CHAPTER V.

The celebrated Sir Thomas Bodley lived at Parson’s Green from 1605 to 1609. The old mansion at the west side of the Green was formerly the Rectory House, and is traditionally reported to have been the residence of Adoniram Byfield, the noted Presbyterian Chaplain to Colonel Cholmondeley’s regiment in the Earl of Essex’s army, who took so prominent a part in Cromwellian politics, that he became immortalized in Hudibras.The Rectory HouseAn old stone building is noticed by Bowack in 1705, as adjoining this house, and presumed by him to be of three or four hundred years’ standing, and in all probability a chapel for the rectors and their domestics. This building was pulled down, according to Lysons, about theyear 1742, and the house is now divided into two, that at the corner being occupied by Dr. Lauman’s Academy. At the south-west side of the Green is the old entrance to Peterborough House, a residence with the recollections of which the names of Locke, Swift, Pope, Gay, Prior, and a crowd of others are associated.

The present Peterborough House, which is a little beyond the old brick gateway, was built by Mr. J. Meyrick, who died there in 1801. Ho was the father of Sir Samuel Meyrick the well-known antiquary. Ho purchased the house, in 1794, of R. Heavyside, Esq., and pulled down the old mansion that stood close to the site of the ancient maze, which became converted into a lawn at the rear of the modern house. The place was originallyOld Gate of Peterborough Housetermed Brightwells, or Rightwells, and here, in 1569, died John Tarnworth, Esq., one of Elizabeth’s privy counsellors, who lies buried at Fulham.

Brightwells afterwards belonged to Sir Thomas Knolles,who, in 1603, sold it to Sir Thomas Smith, who had been secretary to the unfortunate Earl of Essex, and became, under James I., Clerk of the Council, Latin Secretary, and Master of the Requests; and here he died in 1609, and was buried in the chancel of Fulham Church, where a handsome monument is erected to his memory. After Sir Thomas Smith’s death, his widow married the first Earl of Exeter, and continued to reside at Brightwells until her death, in 1633. Sir Thomas Smith’s only daughter having married the Honourable Thomas Carey, the Earl of Monmouth’s second son, he became possessed of the estate in right of his wife, and after him the place was called Villa Carey, which has led to the belief that old Peterborough House was built by him. It stood facing the pond on Parson’s Green, and at about the same distance from the road as the present house. Francis Cleyne, who came over to England in the reign of Charles I., was certainly employed to decorate the rooms. Mr. Carey died about 1635; and his widow, about five years afterwards, married Sir Edward Herbert, Attorney-General to King Charles. Sir Edward was a firm loyalist, and resided at Parson’s Green till the death of his royal master, when he accompanied Charles II. in his exile, who created him Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and he died abroad in 1657. His estate was ordered to be sold with the estates of other loyalists in 1653, but the sale does not appear to have taken place, as Villa Carey, in 1660, was in the possession of Lord Mordaunt, who had married the daughter and heiress of Mr. Carey. Lord Clarendon bears honourable testimony to the daring spirit and devoted zealin the royal cause evinced by this “young gentleman,” and to the no less chivalric conduct of his charming bride.

“He was,” says the historian, “of great vigour of mind, and newly married to a young and beautiful lady of a very loyal spirit and notable vivacity of wit and humour, who concurred with him in all honourable dedications of himself.”

When her husband was arrested and brought to trial in 1658, as a partizan of Charles II., by her contrivance one of the principal witnesses against him was kept out of the way, and his judges, being divided in their opinion of his guilt, he was acquitted only by the casting vote of the President, the notorious John Lisle, who had sat upon the trial of Charles I., by whom he was addressed in the following remarkable strain:—

“And I have now to speak to you Mr. Mordaunt: God hath appeared in justice, and God doth appear in mercy, as the Lord is just to them, so the Lord is exceeding merciful to you, and I may say to you that God appears to you at this time, as he speaks to sinners in Jesus Christ, for Sir, he doth clear sinners in Christ Jesus even when they are guilty, and so God cleareth you. I will not say you are guilty, but ask your own conscience whether you are or no. Sir, bless God as long as you live, and bless my Lord Protector, by whose authority you are cleared. Sir, I speak no more, but I beseech you to speak to God.”

The very active part which Lord Mordaunt had taken in effecting the restoration of Charles II., in which service, according to his epitaph, he “encountered a thousand dangers, provoking and also defeating the rage of Cromwell,” was not rewarded by any extraordinary marks of distinction or favour, and he seems after that event to have quietly resided on his estate at Parson’s Green, where he died in the forty-eighth year of his age,on the 5th June, 1675, and was buried in Fulham Church. The son of Lord Mordaunt, who afterwards received the title of Earl of Peterborough, married first, Carey, daughter to Sir Alexander Fraser, of Dover. His second wife was the accomplished singer Anastasia Robinson, who survived him. The earl was visited at Peterborough House by all the wits and literati of his time. Bowack, in 1706, describes the gardens of Peterborough House, as containing twenty acres of ground, and mentions a tulip-tree seventy-six feet in height, and five feet nine inches in girth. Swift, in one of his letters, speaks of Lord Peterborough’s gardens as the finest he had ever seen about London.

