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diff --git a/old/62807-0.txt b/old/62807-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 3db8ecc..0000000 --- a/old/62807-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4080 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, Old Chelsea, by Benjamin Ellis Martin, -Illustrated by Joseph Pennell - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: Old Chelsea - A Summer-Day's Stroll - - -Author: Benjamin Ellis Martin - - - -Release Date: August 1, 2020 [eBook #62807] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD CHELSEA*** - - -Transcribed from the 1889 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David Price, email -ccx074@pglaf.org - - [Picture: Statue of Thomas Carlyle, by Boehm] - - - - - - OLD CHELSEA - _A SUMMER-DAY’S STROLL_ - - - BY - BENJAMIN ELLIS MARTIN - - ILLUSTRATED BY JOSEPH PENNELL - - [Picture: Gateway of Rossetti’s old house] - - London - T FISHER UNWIN - 26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE - 1889 - - - - -NOTE. - - -THE stroll described in these pages may be imagined to be taken during -the summer of 1888: all the dates, descriptions, and references herein -having been brought down to the present moment. - -The specimen of Old Chelsea ware on the cover is an accurate copy—reduced -in size, naturally—of one of the plates of the set belonging once to Dr. -Johnson, now in Holland House. For the privilege of this unique -reproduction I am indebted to the courtesy of Lady Holland. - - B. E. M. - -LONDON, _August_, 1888 - - - - -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. - - PAGE -STATUE OF THOMAS CARLYLE, BY BOEHM _Frontispiece_ -THE EMBANKMENT MANSIONS FROM BATTERSEA 16 -A VIEW OF CHELSEA 21 -STEAMBOAT PIER AT OLD BATTERSEA BRIDGE, AND THE 26 -RIVER FRONT, TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO -THE EMBANKMENT AND OLD BATTERSEA BRIDGE 29 -MAP OF CHELSEA 35 -THE HOUSES AT CHELSEA 56 -LINDSEY HOUSE AND BATTERSEA BRIDGE 59 -SANDFORD MANOR HOUSE, SAND’S END 64 -CHELSEA HOSPITAL, RIVER FRONT 72 -PARADISE ROW 88 -TITE STREET 99 -STATUE OF SIR HANS SLOANE IN THE BOTANIC GARDENS 103 -NO. 4, CHEYNE WALK 107 -GATEWAY OF ROSSETTI’S OLD HOUSE 110 -DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI’S GARDEN 114 -DON SALTERO’S 123 -CHEYNE WALK, WITH THE MAGPIE AND STUMP 127 -A CHELSEA CORNER 133 -STATUE OF THOMAS CARLYLE, BY BOEHM 136 -CARLYLE’S HOUSE, GREAT CHEYNE ROW 139 -THE CHELSEA RECTORY 144 -A CORNER IN CHELSEA OLD CHURCH 154 -OLD BATTERSEA CHURCH, WHERE BLAKE WAS MARRIED, 164 -SHOWING THE WINDOW FROM WHICH TURNER SKETCHED -THE WESTERN END OF CHEYNE WALK 167 -TURNER’S LAST DWELLING-PLACE 171 -BATTERSEA BRIDGE AND CHURCH FROM TURNER’S HOUSE 176 - - * * * * * - - “OUT of monuments, names, wordes, proverbs, traditions, private - recordes and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of bookes, and - the like, we doe save and re-cover somewhat from the deluge of - Time.”—_Bacon_, “_Advancement of Learning_”, _Book II_. - - “I have always loved to wander over the scenes inhabited by men I - have known, admired, loved, or revered, as well amongst the living as - the dead. The spots inhabited and preferred by a great man during - his passage on the earth have always appeared to me the surest and - most speaking relic of himself: a kind of material manifestation of - his genius—a mute revelation of a portion of his soul—a living and - sensible commentary on his life, actions, and thoughts.”—_Lamartine_, - “_Pilgrimage to the Holy Land_.” - - “The man that is tired of London is tired of existence.”—_Samuel - Johnson_. - - - - -_Old Chelsea_. - - - [Picture: The embankment mansions from Battersea] - -I HAD strolled, on a summer day, from Apsley House towards the then -residence of Charles Reade at Knightsbridge, when I came upon one of -those surprises of which London is still so full to me, even after more -than a dozen years of fond familiarity with its streets and with all that -they mean to the true lover of the Town. For, as I watched the ceaseless -traffic of the turbulent turnings from the great thoroughfare down -towards Chelsea, there came to my mind a phrase in the pages of its local -historian: who, writing but a little earlier than the year 1830, points -with pride to a project just then formed for the laying out of the latest -of these very streets—at that day it was a new rural road cut through -fields and swamps—and by it, he says, “Chelsea will obtain direct -connection with London; and henceforth must be considered an integral -part of the Great Metropolis of the British Empire”! It is hard to -realise that only fifty years ago Chelsea was a rustic and retired -village, far from London: even as was Islington, fifty years ago, when -Charles Lamb, pensioned and set free from his desk in the India House, -retired to that secluded spot with his sister to live “in a cottage, with -a spacious garden,” as he wrote; with “the New River, rather elderly by -this time, running in front (if a moderate walking pace can be so -termed)”: even as was Kensington—“the old court suburb pleasantly -situated on the great Western road”—just fifty years ago, when wits and -statesmen drove between fields and market gardens to the rival courts of -Gore House and of Holland House; and N. P. Willis delighted the feminine -readers of the _New York Mirror_ with his gossip about his visits to Lady -Blessington and about the celebrities who bowed before her. To-day all -these villages, along with many even more remote, are one with London. -Yet, more than any of them, has Chelsea kept its old village -character—albeit preserving but few of its old village features. Of the -many magnificent mansions which gave it the name of “The Village of -Palaces” five alone still stand—Blacklands, Gough, Lindsey, Stanley and -Walpole Houses—and these are greatly altered. I shall show you all of -them in our stroll to-day. In between them, and away beyond them, -streets have been cut, new quarters built: made up in part of “genteel” -villas and rows of respectable residences; but in great part, also, of -cheap dwellings, of small and shabby shops. These extremes render much -of modern Chelsea utterly uninteresting, except mayhap to the collector -of rents or to the inspector of nuisances. Yet much of that which is -truly ancient and honourable has been fondly kept untouched, and not -ignobly cleaned, as in next-door Kensington. Alongside this artistic -squalor we have the curious contrast of artistic splendour in a blazing, -brand-new quarter, of which the sacred centre is Tite Street. Here, amid -much that is good and genuine in our modern manner, there is an -aggressive affectation of antiquity shown by the little houses and -studios obtruding on the street, by the grandiose piles of mansions -towering on the embankment: all in raging red brick, and in the so-called -Queen Anne style. The original article, deadly dull and decorous as it -may be, has yet a decent dignity of its own as a real relic, not found in -this painful pretence of ancient quaintness. This is a quarter, however, -much in vogue; mighty swells dwell here, and here pose some famous -_farceurs_ in art and literature; here, too, work many earnest men and -women in all pursuits of life. These latter plentifully people every -part of Chelsea, for the sake of the seclusion and the stillness they -seek and here find: just as there settled here for the same