph was keenly discussed among antiquaries, and the probable date at which the ‘Tempest’ was written, became a question, no one presumed to deny that the coincidences between the passage in the 2nd Act of the ‘Tempest’ where Gonzalo says—

“I’ the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known: riches, poverty,
And use of service, none: contract, succession;
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn or wine or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;
And women too; but innocent and pure:
No Sovereignty:”—

is but an echo of the following in Florio’s translation of Montaigne:—

—“It is a nation, would I answer Plato, that hath no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politic superiority; no use of service, of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, no successions; no occupation, but idle, no respect of kindred but common; no apparel, but natural; no manuring of lands, no use of wine, corn, or metal,” etc.

There are other coincidences also, free from the very great difficulty of reconciling satisfactorily printed dates with an imaginary career—which coincidences are too remarkable to have escaped the host of ingenious commentators upon the supposed sources of Shakespeare’s information—of his observation what shall I say?

The coincidence between passages in Daniel’s “Civil Warres,” published in 1595, and passages in Shakespeare’s Richard II., induce Mr. Charles Knight to observe that “We”—thereby meaning himself—“have looked at this poem with some care, and we cannot avoid coming to the conclusion that, with reference to parts of the conduct of the story, and in a few modes of expression, each of which differs from the general narrative and the particular language of the chroniclers, there are similarities betwixt Shakespeare and Daniel which would lead to the conclusion either that the poem of Daniel was known to Shakespeare, or the play of Shakespeare was known to Daniel.”

This position is, indeed, established by Mr. Knight, who arrives satisfactorily enough for his own conclusion, that of fixing the date of the composition of Shakespeare’s play to 1597; adding, candidly enough, that “the exact date is really of very little importance; and we should not have dwelt upon it had it not been pleasant to trace resemblances between contemporary poets, who were themselves personal friends.”

Now, with regard to dates, and the disputed dates of the composition of the ‘Tempest,’ it is important to ascertain who John Florio and Samuel Daniel were.

We know that Florio was the Italian scholar of his day, and the Court favourite. We know that Daniel, whose name is now scarcely popularly remembered, was helped into the office of poet-laureat by his connection with Florio as his brother-in-law, by Florio’s recommendations to be the successor of “that poor poet, Edmund Spenser.” Here, at once, by admitting Shakespeare’s personal intimacy with Florio and Daniel, with his knowledge of their writings, there can be no question; and supposing that he had seen Florio’s translation of Montaigne in MS., much difficulty about dates is got rid of, and we can account for Shakespeare’s acquaintance with Italian literature.

And allow me to add to this the fact noticed by Mr. Collier, in his memoirs of the principal actors in the plays of Shakespeare, printed for the Shakespeare Society, that Shakespeare’s fellow-player, Henry Condell, did some time sojourn at Fulham; for a tract printed in 1625, entitled ‘The Runaway’s Answer to a book “A Rod for Runaways,”’ in reply to a pamphlet published by Decker, is inscribed “to our much respected and very worthy friend, Mr. H. Condell, at his country house at Fulham.” Again, couple with the name of Condell that of Burbadge, in 1625, at Fulham; is not the association most extraordinary, although there is no further agreement in the Christian name than the first letter, Robert being that in the Fulham assessment of poor-rates, Richard that of Shakespeare’s fellow-actor. The family name of Burbadge, however, belongs not to Middlesex, but to Warwickshire. Alas! for the credit sake of ‘Robert Burbadge, of Northend, Fulham,’ in the place in the poor-rate assessment of 1625, where the sum should have been inserted, there is a blank; although twenty-two of his neighbours at North End are contributors of sums varying from 6s. 8d. to 1s.

Joshua Sylvester, who was born in 1563 or 1564, and died in 1618, thus describes the village of North End, Fulham, where his uncle Plumbe resided, and he (Sylvester) formed the attachment which is the subject of his poem:—

I was wont (for my disport)
Often in the summer season,
To a Village to resort
Famous for the rathe ripe peason,
Where beneath a Plumb-tree shade
Many pleasant walks I made.

And Norden, whom we consider as the father of English topography, dates the address “to all courteous gentlemen,” prefixed to his account of Middlesex and Hertfordshire, from his “poore home, near Fulham, 4th November, 1596.”

Here, then, we have a mass of facts, which render it impossible for us to doubt that the Golden Lion, Fulham, must have been, according to the custom of the times, frequented by Florio and his brother-in-law Daniel; by Fletcher; by Henry Condell, Shakespeare’s fellow-player; by some one of the name of Burbadge; by Joshua Sylvester, and John Norden, about the years 1595 and 1596. Is there not, then, every reasonable presumption that our immortal Shakespeare was also a member of this clique?

On the pulling down of the Old Inn by Mr. Powell, the panelling was purchased by Mr. Street, of Brewer Street, and

was afterwards sold to Lord Ellenborough, for the fitting up of his Lordship’s residence, Southam House, Cheltenham.

Fulham High Street, which extends from the London Road to Church Row, appears to have been denominated Bear Street, and is called in the more ancient parish books Fulham Street. The direct approach to Fulham Church is by Church Row, which branches off to the right of the High Street. On the left of the churchyard entrance is the Vicarage. The present vicar is the Rev. R. G. Baker. Opposite the vicarage is a piece of ground, which was consecrated in 1843 by Bishop Blomfield, who is buried there. Upon this recent addition to the burial-ground formerly stood Miss Batsford’s seminary for young gentlemen. There are several curious old monuments in the church, which have been described and engraved by Faulkner, to whose work the curious reader may be referred. In the churchyard are the tombs and monuments of several of the old bishops of London—Compton, Robinson, Hayter, Gibson, Terrick, Lowth, Sherlock, and Randolph.

The grave of that distinguished author and brilliant wit, Theodore Hook, is immediately opposite the chancel window. The stone bears the plain inscription “Theodore Edward Hook, died 24th August, 1841, in the fifty-third year of his age.”