On the same side of the Green as Peterborough House, stood the residence of Samuel Richardson, who removed to Parson’s Green from North End in 1755, and in this house his second wife, who survived him, died in November, 1773, aged seventy-seven. Formerly the same house belonged to Sir Edward Saunders, Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench in 1682. A sketch of the house will be found in Chambers’ Cyclopædia of English Literature. Drury Lodge, situated on the King’s Road adjoining Parson’s Green, and immediately opposite the Malt House, formerly known as Ivy Cottage, was built by Walsh Porter in the Gothic style, and is now the residence of Mr. E. T. Smith, who has called the house after his theatre. The name of the lane which runs down by the side of Drury Lodge has, however, not been altered toDruryLane, but still retains its old title of Broom Lane.

It is said that on the site of what is now called DruryLodge, was formerly a house, the residence of Oliver Cromwell, which was called theOld Red Ivy House. Part of the old walls of that building form the west side of the present cottage.

Proceeding forward from Purser’s Cross on the main Fulham Road, where St. Peter’s Villa may be noticed as the residence of Madame Garcia in 1842, about a quarter of a mile brings us to Munster House, which is supposed to owe its name to Melesina Schulenberg, created by George II., in 1716, Duchess of Munster.Munster house (1844)According to Faulkner, it was also calledMustowHouse—this was not improbably the duchess’s pronunciation; and he adds that tradition makes it a hunting-seat of Charles II., and asserts that an extensive park was attached to it; but Faulkner also tells us that Munster House “was during the greater part of the seventeenth century, theresidenceand property of Sir William Powell, Bart., who founded the almshouses.” How, after this statement, Mr. Faulkner could have admitted the tradition, requires some explanation, as he seems to have followed, without acknowledgment, the particulars supplied to Lysons from authentic documents by Mr. Deere, of the Auditor’s Office, who appears merely to have informedthat gentleman, that among the title-deeds of this property there is one of Sir Edward Powell’s, dated 1640, and that Sir William Powell’s will bears date 1680. According to the same unquestionable records, Munster House came from the Powells into the possession of Sir John Williams, Bart., of Pengethly, Monmouthshire.

In 1795, Lysons says that Munster House was “occupied as a school.” Faulkner, in 1813, states that it was “in the occupation of M. Sampayo, a Portuguese merchant.” And his successor in the tenancy was John Wilson Croker, Esq., M.P., then secretary of the Admiralty, and afterwards the Right Hon. Mr. Croker,[171]a gentleman who brilliantly retired into private life, but whose character is so well known, and has been so often discussed in political and literary circles, that I shall only venture to remark the local coincidence of three indefatigable secretaries of the Admiralty, during the most critical periods of England’s history—namely, Sir Philip Stevens, Sir Evan Nepean, and Mr. Croker—having selected the quietude of Fulham as the most convenient and attractive position in the neighbourhood of London, where they might momentarily relax from the arduous strain of official duties.

Marble bust

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.

Woman and child—Rustic stone seat

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 toMonster 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 whichnursery is Churchfield House, the residence of Dr. Burchell the African traveller.

Fulham LodgeFulham Lodge stood on the opposite, or south side, of the road from Munster House, on the ground immediately beyond Munster Terrace, which was built a short time prior to its demolition. This cottage, for it was no more, was a favourite retirement of the late Duke of York. An affecting story is told by George Colman the younger, connected with his own feelings while on a visit here. He had lost sight of an old college friend, the Rev. Robert Lowth, son of the Bishop of London, from the year 1781 to 1822 (one and forty years!), when Colman was surprised and pleased by the receipt of the following letter, written and left upon his table by a gentleman who had called when he was not at home:—

“August16, 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 yourci-devantrooms 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 youover-looked, or undervalued as avade-mecum, and left. And, as an exemplification of the great vanity of over-anxious care, and the safe preservationper contra, in which an article may possibly be found without any care at all, that paint-box is stillin 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 nameChiswick, 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 istoute autre chose.”

“August16, 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 yourci-devantrooms 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 youover-looked, or undervalued as avade-mecum, and left. And, as an exemplification of the great vanity of over-anxious care, and the safe preservationper contra, in which an article may possibly be found without any care at all, that paint-box is stillin 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 nameChiswick, 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 istoute 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.”

There is a regret expressed by Colman that he kept no copy of his answer, “which,” he adds, “was written in the ‘flow of soul,’ and at the impulse of the moment?” Mr. Lowth wrote in reply to Colman, detailing in a most amusing manner his having, in the pursuit of two Cockneys, who had made an attack upon a grove of Orleans plum-trees in his grounds, taken cold, which confined him to his room.

“But for thisinter poculum et labra,” continued Mr. Lowth, “it was my intention to have made you my firstpost restante, with, perhaps, a walk down the old avenue, in my way to town, that identical day; and, still hoping to accomplish three miles and back, I have hoped from day to day, but I cannot get in travelling condition, even for so short a journey. Therefore I hope you will send me word by my new Yorkshire groom lad, that you will take pot-luck with me on Sunday as the most likely day for you to suburbise.”

Colman accepted the invitation, believing from the length of Mr. Lowth’s letter (three pages), and the playfulness of his old friend’s communication, that nothing more than an ordinary cold was the matter with him. A note, however, which followed from one of Mr. Lowth’s daughters, stated that the meeting proposed by her father must be postponed, that he “had become extremely unwell, that bleeding and cupping had been prescribed,” and the most perfect quiet enjoined.