reasons, two -centuries ago and earlier, men of learning and of wealth, scholars and -nobles, who kept themselves exclusive by virtue of their birth or their -brains. And so this privileged suburb, - - “Where fruitful Thames salutes the learned shore,” - -came to be in time a place of polite resort: while yet, in the words of -Macaulay, it was but “a quiet country village of about one thousand -inhabitants, the baptisms therein averaging a little more than forty in -the year.” On the slope which rises from the river—as we see it in our -print of those days—stand, in trim gardens, the grand mansions which -first made the little village famous. Back from these isolated houses -and between them stretch fair fields, and fertile meadows, and wooded -slopes; and along the river bank runs a row of fishermen’s thatched -cottages. Here and there on the shore, are nestled noted taverns and -pleasure-gardens, much frequented by town visitors, reputable or not, -coming up the river on excursions—as does Pepys, “to make merry at the -Swan.” Gay sings of the place and the period: - - “Then Chelsey’s meads o’erhear perfidious vows, - And the press’d grass defrauds the grazing cows.” - -The low river shore, planted with lime and plane trees, is protected by a -slight embankment: first built by the Romans on the banks above their -walled town of London: improved later by the Norman conquerors; and kept -in repair afterward either by landlord or by tenant, as might be decided -in the incessant disputes between them, still shown on the parish records -of that day. This little embankment is broken here and there by carved -gateways, giving entrance to the grand houses; and by water -staircases—called, in our print, Ranelagh, Bishop’s, Old Magpye, Beaufort -Stairs—from which a few country lanes—such as Pound and Church Lanes and -Cheyne Row—lead from the river front to the King’s Road. This road had -been first a foot-path following the windings of the river a little -inland—worn perhaps by the feet of the wandering tribes of -Trinobantes—and had gradually enlarged itself as the country around -became cultivated. It led from the village of Whitehall through the -woods and fields, across the tidal swamps and the marsh lands west of -Westminster—partly filled in by the great Cubitt with the earth dug out -in the excavations of St. Katherine’s docks, early in this century: where -now stretches graceful St. James’s Park, where now Belgravia is built so -bravely—and so the road ran to the slopes of Chelsea, to the first good -land close alongside the river which rose fairly above it. - - [Picture: A view of Chelsea] - -Such was the secret of the speedy settlement of this secluded suburb. It -was high and healthy, and had easy access to town by the safe, swift, -silent highway of the river; when few cared to go by the land road, bad -enough at its best, unsafe even in daylight by reason of the foot-pads; -but at last made wide and smooth for his coach by Charles II., recently -restored. He used it as the royal route to Hampton Palace, and called it -the King’s Private Road. Even that exclusive name did not serve to make -it safe; and long after Chelsea Hospital was built, a guard of its -pensioners nightly patrolled, as an escort for honest travellers, from -where Buckingham Palace now stands, across Bloody Bridge,—at the edge of -present Pimlico,—and so away through the Five Fields, “where robbers lie -in wait,” as the _Tatler_ puts it. For Mr. Dick Steele often went by -this road to Chelsea, where he had a little house somewhere near the -river bank: whereto he was fond of taking “a friend to supper,” leaving -word at home that he should not be able to return until the next morning, -the roads being so unsafe by night! Sometimes his friend Addison was -with him; sometimes the latter walked this way alone to his own home, at -the farther end of Chelsea; and once on a moonlight night, he strolled -out here with Colonel Esmond, as you may remember. A few years later, -this same walk was frequently taken by Mr. Jonathan Swift, from Mrs. -Vanhomrigh’s house in Suffolk Street, Pall Mall—where he used to leave -his “best gown and periwig,” as he tells Stella—“and so to Chelsea, a -little beyond the Church.” And still later, in December, 1754, Smollett -was robbed of his watch and purse—there was but little in the latter, for -he was then in poor case—as he went by coach from London to his residence -out in Chelsea. - - [Picture: Steamboat Pier at Old Battersea Bridge, and the river front, - twenty-five years ago] {26} - -“King’s Road,” as we see it to-day, in dingy letters on the old brick or -plaster-fronted houses, makes us almost look for the Merry Monarch—as -history has mis-named one of her saddest figures—driving past, on his way -to Hampton Court, in company with a bevy of those beauties who still lure -our senses from out their canvasses on the walls of the old palace. We -see, at intervals along the road, behind its rusty iron railings and -flagged front-yard and old-time porch, a long low brick house, - - . . . “whose ancient casements stare - Like sad, dim eyes, at the retreating years,” - -as if weary of waiting for their owner to come home from the Dutch wars. -Through narrow archways we catch glimpses of trees and of gardens. -Turning down a rural lane we stroll into “The Vale,” and find a clump of -cottages, covered with vines, grown about with greenery; flowers blow, -cocks crow, an air of country unconcern covers the enclosure. The French -gardeners who came here in crowds in 1685, after the Revocation of the -Edict of Nantes, and set Chelsea all a-bloom with their nurseries, have -left to their heirs but a diminished domain; yet although Butterfly -Alley, sought by sauntering swells, has gone, King’s Road is still -countrified by its florists: their famous wistarias grow on the Hospital -walls and climb the houses of Cheyne Walk: you still find their fig-trees -in private gardens, their vines on old-fashioned trellises: they make -Chelsea streets all green and golden with their massed creepers through -summer and through autumn. In unexpected corners you will stumble on a -collection of cosy cottages, like Camera Square; there are a few rural -nooks still left; here and there a woodland walk; and in dairies hid -behind stone streets the cow is milked for you while you wait to drink -the warm milk. - -And on the river bank, although the old Roman and the old Norman wall and -walk are replaced by the broad new Embankment and its smug gardens; -although the insolent affectations of the Queen Anne mania stare stonily -down on Cheyne Walk; all these have not been able to vulgarise this most -delightful of promenades. Starting from Chelsea Barracks we can still -walk under the old plane trees:—on our right the ancient Dutch-fronted -houses, so prim, so secluded, so reserved; on our left the placid flow of -the storied Thames, broadened here into Chelsea Reach:—to dingy, dear old -Battersea Bridge, and so on to Sand’s End. At each end of our walk are -the two small rivulets which bounded the old parish east and west; one is -now arched over and flows unseen beneath the tread of busy feet; the -other serves as a railway cutting and carries rattling trains: so the -old-time memories of the place now either flow underground, or are -modernised and become part of its daily life. - - [Picture: The Embankment and Old Battersea Bridge] - -In the extreme north-eastern corner