On the day after the receipt of this note, Colman sent over to Grove House, Chiswick, to make inquiries as to Mr. Lowth’s health, when the reply given by an elderly female at the gate, after considerable delay, was that “her master was no more.”

A letter from Dr. Badeley to Colman, dated 22d August, 1822, confirmed the melancholy intelligence, which he had at first hesitated to believe. It stated that “the decease of Mr. Lowth took place on Sunday evening,” the very evening appointed by him for their anticipated happy reunion; and that his remains were to be interred in the family vault at Fulham on Monday morning at ten o’clock.

“I continued,” said Colman, “at Fulham Lodge, which is nearer in a direct line to the church than to the Bishop’s Palace and the ‘old avenue.’ On Monday the adjacent steeple gave early notice of the approaching funeral; religion and sorrow mingled within me while the slow and mournful tolling of the bell smote upon my heart. Selfish feelings, too, though secondary, might now and then obtrude, for they are implanted in our nature. My departed friend was about my own age: we had entered the field nearly at the same time; we had fought, indeed, our chief battles asunder, but in our younger days he had been my comrade, close to me in the ranks: he had fallen, and my own turn might speedily follow.”

These are the ideas which George Colman the younger records as having passed through his mind while an inmate of Fulham Lodge:—

“My walk next morning,” he says, “was to the sepulchre of the Lowths, to indulge in the mournful satisfaction of viewing the depository of my poor friend’s remains. It stands in the churchyard, a few paces from the eastern end of the ancient church at Fulham. The surrounding earth, trampled by recent footsteps, and a slab of marble which had been evidently taken out and replaced in the side of the tomb, too plainly presented traces of those rites, which had been performed on the previous day. For several mornings I repeated my walk thither, and no summer has since glided away, except the last, when my sojournment at Fulham was suspended, without my visiting the spot and heaving a sigh to the memory of Robert Lowth.”

Theodore Hook’s manuscript Diary contains the following entries with reference to visits made by him at Fulham Lodge:—

“2nd January, 1826.—Called. Mrs. Carey’s luncheon.“Thursday, 5th January.—Drove over to Fulham. Mrs. Carey’s din. Colman, Harris, Mrs. G. Good hits. Mrs. Coutts, ‘Julius Cæsar,’ &c. Stayed very late, and walked home.”

“2nd January, 1826.—Called. Mrs. Carey’s luncheon.

“Thursday, 5th January.—Drove over to Fulham. Mrs. Carey’s din. Colman, Harris, Mrs. G. Good hits. Mrs. Coutts, ‘Julius Cæsar,’ &c. Stayed very late, and walked home.”

Fulham Park Road is now where Fulham Lodge stood, and the ground is partly built on, the rest is to be let for building.

This walk is exactly three miles and a half from Hyde Park Corner; and what an Irishman would call the iron mile-stone stood exactly opposite to Ivy Lodge, until placed against the brick wall immediately beyond the railings.

Ivy Lodge was for some years the residence of Rudolph Ackermann, a name, as a printseller, known (it is notusing too broad a word to say) throughout the world, and whose representatives still carry on this business in Regent Street.

Ackermann was a remarkable man. He was born in 1764, at Stollberg, near Schneeberg, in Saxony; and, having been bred a coach-builder, upon visiting England shortly before the French Revolution, found employment as a carriage-draughtsman, which led to his forming the acquaintance of artists, and becoming a print-publisher in London. The French refugees, whose necessities obliged them to exercise their acquirements and talents as a means of support, found in Mr. Ackermann’s shop a repository for the exhibition and sale of decorative articles, which elevated this branch of business to an importance that it had never before assumed in England. Ackermann’s name stands prominently forward in the early history of gas and lithography in England, and he must be remembered as the introducer of a species of illustrated periodicals, by the publication of the ‘Forget-Me-Not;’ to which, or to similar works, nearly every honoured contemporary name in the whole circle of British literature have contributed, and which have produced a certain, but advantageously a questionable, influence upon the Fine Arts.

After the battle of Leipzig, Mr. Ackermann publicly advocated the cause of the starving population of many districts of Germany, in consequence of the calamities of war, with so much zeal and success, that a parliamentary grant of £100,000 was more than doubled by a public subscription. In the spring of 1830, when residing at Ivy Lodge, he experienced a sudden attack of paralysis; and achange of air was recommended by his medical attendants. This led to Mr. Ackermann’s removal to Finchley, where he died on the 30th of March, 1834.

Having now arrived at Fulham, we will in the next chapter accompany the reader in a walk through that ancient village.

The Entrance to Fulham (1844)

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 calledFulanham. Camden in his ‘Britannia’ calls itFulham, and derives its name from the Saxon wordFulanham,Volucrum Domus, the habitation of birds or place of fowls. Norden agrees with Camden, and adds, “It may also be taken forVolucrum Amnis, or the river of fowl; forHamalso in many places signifiesAmnis, 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 beenthe 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 Crokerread 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 years1595and1596.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 destructionAncient tobacco pipewas 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 contrariesExecute all things; forno kind of trafficWould 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 hathno kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers,no name of magistrate, nor of politic superiority; nouse of service, ofriches, or ofpoverty; nocontracts, nosuccessions; 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 whichwould 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 resortFamous for the rathe ripe peason,Where beneath aPlumb-tree shadeMany 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 probability of the Golden Lion Inn,at Fulham,having been frequented by Shakespeare about the years1595and1596.