as we enter Chelsea we find Hans -Place, a secluded green oval, built about with old-time two-storied brick -houses. In No. 25 was born in 1802 the poetess, Letitia E. Landon, known -as “L. E. L.”; and at No. 22 she went to school. {31} At the farthest -south-western point of the parish, just over on the border of Fulham, -stands the old house once tenanted by Nell Gwynne. At the northern end -of Church Street, opposite the Jewish burial ground, is a public-house, -“The Queen’s Elm,” perpetuating the memory of the tree, there standing -until very lately, under which Elizabeth sought shelter from a shower, -when strolling in the fields with Burleigh on one of her frequent visits -to Chelsea. On the southern, the river, border of the parish, lived -George Eliot; and here, at No. 4, Cheyne Walk, she died. Between these -spots, marked by the memories of these four women, so far apart in time, -rank, and character, how much of history and romance do we traverse! - -In taking you for a stroll to-day through Old Chelsea we will not stop to -puzzle over the etymology of the name; whether it came from the Saxon, -_Chelchythe_, or from _Chesel_, meaning gravel, and _ea_, meaning a bank: -nor trace it back to its earliest appearance in Saxon chronicles, in 745, -as the Hundred of Ossulston, Middlesex. You may see, if you choose, in -the British Museum, the Charter of Edward the Confessor giving the “Manor -of Chelsey to the Abbot and brothers of the Ministers of the West,” by -whom it was rented for four pounds yearly. But it will not add to the -interest of our stroll to learn that when it was a residence of Offa, -King of the Mercians, there was a “Geflit-fullic” held here; nor that -they had “a contentious synod.” Nor shall we altogether partake of the -joy of one Maitland, sounding for many a day up and down the river, and -at last finding, on the eighteenth of September, 1732, the very ford -between Chelsea and Battersea, traversed by Cæsar’s army in pursuit of -the flying Britons. For several centuries after the Conquest, the names -Chelcheth or Chelchith were used indifferently; in the sixteenth century -it began to be written Chelsey; and it is only since about 1795 that the -modern spelling has prevailed. - -Among the archives of Chelsea may be seen the will, dated in 1369, of the -Earl of Warwick; and we know that long before that year he had come here -with the prestige of his prowess at Poictiers, his courage at Cressy, and -had built himself a house—the first great nobleman’s house erected here. -But we do not know where it stood, nor anything more of it, than that it -was afterwards leased by Richard III. to the widowed Duchess of Norfolk -for the yearly rental of one red rose. - -Sir Thomas More’s is the first house, as well as the fullest of human -interest, of which we have any authentic record in Chelsea; and it was he -who laid the foundations of the prosperity of the place. He built it for -himself in 1520: glad to go from narrow Bucklersbury in the City to sweet -sights and sounds and air for his young children. For more than two -centuries his house stood here, tenanted by many families, famous and -infamous, until 1740, when it was pulled down. It is a labour of love, -and no difficult one, to reconstruct it as Bowack saw it: “This house is -between 200 and 300 feet in length, has a stately ancient front towards -the Thames, also two spacious courtyards, and behind it are _very fine -gardens_. It is so pleasantly situated that the late Queen Mary had a -great desire to purchase it before King William built Kensington Palace, -but was prevented by some secret obstacles.” An old view signed “L. -Knyff del: 1699,” shows us a projecting porch in the centre, a dozen or -more generous windows on each floor, four of them oriel; and above, many -gables, turrets, and a small tower. The back view crowds together, in -picturesque confusion, a mass of casements, close packed gables, and -jutting pent-houses. Such was “this pore howse in Chelchith” from which -More dated one of his letters; and Erasmus wrote of it that it was -“neither mean nor invidiously grand, and so subject to envy, yet -commodious enough.” It stood on the slope a little back from the river, -half-way up to the King’s Road, about where Beaufort Street now runs. A -spacious garden lay in front, too, wherein the great Chancellor was wont -to walk, as well as on the gate-house, which, in the words of Aubrey, -“was flatt on the top, leaded, from whence is a most pleasant prospect of -the Thames and the fields beyond.” Sometimes he walked with his guest -Holbein; sometimes with his friend Ellis Heywood, poet and playwright, -who wrote warmly about “this enchanting spot”; sometimes with his King, -Henry VIII., who, still posing as a good Catholic and Defender of the -Faith, used to come up the river, drop into dinner, and saunter afterward -in the garden, his arm about More’s neck. The son-in-law, Roper, records -this with delight, “never having seen the King so familiar with any one -else, except Wolsey.” More knew just what all this was worth, and that -his head would count, with the king, for nothing against “say a French -city or a citadel.” Wolsey’s fate—the fate of so many others—howbeit -warned none of the rest; else could they not have forgotten that to every -neck on which had hung that royal ruffian’s arm the axe soon came; and -that to be his friend was only a little less dangerous than to be his -wife. - - [Picture: Map of Chelsea] - -In this garden were the stocks for heretics, and the “Jesus tree,” or -tree of troth, whereat they were flogged; for More was fond of -suppressing heresy, and failing that, he used to suppress the heretics, -by flinging them into prison. The resolute old Catholic denied that he -had ever laid hands on a dissident, but it is certain that some one did -so by his orders. Near his house he had put up the “newe buildinge, for -the entertainment of distressed old men and women;” and therein was a -small chapel, where he spent much time, praying, and scourging himself -with a knotted cord; wearing next his skin the hair shirt which is still -preserved in the convent of Spilsberg. He was fond of assisting in the -service at the old church, carrying the cross in the procession, and -doing divers duties “like a parish clerk.” One day the Duke of Norfolk, -coming out to dine with him, “fortuned to finde him in the quier with a -surplisse on his backe, singinge:” at the sight of which servile service, -the good worldly duke was moved to wrathful remonstrance. - -All this rigidity in religion was but the natural stand of a strong -character against the drift of the times and the current that was -carrying crowds down with the king; and it narrowed none in the least -this man’s broad spirit, nor touched for the worse his quaint, gentle -humour, his fine wit, his sweet and wholesome nature. It was he who had -said, in better balanced days:—“A man may live for the next world, yet be -merry withal:” his was the dainty description of Jane Shore in her -youth:—“Proper she was and fair; nothing in hir body that you would have -changed, but if you would have wished hir somewhat higher;” and his that -pitiful picture of her old age and misery. It was of him that Erasmus -wrote these beautiful words: “There was not any man living who was so -affectionate to his children as he; and he loveth his old wife as well as -if she were a young maid.” Nor was she only “old,” but, in the words of -More’s grandson, “of good yeares, of no good favour nor complexion, nor -very rich; her disposition very near and worldly.” Moreover, she was his -second wife; and to her—selfish, grasping, hard, nagging—this man grandly -gave unswerving devotion to the very last. His was, indeed, an ideal -household into which I like to look; all dwelling together in -affectionate amity; father, mother, the son and his wife, the three -daughters—“the Moricæ”—and their husbands, with all the grandchildren; -and the orphan girl, Margery Giggs, adopted as a daughter by More, “and -as dear to him as if she were his own.” There is work for all, and “no -wrangling, no idle word was heard; no one was idle,” Erasmus tells us. -All the female folk study too—a rare thing then, for More was centuries -ahead of his time in his larger views of woman’s education, as he—the -greatest minister of Humanism—was in political and in mightier matters. -Pithily he put it: “It mattereth not, in harvest time, whether the corn -were sown by a man or a woman.” At his table—his dining-hour was -doubtless late, for he urges this boon among the other wise innovations -of his “Utopia”—met the “best society” of England, and famous foreign -guests. Perhaps it was here that Erasmus sat, greatest of scholars and -divines, himself easily first of all that notable band; admiring, as he -owns, Grocyn’s vast range of knowledge, and Linacre’s subtle, deep, fine -judgment; seeming to hear Plato speak, as he listens to Colet—him who -founded St. Paul’s School—and wondering “did nature ever frame a -disposition more gentle, more sweet, more happy,” than that of his host! - -From this home, More was taken to a prison, by his good King. He had -refused, by countenancing Henry’s divorce, to debase himself and his -great office, and had stepped down from it on May 16, 1533, with even -greater joy than he had stepped up to it on Wolsey’s disgrace, four years -previously. So he retired to this Chelsea mansion with but one hundred -pounds a year income left to him; after so many years of high and of -lucrative office. Here he bothered no more about public concerns, but -busied himself with the welfare of his household, preparing his family -and himself for the end which he saw coming. It came soon enough; and -when he refused to violate his conscience by acknowledging Henry’s -supremacy over that of the Pope as the head of the Church, and by taking -the oath of succession (under which Anne Boleyn’s children were to be -acknowledged the lawful heirs to the crown), he was carried down the -river to the Tower; and there imprisoned for a whole year, in the very -cell, it is said, wherein he had sat as grand inquisitor, aforetime -racking heretics. “Very nigh Heaven,” he said it was, looking up -contentedly from this narrow tenement. At nine o’clock of the morning of -July 16, 1535, he was led to the block on Tower Hill and there beheaded. -You may walk there and look on the place to-day: but lately found and -fixed on, railed in and paved. His courage and his constancy had never -once failed him, save as he was being brought back to his cell after his -trial in Westminster Hall; when his favourite daughter, Margaret Roper, -waiting among the crowd on Tower Wharf—learning his sentence by the token -of the blade of the headsman’s axe turned towards him—broke through the -guards, and clung to his neck, kissing him and sobbing, “Oh, my father!” -with no other words uttered. Then for a moment the father in him was -unmanned, as he moaned, “My Meg!” and kissed her for the last time. On -the morning of his execution he was cheerful and even jocular: “I pray -you, master Lieutenant,” said he at the scaffold-steps, “see me safe up, -and for my coming down I can shift for myself.” He put aside his beard -out of the axe’s reach—“for _it_ has never committed treason”—and so laid -his reverend head on the block; too noble a head to drop in so worthless -a cause. - -“A dauntless soul erect, who smiled at death,” is Thomson’s fitting -phrase. And Erasmus wrote: “All lament his death as the loss of their -own father or brother. I myself have seen tears come from those men who -never saw More. . . . How many souls hath that axe wounded which cut off -More’s head!” - -Where they buried his body has always been matter of conjecture. In a -record, printed in 1726, his great-grandson says: “His trunke was -interred in Chelsey Church, near the middle of the south wall;” but other -records tell us that it was inhumed beneath the Tower Chapel; and it -seems certain that no one will ever really know the truth about this. We -do know, however, that his head was exposed on a spike above London -Bridge, “where as traytors’ heads are sett upon poles; having remained -some moneths there, being to be cast into the Thames, because roome -should be made for diverse others, who in plentiful sorte suffered -martyrdome for the same supremacie.” It was taken away by Margaret -Roper, by bribery or stealth; “least—as she stoutly affirmed before the -Councell, being called before them for the same matter—it should be foode -for fishes; which she buried where she thought fittest.” This spot was -found—in 1835, after just three centuries of doubt—to be in the vault of -the Roper family in St. Dunstan’s Church, Canterbury: and there his head -remains to-day “in a leaden box something in the shape of a bee-hive, -open in the front, and with an iron grating before it.” - -In my visits to Canterbury, as I stroll down its delightful old street to -St. Dunstan’s, I pause always in front of the ancient carved stone -gateway—all that is left of the Roper mansion—fancying I see that devoted -daughter hurrying home, secretly and by night, carrying her beloved -burden in a silver casket: carrying it all the way in her own hands, -fearful of entrusting it to those of any other. Most lovable as well as -most learned among women—“her humility equal to her learning,” “no woman, -that could speak so well, did speak so little,” says old Fuller in his -“Worthies”—Margaret Roper holds her high place among the Fair Women of -England, and her story is very near the first in the Legend of Good -Women. - - “Morn broadened on the borders of the dark, - Ere I saw her, who clasped in the last trance - Her murder’d father’s head.” - -And, amid all the thronging shadows which people Chelsea’s shore, there -walks no more vivid personality than his, as it moves before us through -all his characteristic career; from the day he was taken from his school -in Threadneedle Street, and made page-boy to Cardinal Morten, who said of -him, seeing already his promise of wit and of worth: “This child here, -waiting at table, whosoever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous -man;” then to Oxford on his scanty allowance; thence to New Inn and to -Lincoln’s Inn, studying law by his father’s desire, albeit longing -himself for the pulpit; then law-reader of Furnivall’s Inn, whence he was -called to the bar at the age of twenty-one, and so going to live -“religiously yet without vow” in the Charter-House; lecturing in St. -Lawrence, Old Jewry, on Augustine’s “City of God,” listened to by “all -the chief learned of London”; patiently practising his profession, taking -“no fee of Widow, Orphane, or poor person”; becoming famous, near and -far, for his capacity, learning, integrity; and thus elected to the House -of Commons when only twenty-three, and soon