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 destructionAncient tobacco pipewas 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 contrariesExecute all things; forno kind of trafficWould 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 hathno kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers,no name of magistrate, nor of politic superiority; nouse of service, ofriches, or ofpoverty; nocontracts, nosuccessions; 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 whichwould 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 resortFamous for the rathe ripe peason,Where beneath aPlumb-tree shadeMany 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?

Fireplaces in the old Golden Lion

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

Old entrance to Pryor’s Bank, 1844[188b]

Leaving the church by the other entrance, we are in Church Lane. The first house opposite the gate of the churchyard is Pryor’s Bank, to which a separate chapter of our little volume is devoted, so that we can pass on immediately to the next house, Thames Bank, the present residence of Mr. Baylis, whose well-knowntaste will no doubt soon change its present aspect. Granville Sharp’s[188a]House stood opposite. It was pulled down about twenty-five years ago. John’s Place (erected 1844) is on the site.

Next to Thames Bank, formerly stood Egmont Villa, the residence of Theodore Hook, and the house in which he died, now pulled down, the back of which, is shown in the annexed sketch. This house, though of the smallest dimensions, was fitted up with much good taste.Back of Egmont VillaThere was a small boudoir on the side of the drawing-room, which was very rich in articles of virtù, more especially in some remarkably fine carvings, attributed to Cellini, Brustolini, and others. These were left to Hook by his brother, the late Dean of Worcester.As an improvisatore, Hook was unapproachable. In regard to his literary merits, let the following suffice, taken from the late Mr. Barham’s life of Hook, published in 1848:—

“There can be no need,” says the Editor, “at this day to enter upon any lengthened criticism of Theodore Hook’s merits as a novelist; they have been discussed over and over again, with little variety of opinion, by every reviewer of the kingdom. Indeed, both his faults and his excellencies lie on the surface, and are obvious and patent to the most superficial reader; his fables, for the most part ill knit and insufficient, disappoint as they are unfolded; repetitions and omissions are frequent: in short, a general want of care and finish is observable throughout, which must be attributed to the hurry in which he was compelled to write, arising from the multiplicity and distracting nature of his engagements. His tendency to caricature was innate; but even this would probably have been in a great measure repressed, had he allowed himself sufficient time for correction: while, on the contrary, in detached scenes, which sprang up as pictures in his mind, replete with comic circumstance, in brilliant dialogue and portraiture of character, not to mention those flashes of sound wisdom with which ever and anon his pages are lighted up, his wit and genius had fair play, revelling and rioting in fun, and achieving on the spur of the moment those lasting triumphs which cast into the shade the minor and mechanical blemishes to which we have adverted.”

Hook was a successful dramatist, and an extensive journalist. Of his novels, ‘Gilbert Gurney’ may be considered to be the most remarkable.

Hook’s furniture was sold by George Robins, in September, 1841. In 1855 the aqueduct was erected by the Chelsea Water Works Company, for conveying the water from Kingston-upon-Thames to the metropolis, and it was necessary that the contractor, Mr. Brotherhood, should get possession of Egmont Villa, to enable them to erect thetower on the Fulham side. Here the piles and timbers of the old Bishop’s Ferry, used for the conveyance of passengers across the river from Putney to Fulham, before the old bridge was built, were discovered. It was subsequently considered desirable to pull the villa down; and there now remains no trace of the house in which Hook lived and died, and which stood within a few paces of his grave. Bowack mentions that Robert Limpany, Esq., “whose estate was so considerable in the parish that he was commonly called the Lord of Fulham,” resided in a neat house in Church Lane. He died at the age of ninety-four. Beyond the Pryor’s Bank on the right, is the Bishop’s Walk, which runs along the side of the Thames for some little distance, and from hence a view of the Bishop’s Palace is obtained. This palace has been from a very early period the summer residence of the Bishops of London. The land consists of about 37 acres, and the whole is surrounded by a moat, over which are two bridges.

Following the course of the Bishop’s Walk, we come to the road leading to Craven Cottage, originally built by the Margravine of Anspach, when Countess of Craven, and since altered and improved by Walsh Porter, who occasionally resided in it till his death in 1809. Craven Cottage was considered the prettiest specimen of cottage architecture then existing. The three principal reception-rooms were equally remarkable for their structure, as well as their furniture. The centre, or principal saloon, supported by large palm-trees of considerable size, exceedingly well executed, with their drooping foliage at the top, supporting the cornice and architraves of the room. The otherdecorations were in corresponding taste. The furniture comprised a lion’s skin for a hearth-rug, for a sofa the back of a tiger, the supports of the tables in most instances were four twisted serpents or hydras: in fact, the whole of the decorations of the room were of a character perfectly unique and uniform in their style. This room led to a large Gothic dining-room of very considerable dimensions, and on the front of the former apartment was a very large oval rustic balcony, opposed to which was a large, half-circular library, that became more celebrated afterwards as the room in which the highly-gifted and talented author of ‘Pelham’ wrote some of his most celebrated works.