made Speaker; rapidly rising -to the highest place in the realm, that of Lord High Chancellor; and -then, as he passed daily to his seat on the woolsack, stopping always -before his aged father, who sat, as judge of the court of the King’s -Bench, in William Rufus’s Hall at Westminster, and “reverently kneeling -down in the sight of all, ask his blessing.” - -In the gallery of Old Masters at Brussels, I found lately, after long -searching, a diminutive dark canvas set in a black frame, with a small -gilt column on each side; its tiny tablet bears the inscription: “Holbein -le jeune, 1497–1543. Thomas Morus.” This most attractive painting shows -a table on which lies a small dog, peering at his master who sits behind; -in More’s right hand, one finger between the leaves, he holds a book; his -left hand grips his dark gown at the neck; a flat cap is on his head; a -short curling beard, steadfast honest eyes, a plain, resolute, shrewd, -strong face:—this is the man “in his habit as he lived” in the later -years of his good life. - -This portrait—as well as the more famous group of More and his family, -now in Nostell Priory—was painted by Hans Holbein, {48} while he was -living with More. He had grown tired of his dissipated life in Basle and -of his wife, and had come to England with a letter of introduction to -More, from Erasmus, whose portrait Holbein had just finished in Basle; -and More was so pleased with the man that he gave him a home with -himself. Here were passed three of the happiest years of the great -painter’s life, during which he did much good work. Some of this was -shown to the king on one of his visits, More having hung several of the -portraits in a fine light for that purpose; and they so charmed the -delicate-minded monarch that he asked, “if such an artist were still -alive, and to be had for money?” So it came to pass that Holbein, on -losing his good friend, entered the king’s service, and there remained -until his own death. - - * * * * * - -After More’s execution, and the confiscation of his property—which is a -tautological way of speaking of any of Henry’s murders—the house passed -through many hands, noble and base, clean and dirty; and while everything -is of interest concerning walls which, in Cicero’s words, “could give -such good reason for their fame,” it would be but dry detail to follow -their forlorn fortunes fully. Of the noblemen and courtiers who dwelt -here, few are worthy our notice: but I may mention that as early as 1586 -Lord and Lady Dacre had bought the house and estate; and here her -brother, Thomas Sackville, often visited her, and from here many of his -letters are dated. Here he may have written his “Gorbudic,” the first -English Tragedy. It was Sackville who was sent to tell Queen Mary of -Scots that her sentence was signed, and he it was who saw it executed. -Lady Dacre, surviving her husband, willed the place to the great Lord -Burleigh; and so it came to his son, Lord Robert Cecil, afterwards Earl -of Salisbury. He rebuilt the house and improved the place in 1619, so -that even then it was “the greatest house in Chelsey.” So great that, -later, James I. found it just the place he wanted for his favourite “dear -Steenie,” first Duke of Buckingham; giving its owner, then Craufield, -Earl of Middlesex, snug lodgings in the Tower, in exchange. Charles I., -as deeply infatuated with the Duke as his royal father had been, gave the -estate out and out to him, in 1627; and his it remained until the -Commonwealth seized on it. - -His son, George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham—a man worthy of, and -worse even than his sire—regained the property by his shifty marriage -with the daughter of Fairfax, and it was confirmed to him on the -Restoration; but in 1664 it was sold, along with all the other estates of -this poor and profligate scoundrel—the last and the lowest of the -Villiers. He was the Zimri of Dryden’s “Absalom and Achitophel”: - - . . . “everything by starts and nothing long; - But, in the course of one revolving moon, - Was Chymist, Fidler, Statesman, and Buffoon. - - * * * * - - Beggar’d by fools, when still he found too late - He had his jest and they had his estate.” - -And Pope tells us, in his stinging verse, how “this lord of useless -thousands ends” his ignoble life, deserted and despised: - - “In the worst inn’s worst room, with mat half hung, - The floor of plaister and the walls of dung, - On once a flock bed, but repair’d with straw, - With tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw; - The George and Garter dangling from that bed - Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red; - Great Villiers lies!” - -It was the Earl of Bristol who bought the place from Buckingham, and it -is at this time that we meet with a notice of it in Evelyn’s diary under -the date 15th January, 1678–9: “Went with my Lady Sunderland to Chelsey -and dined with the Countesse of Bristol in the greate house, formerly the -Duke of Buckingham’s, a spacious and excellent place, for the extent of -ground and situation in good aire. The house is large but -ill-contrived.” - -In 1682 the Marquis of Worcester, afterwards Duke of Beaufort, became the -owner of the mansion; and from him it was named Beaufort House, -thereafter always called so. He selected this place that he might live, -says Strype, “in an air he thought much healthier, and near enough to the -town for business.” In 1738 Sir Hans Sloane bought the house and soon -after pulled it down; giving the famous Inigo Jones-gateway to the Earl -of Burlington, who removed it to Chiswick, where it stands to-day in the -gardens of the Duke of Devonshire’s Chiswick House, not far from the -statue of the architect. It was on meeting its disjointed stones, as -they were being carted away, that Alexander Pope wrote the well-known -lines: - - _Passenger_: “O Gate, how com’st thou here?” - - _Gate_: “I was brought from Chelsea last year, - Batter’d with wind and weather; - Inigo Jones put me together; - Sir Hans Sloane - Let me alone; - Burlington brought me hither.” - -Do not think, however, that this gateway is the only relic of More’s -mansion; for the persevering prowler may find still another, well worth -the search. Where King’s Road curves about to Millman’s Street—known on -the old maps of those days as the Lovers’ Walk, “A Way to Little -Chelsea”—an ancient gateway gave entrance to More’s back garden and -stables, and through it we may now pass into the Moravian Burial Ground. -Here, in the peacefullest spot in all London, lie in rows, men and women -on opposite sides, our Moravian brothers and sisters, “departed,” as -their little headstones, in their touching simplicity, tell us. Grass -grows above them, great trees guard them; trees perhaps planted by More -himself. For this was part of the “very fine gardens” which Bowack -speaks of; and that massive wall at the farther end was built in the -century which saw the Armada. In among the gardens of the houses beyond, -may be found other bits of wall; all built of very narrow bricks, such as -we trace in More’s chapel in Chelsea Old Church; bricks made only then, -peculiar to that period, not seen since. This largest piece we are -looking at is still solid enough, though bulging here and there with its -weight of over three hundred years, its bricks black with age and smoke; -here are the traces of beams once set in it, here is a bit of an archway, -there the