Craven Cottage was the residence of the Right Hon. Sir E. Bulwer-Lytton, from whom it passed to Mr. Baylis, now of Thames Bank, who parted with it to Sir Ralph Howard, its present occupant, who removed the door shown in the annexed cut, through which the library is seen.

Door of Egyptian Hall at Craven Cottage

Returning to Church Lane, we come out at the bridge,built in 1729, and close to which is Willow Bank, the late residence of Mr. Delafield and General Conyers. The Ferry belonged to the See of London, and it was necessary that the consent of the Bishops should be had, for the erection of the bridge and consequent destruction of their Ferry; it was, therefore, stipulated for the right of themselves, their families, and all their dependents, that they should pass over the bridge toll free, which right exists at the present time; and passengers are often very much astonished at hearing the exclamation of “Bishop!” shouted out by the stentorian lungs of bricklayers, carpenters, or others, who may be going to the palace, that being the pass-word for the privilege of going over. The architect of the bridge was the eminent surgeon, W. Cheselden, who died in 1752, and is buried in the graveyard attached to Chelsea Hospital. His tomb is close to the railings of the new road, leading from Sloane Street to the Suspension Bridge at Chelsea. Cheselden was for many years, surgeon of Chelsea Hospital.

The Swan Tavern

Standing by the Ferry is the Swan Tavern, acharacteristic old house, with a garden attached, looking on to the river, and scarcely altered in any of its features since Chatelaine published his views of “The most agreeable Prospects near London,” about 1740. It is a good specimen of a waterside inn, and appears to have been erected about the time of William III.

At the foot of the bridge is ‘The Eight Bells’ public-house, where the Fulham omnibuses leave for London.

Approach to Putney Bridge

Bridge Street brings us to the point at which we turned off at the termination of the High Street, and on the right-hand side as we look towards London is Church Street (formerly Windsor Street, according to Faulkner), leading up to the Ship Tavern, and thence into the King’s Road.

The Charity School is in Church Street. This building was erected in 1811.

Retracing our steps towards London, we come to the George at Walham Green, which turns off to the left. The church stands on the right hand side. Opposite Walham House, near the church, is North End Lodge, the residenceof the late Mr. Albert Smith, and where he died on the 23rd May, 1860. As novelist, dramatist, and lecturer, he had achieved considerable reputation; and his unexpected death, at the early age of forty-four, brought to a sudden close the most popular monologue entertainment of this, or of any, time. Mr. Smith was an amusing writer and a most genial companion, and was ever ready to assist a professional brother in the hour of need. Against the brick wall, close to the gate of North End Lodge, is a slab with the inscription “From Hyde Park Corner, 3 miles 17 yards.” We are now in North End, where there are many houses of interest which deserve attention; we will therefore go out of the direct road and return to London by way of North End.

north end.

North Endmay be described as a series of residences on each side the lane, more than a mile in length, which runs from the church at Walham Green to the main road from Kensington to Hammersmith. There were but few houses in it when Faulkner published his map in 1813. Market gardens were on both sides the road, and the gardeners cottagers were very old.Panelled DoorThe panelled door, here represented, was fitted to one of them, and evidently was fashioned in the seventeenth century. The celebrated bookseller, Jacob Tonson, lived for some time at North End. At York Cottage, which is on the right hand side of the road, about a quarter of a mile from the church, resided for many years Mr. J. B. Pyne, the landscape painter. At a short distance beyond, the road from Old Brompton crosses into Fulham Fields. Here, at one corner, is a house (Hermitage Lodge) which was originally constructed as stables to the residence ofFoote, the dramatist and comedian,[196]which still stands on the opposite side of the road leading to Brompton, and where he lived for many years, expending large sums upon its improvement. It is now called “The Hermitage,” and is completely surrounded by a large garden enclosed by high walls.

Hermitage Lodge (1844) and The Hermitage

Exactly opposite to this house, in the angle of the road, stands an old house in a moderate-sized garden (Cambridge Lodge). Francis Bartolozzi, the celebrated engraver, who arrived in England in 1764, came to reside here in 1777. He was born at Florence in 1730, and died at Lisbon in 1813. His son, Gaetano Bartolozzi, father to the late Madame Vestris, was born in 1757, and died August 25th, 1813. Passing up the road, beside market gardens, is the old garden wall of Normand House, with some curious brick gates (now closed in): the house is very old; thedate, 1661, is in the centre arch, over the principal gateway, and it is said to have been used as a hospital for persons recovering from the Great Plague in 1665.Bartolozzi’s HouseSir E. Bulwer Lytton has resided here. In 1813 “it was appropriated for the reception of insane ladies” (Faulkner), and it is now a lunatic asylum for ladies, with the name of “Talfourd” on a brass plate. A little further on the road, out of which we have turned, is a cottage to the right named Wentworth Cottage. Here Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall once resided. The willow in front of the cottage was planted by them from a slip of that over the grave of Napoleon at St. Helena. The land opposite this cottage is now to be let on building lease. This district, now known as “Fulham Fields,” was formerly called “No Man’s Land,” and according to Faulkner, the local historian, contained, in 1813, “about six houses.” One of these was “an ancient house, once the residence of the family of Plumbe,” which was pulled down about twenty-three years ago, and replaced by a cluster of dwellings for the labourers in the surrounding market gardens, which extend from Walham Green nearly to the Thames in a north-west direction; “the North End Road,” as it is called, forming the eastern boundary of “Fulham Fields.” To establishthe connection of Sylvester’s lines, quoted in the late Mr. Crofton Croker’s Paper on the “Golden Lion,” with this locality, the antiquary who pointed it out observed that—

“Our poet had an uncle named William Plumbe, who resided at North End, Fulham, having married the widow of John Gresham, the second son of Sir John Gresham, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1547, and which lady was the only daughter and heir of Edward Dormer of Fulham. Here it was, while visiting his uncle, that Sylvester formed the attachment which is the subject of his poem (see the folio edition of his works, 1621). Uncle Plumbe had been a widower; and from monuments which exist, or existed, in the parish church of Fulham, appears to have departed this life on the 9th February, 1593–4, aged sixty. In the previous May, his widow had lost her son Edmund (or Edward) Gresham, at the age of sixteen; and seriously touched by the rapid proofs of mortality within her house, from which the hand of death had within twelve months removed both a husband and a child, made preparations for her own demise by recording her intention to repose beside their remains: and to her husband’s memory she raised, in Fulham Church, a monument ‘of alabaster, inlaid and ornamented with various-coloured marble,’ leaving a space after her name for the insertion of the date of her death and age, which appear never to have been supplied.”

The arms of “Dormer, impaled with Gresham,” we are told remain, “those of Plumbe are gone.” Sylvester’s “Triumph of Faith” is consecrated “to the grateful memory of the first kind fosterer of our tender Muses, by my never sufficiently honoured dear uncle, W. Plumb, Esq.” It is not our intention to linger over the recollections connected with the age of Elizabeth in Fulham Fields or at North End, although there can be no doubt that a little research might bring some curious local particulars to light connected with the history of the literature, the drama, and the fine arts of that period,

The gardens here provide the London markets with a large supply of vegetables. A very primitive form of draw-well was common here, consisting of a pole, balanced horizontally on an upright, the bucket being affixed to a rope at one end.Draw-wellThe pole is pulled downward for the bucket to descend the well, and when filled, is raised by the weight of wood attached to the opposite end of the pole. This mode of raising water is still in use in the East, and Wilkinson, in his ‘Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians,’ Series I. vol. ii. p. 4, has engraved representations of this machine, from paintings on the walls of Thebes, of the time of the Pharaohs.Cottage in Fulham FieldsIn “Fulham Fields” are still standing many old cottages, inhabited by market-gardeners. A sketch, taken in 1844, of one of the best examples then existing, is here given as a specimen.

A little beyond “Wentworth Cottage,” the road branches off, the turning to the right going to Hammersmith, and that to the left leading to Fulham. Hammersmith was a part of Fulham until 1834, when it was formed into a separate parish by Act of Parliament.

Elm HouseReturning to the lane at North End, immediately beyond Bartolozzi’s house, is an old wall, apparently of the time of Charles II., enclosing a tall peculiar-looking house, now called Elm House, once the residence of Cheeseman the engraver, of whom little is known, except that he was a pupil of Bartolozzi, and lived in Newman Street about thirty years ago. He is said to have been very fond of music, and having a small independence and less ambition, he was content to engrave but little, and with his violoncello and musical friends, passed a very happy life.

A little further on the opposite side of the road stood Walnut-Tree Cottage (pulled down in 1846), once the residence of Edmund Kean, and also of Copley the artist, which took its name from the tree in the fore-court.Walnut-Tree CottageWe then come to the North End Sunday and Day Schools, erected in 1857. The road here curves round by the wall of Kensington Hall, a large mansion on the right, built by Slater, the well-knownbutcher of Kensington, and it has been called in consequence Slater’s Mansion. It is at present a school, kept by Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, but it is to be let or sold.

A little further to the left is Deadman’s Lane. Here, in the midst of garden grounds, stands a venerable and isolated fabric, which would appear to have been built in the reign of James I. This lane leads to Hammersmith, but a more agreeable way has been made opposite Edith Villas, called Edith Road. The land is to be let on building lease; and here once stood the house of Cipriani, the painter.Cipriani’s HouseCipriani was born at Florence, in 1727, and died in London in 1785. He came to England in 1755; and he was one of the members of the Royal Academy at its foundation in 1769, when he was employed to make the design for the diploma given to Academicians and Associates on their admission, which was engraved by Bartolozzi. The character and works of this artist are thus described by Fuseli: “The fertility of his invention, the graces of his composition, and the seductive elegance of his forms, were only surpassed by the probity of his character, the simplicity of his manners, and the benevolence of his heart.” A few plates were engraved by himself after his own designs.

Another curve of the road brings us to the site of Dr. Crotch’s house, where a row of houses, called Grove Cottages, have been built.Dr. Crotch’s HouseDr. Crotch was, in 1797, at the early age of twenty-two, appointed Professor of Music in the University of Oxford, where he received the degree of Doctor of Music. In 1822 he was appointed Principal of the Royal Academy of Music. He performed for the last time in public in 1834 in Westminster Abbey, during the royal festival, and died 20th December, 1847, while sitting at dinner. Dr. Crotch has composed numerous pieces for the organ and pianoforte, and published, in 1812, ‘Elements of Musical Composition and Thorough Bass,’ and subsequently specimens of various styles of music of all ages. W. Wynne Ryland, the engraver, lived in this house before Dr. Crotch inhabited it.