remains of a fireplace. Thomas More’s arm rested on this wall: -it is part of him, and he mutely bequeaths it to our care. It is well -that we should claim salvage for this bit of wreckage thrown upon the -beach of Time, with his mark upon it. - -The little brick cottage of the keeper of the graveyard is overrun with -vines, and answers to the assurance of the antiquity of all within the -enclosure. The long low building of one room formerly serving as the -Moravian Chapel is now used for a Sunday School. As I glance through the -windows in this Sunday sunset I see boys wriggling on board benches, -struggling with big Bible names, and mad for the fresh air and the -freedom outside; one belated boy, trying at the locked gate, does not -look unhappy at being refused entrance. There are memorial tablets on -the chapel walls; one of them bears the name of “Christian Renatus, Count -of Zinzendorf”; another that of “Maria Justina, Countess Reuss.” These -were the son and daughter of the great Zinzendorf; and to tell how these -came here I must give you the story of another great Chelsea mansion, -Lindsey House. {57} - - [Picture: The Houses at Chelsea] - -It still stands slightly slant-wise to the river road, just west of the -quaint group of houses on the corner of Cheyne Walk and Beaufort Street. -Its front has been stuccoed, and it has been otherwise modernized; but it -has not been entirely robbed of its old-fashioned stateliness. The five -separate dwellings into which it was long ago divided have harboured some -famous tenants; Martin the painter lived in that one which still inherits -the old name, “Lindsey House.” Here, too, lived Brunel, the great -engineer; Bramah, famous for his locks, in another. It was the Earl of -Lindsey, who, about 1674, built this grand new mansion on the site of a -former house: between Beaufort House, you see, and the river. It -remained in his family until 1750, when it was bought by Count Zinzendorf -as a residence for himself and the Moravian Brethren of whom he was the -head: and at the same time he bought from Sir Hans Sloane the stables of -More’s mansion to be used as a chapel, and his garden for a graveyard. -Zinzendorf was a man of a rare nature, lifted above all that is petty and -paltry in ordinary life: a spiritual knight, he had founded in his youth, -at Halle, a sort of knighthood, “The Slaves of Virtue” and also the -“Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed;” teaching his disciples there, -teaching the Dutchmen in Holland, and the negroes in Pennsylvania, {58} -later—teaching and preaching all his life—the brotherhood of man, the -essential unity of all forms of religion. A true Catholic, his aim in -life was to unite all sects. As head and guardian of his little body of -Herrnhuters, he had used his own fortune to buy 100,000 acres of land in -North Carolina, from Lord Granville, in 1749; and in the following year -he bought this property at Chelsea. But no part of it now belongs to the -Moravians, except this burial-ground; still in use, as we have seen, -having been exempted by special provision from the Act of 1855, which -closed the other intramural graveyards of London, by reason of this one -burying but one body in each grave, and that so deeply. - - [Picture: Lindsey House and Battersea Bridge] - -The name of Pennsylvania just mentioned comes to us again as we walk a -little further west; for its famous founder, William Penn, is oddly -enough associated with the notorious Cremorne Gardens, which lay just -here. The very name of this haunt of feasting and flirting by a peculiar -irony was derived from the Viscount Cremorne, its former owner, “this -most excellent man,” known, even when plain Thomas Dawson, before his -peerage, as a model of all that was steady and sedate. His second wife, -the great-granddaughter of William Penn, was named Philadelphia, from the -city of her birth—a good woman, whose character, her funeral sermon -assures us, “it was difficult to delineate.” She, becoming Lady -Cremorne, and outliving her husband, inherited this charming villa and -grounds, called Chelsea Farm; and left it at her death, in 1825, to her -nephew, Granville Penn, “one of the Hereditary Governors and -Proprietaries of the late Province of Pennsylvania.” He soon sold it, -and it became a den of drinking, dancing, devilry. The ancient gilded -barge, “The Folly,” moored on its river front, was once more the scene of -just such orgies as it had known in its youth, during the roystering days -of the Restoration. - -Past the prim and proper brick cottages, past the innocent nursery -garden, which cover wicked old Cremorne: through new streets and -crescents built on the site of the famous Ashburnham estate—where, in old -days, stretched the great gardens of the learned Dr. Cadogan, filled with -rarest medicinal plants: out beyond the high brick wall, massive with -reserve and respectability, behind which hides old Stanley House—built by -Sir Arthur Gorges, who was embalmed in his friend Spenser’s verse as -Alcyon, for his talents and his conjugal affection, and who was here -visited once by Queen Elizabeth; her thrifty-minded majesty accepting, as -was her wont, the customary gift of greeting, “a faire jewell,” from her -host:—so we come to the westernmost edge of Chelsea. Here, standing on -the little bridge which carries King’s Road across the deep railway -cutting into Sand’s End, Fulham, we look over to an old plaster-fronted -house, once known as Sandford Manor House. This was one of the many -residences of Mistress Eleanor Gwynne; and in it, a hundred years after -her, lived Joseph Addison. It has been newly plastered, the sloping roof -raised a little, and the wings long since torn down; but it has been very -slightly modernized otherwise; and Mr. McMinn, its occupant, with rare -and real reverence has preserved its antique features; all the more -marked by their contrast with the great modern gasometers beyond. -Within, its square hall retains the old wainscotting, and the staircase -remains as when Charles II. rode up it on his pony, for a freak. The -delightful little back garden is perhaps hardly altered since those days, -except that the four walnut trees which Charles is said to have planted -in the front garden have gone to decay and have recently been uprooted. -At its foot, where now the railway cuts through, once ran “the creek with -barges gliding deep, beside the long grass,” on the banks of which -Addison went bird-nesting, in search of eggs for the young Earl of -Warwick. This was when he was thinking of marrying the lad’s mother, and -the letters—still in existence—which he wrote from here to the little -ten-year-old earl, are as genuine and charming as anything which ever -came from his pen. One of them begins: “The business of this is to -invite you to a concert of music, which I have found out in the -neighbouring wood.” I wish space allowed me to quote more of these -letters. Although they are dated simply at Sand’s End, none other than -Sandford House has ever stood which can make entirely good the -descriptions of that country retreat, “whereto Mr. Addison often retires -in summer.” What would one not give to have been invited out there, on -such an evening as Thackeray tells us of? - - “When the time came to leave, Esmond marched homeward to his - lodgings, and met Mr. Addison on the road, walking to a cottage which - he had at Fulham, the moon shining on his handsome serene face. - ‘What cheer, brother?’ says Addison, laughing: ‘I thought it was a - foot-pad advancing in the dark, and behold, it is an old friend. We - may shake hands, Colonel, in the dark; ’tis better than fighting by - daylight. Why should we quarrel because thou art a Whig and I am a - Tory? Turn thy steps and walk with me to Fulham, where there is a - nightingale still singing in the garden, and a cool bottle in a cave - I know of. You shall drink to the Pretender, if you like. I will - drink my liquor in my own way.’” - - [Picture: Sandford Manor House, Sand’s End] - -On the corner of the little turning which leads to this house there -stands a tavern called “The Nell Gwynne;” this, at the extreme western -end of the parish, is matched by another of the same name on its -easternmost edge; and between these two public-houses we may track many -other footprints of this fair lady, “with whom, for all her frailties, -the English people can never be angry,” as Peter Cunningham well says. -She has left her trace on Chelsea, as she left it in her time on the -light-minded monarch: both shown even yet in Chelsea Hospital, according -to that tradition and popular belief which credit her with its founding. -To this day the old pensioners worship her as their patron saint! It is -true that Louis XIV. had probably given the notion to the English King by -his foundation a few years before of the _Invalides_ as a retreat for -French veterans; it is true that as early as 1666 Evelyn had sent to -Pepys, as Clerk of the Admiralty, a scheme for an Infirmary for Disabled -English Sailors. In his diary, January 27, 1681–82, Evelyn says: “This -evening Sir Stephen Fox acquainted me again with his Majesty’s resolution -of proceeding in the erection of a Royal Hospital for emerited soldiers;” -and it is a matter of record that Sir Stephen Fox, first -Paymaster-General of the Forces, was the potent factor in the founding. -This may well be, but it is at least plausible, and certainly pleasant, -to believe that this good-hearted woman, by a judicious and timely -movement, brought about a sudden solution of the question, which had been -only in suspension in the King’s mind. The general destitution of the -discharged soldiers after the Restoration had become a scandal to the -King and to the country. In olden times such men had found bread and ale -and a night’s rest in monastic houses; but all this had been done away -with by the Dissolution. Now, the poor old fellows, who have known -nothing all their lives but wars and camps, wander about, lame, hungry, -helpless, in these dismal times of peace. Even when able to work, there -is no work for them. Old John Hill, serving in the ranks all his life, -and now turned adrift to carry the weight of eighty-two years, succeeds -after long suing in being appointed to the poor post of beadsman at -Gloucester, only to find that the King had just given it to another old -soldier, and had forgotten it. So it was all over the kingdom. Nell -Gwynne, seeing daily these warriors hobbling about,—the younger ones -wounded for her lover at Dunbar and Worcester, the elder ones for her -lover’s father at Naseby and Marston Moor,—was touched by the sight: she -had been poor herself, yet strangely enough in her prosperity she was -always prone to pity poverty. They say that one day, a shabby soldier -just escaped from Tangiers—probably an impostor—begged at her carriage -door; and she drove home, and urged the King to do something for these -disabled servants of the State. And they say, too, that the shifty -monarch, in giving the land for the hospital, made a pretty good thing of -it for himself! - -There had been already a building on the ground, then nearly in ruins, -the foundation walls of which may still be seen in the cellar of the -chaplain’s house. This was King James’s aborted College for polemic -divinity—“A Colledge of Divines and other Learned Men at -Chelsey”—nicknamed “Controversy College,” and intended to be “a spiritual -garrison, with a magazine of all books.” It was a failure. Nobody would -subscribe, for every man was giving his money, at this time, to repair -St. Paul’s, and to help Sir Hugh Myddleton bring the New River into -London; and only one-eighth of the plan was ever carried out. The Royal -Society used the building for a while; in one of its out-houses Prince -Rupert invented the drops, which, in Macaulay’s words, “have long amused -children and puzzled philosophers”; and by which, absurdly enough, his -name is still kept alive; albeit his is a memorable figure, gallant in -battle, ardent in love, devoted in science. When he laid down the rapier -for the retort, the broadsword for the blowpipe, he pursued chemistry -even as he had pursued the flying Roundheads at Edge Hill, with equal -ardour here on the quiet shore at Chelsea, far from the court and the -crowd. Later, the buildings, falling to pieces, were used even in 1653, -along with barges moored on the river front, as a prison for the Dutch -taken in the war. Grave John Evelyn, one of the four Commissioners in -control of all prisoners of war—he had rode with Rupert as a -volunteer—comes to visit his charges on Ash Wednesday, 1665, and notes: -“They only complained that their bread was too fine!” - -This was the site fixed on for the new infirmary; and in the _Monthly -Recorder_ of February 17, 1682, you may read: “His Majesty went to -Chelsey Colledge to lay the first stone, with several of the nobility, -which is a place designed to be built and endowed by His Majesty for the -relief of Indigent Officers, and Incouragement to serve His Majesty.” -William and Mary finished the edifice; and it stands—an impressive -monument of that union of proportion and of fitness by which Christopher -Wren gave beauty to his plainest designs—in stately solidity in the midst -of its thirty acres of ground. It is handsomely supported, not only by -government aid, but by valuable donations. There are nearly eighty -thousand out-pensioners and over five hundred inmates; these latter -divided into companies, and doing mimic garrison duty in memory of their -active days. Prints of their popular commanders hang all round the walls -of the great hall west of the grand entrance, once a dining-room, now -used for reading and smoking. In glass cases are the war medals left by -veterans dying with no surviving relatives to claim them: on one we find -nearly a dozen battles of the Peninsular campaigns; on another Badajos -and Lucknow figure in curious conjunction; and rarest of all is one whose -owner fought at Inkerman, Balaclava, and the Alma. In this hall the body -of the great Duke lay in state amid the memorials of his victories, -guarded by his own veterans: successors of those other veterans exultant -over the news of Waterloo, whom Wilkie had painted, years before, for the -Duke himself. - - [Picture: Chelsea Hospital, River Front] - -Framed on the wall is a record of the battles, sieges, marches of the -Coldstream Guards; which tells us that this famous body is the sole -surviving representative of the force which placed Charles II. on the -throne, and thus became the nucleus of the standing army of England. The -corps had been formed in 1650 by General George Monk, who made drafts of -picked men from the various Cromwellian regiments, and led them on that -famous march on the first day of the year 1660, from Coldstream to -London, which saved the monarchy