Opposite where Dr. Crotch’s house formerly stood, facing a turning which is called on one side Lawn Terrace, on the other Ashton Terrace, is a large brick mansion inhabited by Richardson the novelist before his removal to Parson’s Green. It is of the period of William III., the appearance of which may be recognized from the annexed sketch. In the garden was a summer-house, in which the novelist wrote before the family were up, and he afterwards, at thebreakfast table, communicated the progress of his story.House of RichardsonHow little the exterior has been altered in the last fifty years, a comparison of this sketch, made in 1844, with the print prefixed to the 4th volume of Richardson’s ‘Correspondence,’ will show at a glance. Sir Richard Phillips’s print was published by him May 26, 1804. Then, as now, this mansion was divided into two houses, and the half nearest to the eye was that occupied by the novelist, the other half was the residence of a Mr. Vanderplank, a name which frequently occurs in ‘Richardson’s Correspondence.’ Richardson’s house has been subsequently inhabited by the late Sir William and Lady Boothby, the latter, better known to the public as that charming actress Mrs. Nisbett. A few extracts from ‘Richardson’s Correspondence’ may here prove interesting.

One of the most romantic incidents in the business-like and hospitable life of Richardson, was his correspondence with, and introduction to Lady Bradshaigh, the wife of a Lancashire Baronet, whom he tried to prevail upon to visit him at North End. After the appearance of the fourth volume of Clarissa Harlowe, a lady, who signed herself Belfour, wrote to Richardson, stating a report that prevailed, that the history of Clarissa was to terminate in amost tragical manner, and requesting that her entreaties may avert so dreadful a catastrophe.

This correspondence with Mrs. Belfour commenced in October, 1748; and she thus concludes her letter to the novelist, her ladyship taking care to mystify her identity by giving her address, Post-office, Exeter, although resident at Haigh in Lancashire. “If you disappoint me,” she writes, “attend to my curse.”

“May the hatred of all the young, beautiful, and virtuous for ever be your portion, and may your eyes never behold anything but age and deformity! May you meet with applause only from envious old maids, surly bachelors, and tyrannical parents; may you be doomed to the company of such! and after death may their ugly souls haunt you!“Now make Lovelace and Clarissa unhappy if you dare!“Perhaps you may think all this proceeds from a giddy girl of sixteen; but know I am past my romantic time of life, though young enough to wish two lovers happy in a married state. As I myself am in that class, it makes me still more anxious for the lovely pair. I have a common understanding, and middling judgment, for one of my sex, which I tell you for fear you should not find it out.”

“Now make Lovelace and Clarissa unhappy if you dare!

“Perhaps you may think all this proceeds from a giddy girl of sixteen; but know I am past my romantic time of life, though young enough to wish two lovers happy in a married state. As I myself am in that class, it makes me still more anxious for the lovely pair. I have a common understanding, and middling judgment, for one of my sex, which I tell you for fear you should not find it out.”

The correspondence thus commenced goes on, until the vanity of Richardson induces him to describe to his unknown correspondent his private circumstances: and to a hint given in the January following by Lady Bradshaigh, of her intention to visit London before she is a year older, when she “shall long to see” Mr. Richardson, and “perhaps may contrivethat, though unknown to him,” he replies,—

“But do not, my dear correspondent (still let me call you so) say, that you will see me,unknown to myself, when you come to town. Permit me to hope, that you will not be personally a stranger to me then.”

This is followed by an acknowledgment from Madame Belfour, that she is not his “Devonshire lady,” having but very little knowledge of the place, though she has a friend there; observing archly, “Lancashire, if you please;” adding an invitation, if he is inclined to take a journey of two hundred miles, with the promise of “a most friendly reception from two persons, who have great reason to esteem” him “a very valuable acquaintance.”

Richardson responded to this invitation by another—

“But I will readily come into any proposal you shall make, to answer the purpose of your question; and if you will be so cruel as to keep yourself still incognito, will acquiesce. I wish you would accept of our invitation on your coming to town.But three little miles from Hyde Park Corner. I keep no vehicle.”

(This was before the age of omnibuses.)

—“but one should be at yours, and at your dear man’s command, as long as you should both honour us with your presence. You shall be only the sister, the cousin, the niece—the what you please of my incognito, and I will never address you as other than what you choose to pass for. If you knew, Madam, you would not question that I am in earnest on this occasion; the less question it, as that at my little habitation near Hammersmith, I have common conveniences, though not splendid ones, to make my offer good.”

Richardson, in the letter from which this passage has been extracted, is again led away by his vanity into a description of his person, and very plainly hints at a meeting in the Park, through which he goes “once or twice a week to” his “little retirement.” He describes himself as

“Short, rather plump than emaciated, about five foot five inches; fair wig; lightish cloth coat, all black besides; one hand generally in his bosom, the other a cane in it, which he leans upon under theskirts of his coat usually, that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support, when attacked by sudden tremors or startings and dizziness.” . . . “Of a light-brown complexion; teeth not yet failing him; smoothish faced and ruddy cheeked; at some times looking to be about sixty-five, at other times much younger; a regular even pace, stealing away ground, rather than seeming to get rid of it; a grey eye, too often overclouded by mistiness from the head; by chance lively—very lively it will be if he have hope of seeing a lady whom he loves and honours; his eye always on the ladies”—and so on.

In return to this description, Lady Bradshaigh on the 16th December, 1749, half promises a meeting in an appointed place, for she tells the elderly gentleman with “a grey eye, too often overclouded by mistiness from the head,” but “by chance lively,” “that she will attend the Park every fine warm day, between the hours of one and two. I do not,” adds this perfect specimen of a literary coquette,

“Say this to put you in the least out of your way, or make you stay a moment longer than your business requires; for a walk in the Park is an excuse she uses for her health; and as she designs staying some months in town, if she misses you one day she may have luck another.”

And Lady Bradshaigh proceeds to present, as if in ridicule of Richardson’s portrait as drawn by himself, her own.

“In surprise or eagerness she is apt to think aloud; and since you have a mind to seeher, who has seen the King, I give you the advantage of knowing she is middle aged, middle sized, a degree above plump, brown as an oak wainscot, a good deal of country red in her cheeks: altogether a plain woman, but nothing remarkably forbidding.”

Any one might think that a meeting would immediately have followed these communications, and that the novel-writer and the novel-reader would have presentedthemselves to each other’s gaze for admiration, at the time and place appointed, and thus the affair which their letters have left upon record might have been satisfactorily wound up in one volume. But this did not accord with the sentimental typographical taste of the times, which required the dilution of an idea into seven or eight volumes to make it palatable. For we are told that a young Cantab, who, when asked if he had read Clarissa, replied, “D---n it, I would not read it through to save my life,” was set down as an incurable dunce. And that a lady reading to her maid, whilst she curled her hair, the seventh volume of Clarissa, the poor girl let fall such a shower of tears that they wetted her mistress’s head so much, she had to send her out of the room to compose herself. Upon the maid being asked the cause of her grief, she said, “Oh, madam, to see such goodness and innocence in such distress,” and her lady rewarded her with a crown for the answer.

January the 9th (1749–50) has arrived—the tantalizing Lady Bradshaigh, the unknown Mrs. Belfour has been in London six weeks, and the novelist begins “not to know what to think” of his fair correspondent’s wish to see him. “May be so,” he writes,

“But with such a desire to be in town three weeks; on the 16th December to be in sight of my dwelling, and three weeks more to elapse, yet I neither to see or hear of the lady; it cannot be that she has so strong a desire.”

Let any one imagine the ridiculousness of the situation of “dear, good, excellent Mr. Richardson” at this time. He had, he confesses,

“Such a desire to see one who had seen the King, that” (he speakingof himself, says) “though prevented by indisposition from going to my little retirement on the Saturday, that I had the pleasure of your letter, I went into the Park on Sunday (it being a very fine day) in hopes of seeing such a lady as you describe, contenting myself with dining as I walked, on a sea biscuit which I had put in my pocket, my family at home, all the time, knowing not what was become of me.—A Quixotte!“Last Saturday, being a fine warm day, in my way to North End, I walked backwards and forwards in the Mall, till past your friend’s time of being there (she preparing, possibly, for the Court, being Twelfth Night!) and I again was disappointed.”

“Last Saturday, being a fine warm day, in my way to North End, I walked backwards and forwards in the Mall, till past your friend’s time of being there (she preparing, possibly, for the Court, being Twelfth Night!) and I again was disappointed.”

On the 28th January, nineteen days after this was written, Lady Bradshaigh, in a letter full of satirical banter, which, however, it may be questionable if Richardson did not receive as replete with the highest compliments to his genius, says,

“Indeed, Sir, I resolved, if ever I came to town, to find out your haunts, if possible, and I have not ‘said anything that is not,’ nor am at all naughty in this respect, for I give you my word, endeavours have not been wanting. You never go to public places. I knew not where to look for you (without making myself known) except in the Park, which place I have frequented most warm days. Once I fancied I met you; I gave a sort of a fluttering start, and surprised my company; but presently recollected you would not deceive me by appearing in a grey, instead of a whitish coat; besides the cane was wanting, otherwise I might have supposed you in mourning.”

Could anything exceed this touch about “a grey, instead of a whitish coat,” except the finishing one of the “mole upon your left cheek?”

“To be sure on the Saturday you mention, I was dressing for court, as you supposed, and have never been in the Park upon a Sunday; but you cannot be sure that I have not seen you. How came I to know that you have a mole upon your left cheek? But not to make myself appear more knowing than I am, I’ll tell you, Sir, that I have only seen you in effigy, in company with your Clarissa at Mr. Highmore’s, where I design making you another visit shortly.”

All this and much more is followed by a most tantalizing and puzzling P.S. to poor Richardson. His fair, or rather “brown as an oak-wainscot, with a good deal-of-country-red in her cheeks” correspondent, requests him “to direct only to C. L., and enclose it to Miss J., to be left at Mrs. G.’s” etc. etc., previously observing that, “whenever there happens to be a fine Saturday I shall look for you in the Park, that being the day on which I suppose you are called that way.”

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