and gave the guard its historic name. -In the chapel, beneath Sebastian Ricci’s great altar-piece, and under the -tattered battle-flags, drooping faded and forlorn, you may see, on any -Sunday, Hubert Herkomer’s picture in real life. It is a touching scene, -this entry of the veterans into their chapel, preceded by their fife and -drum: still more touching, the funeral of one of their dead, as they -parade painfully from the infirmary, the lone drummer and fife playing -the Dead March in Saul. In the quiet old burying-ground hard by, they -lie compactly enough, the dead soldiers; and among them, women who have -fought and died in men’s attire, their sex unsuspected until their death. - -Not only in this burial-ground, but in the quadrangles and courts, and -everywhere about, there rests an air of repose, of forgetfulness of the -turbulent world without. Here, about the spacious central quadrangle, on -massive wooden benches, loaf and smoke and chat the contented old boys; -and growl, withal, in their content. They decorate Grinling Gibbons’ -bronze statue of Charles II., posing as a Roman in the centre, with oak -garlands on “Oak-Apple-Day,” May 29th, the anniversary of the -Restoration; on that day they wear oak branches in their caps, and eat -much plum-pudding at dinner. Open towards the river, this quadrangle -looks out on gracious gardens; just beyond is the great cross, set there -to honour the victims of the Sepoy mutiny: “Some died in battle, some of -wounds, some of disease, ALL in the devoted performance of Duty.” A -little farther out rises the obelisk commemorating those who fell on that -dark and doubtful day at Chillian-wallah, January 13th, 1849. As we -stand here, beside a quiet Quaker cannon, these memorials to the devoted -dead lift themselves directly in front; the terraced gardens slope to the -river bank, their “carpet-beds” yellow with the tints of approaching -autumn; the graceful towers and swaying chains of Chelsea Suspension -Bridge seem floating in the air yonder; above the drooping limes and elms -of the embankment the slim spars of lazy sloops slip slowly by; the -gleaming river glides beneath, and away over beyond it the feathery -masses of the trees of Battersea Park stand solidly against the sky. The -opulent summer sun floods the scene, and an enchanting stillness broods -above all, broken only by the rare rumble of trains on the farther -railway-bridge. All things are half hid in the exquisite English haze: -it softens every sharpness, harmonizes every harshness, rounds every -shape to grace. - - * * * * * - -The Old Soldiers have their own gardens near at hand, and as we stroll -there we pass College Fields, perpetuating the name of King James’s -College; and so on between double rows of lime trees, gnarled and bent, -under which the amorous veterans flirt sedately with the demure -nursemaids, whose neglected charges meanwhile play with the sheep. -Through the gate we enter a small but well-arranged domain, divided into -tiny squares; each planted by its owner in flowers or in vegetables as -may suit him, so giving him a little more tobacco money by his sales. -They seem fond of those plants which put themselves most in evidence; and -their little gardens are all aglow with gorgeous hollyhocks, dahlias, -sunflowers, of the most gigantic and highly coloured kinds. It is a -delight to watch the old fellows of a summer afternoon, bending intent on -their toil in shirt-sleeves; or stalking stiffly about in their long red -coats, senilely chaffing and cackling! - -You will be pleased, I hope, to learn that this little piece of ground is -called Ranelagh Gardens, and is the sole surviving remnant of that famous -resort so dear to an older generation. “The R:t Hon:ble Richard Earle of -Ranelagh,” as he is styled on the original “Ground Plot of the Royal -Hospital” in the British Museum, being made one of the three -commissioners appointed in the beginning to manage the young asylum, -leases to himself seven acres of its grounds on the east, lying along the -river, and there builds a grand mansion, in 1691; the gardens of which -are “curiously kept and elegantly designed: so esteemed the best in -England.” This first Earl of Ranelagh has been one of the pupils of a -certain schoolmaster named John Milton, probably at his house in Barbican -in the City, so recently torn down. The Earl becomes a famous man, in a -different line from his teacher, and dying in 1712, leaves Ranelagh House -and its gardens to his son; who sells the place in 1733 to Lacy, -Garrick’s partner in the Drury Lane theatre patent; to be made by him a -place of open-air amusement, after the manner of the favourite Vauxhall. -But “it has totally beat Vauxhall,” writes Horace Walpole. “Nobody goes -anywhere else, everybody goes there. My Lord Chesterfield is so fond of -it, that he says he has ordered all his letters to be directed thither.” -Of course, he has his sneer at the “rival mobs” of the two places; but he -does not disdain to show himself a very swell mob’s man, in his famous -carouse at Ranelagh, with Miss Ashe and Lady Caroline Petersham. His -father, Sir Robert, was proud to parade here his lovely mistress, Miss -Chudleigh; “not over clothed,” as Leigh Hunt delicately puts it. The -manners and morals of this place and this time have never been so pithily -presented as in George Selwyn’s _mot_, on hearing that one of the waiters -had been convicted of robbery: “What a horrid idea he’ll give of us to -those fellows in Newgate!” - -At this distance, however, the fêtes, frolics, fire-works and all the -fashionable frivolity of the place look bright and bewildering. Nor did -grave and reverend men disdain to spend their evenings at Ranelagh—“to -give expansion and gay sensation to the mind,” as staid old Dr. Johnson -asserted! Goldsmith felt its gaiety, when he came here to forget the -misery of his lodging in Green Arbour Court, where now stands the Holborn -Viaduct station. Laurence Sterne, fresh to the town from his Yorkshire -parsonage, finding himself in great vogue—his portrait much stared at, in -Spring Gardens, one of the four sent there, selected by Sir Joshua as his -choicest works—plunged forthwith into all sorts of frivolities, and was -seen in Ranelagh more often than was considered seemly. Smollett -sometimes emerged from out his Chelsea solitude for a sight of this -festive world; Fielding came here to study the scenes for his “Amelia”; -and Addison, too, who chats about the place in his _Spectator_. {80} It -is spoken of in the _Connoisseur_ and the _Citizen of the World_; the -poet Bloomfield introduced it, and Fanny Burney placed here a scene in -her “Evelina.” At this time—just one hundred years ago—she was a little -past twenty-six, and was living with her father, Dr. Burney, recently -made organist of the hospital chapel, next door. Ranelagh had then begun -to “decline and fall off,” in Silas Wegg’s immortal phrase: having been -open since 1742, it was finally closed at the beginning of this century, -its artificial oil-moon paling before the rising radiance of gas-lighted -new Cremorne. - - * * * * * - -On an old tracing of the Hospital boundaries kept in its archives, I -found this inscription: “To answer the Earl of Ranelagh’s house on the -east side of the College, an house was builded in the Earl of Orford’s -garden on the west side.” This was the house into which Sir Robert -Walpole moved from his lodgings near by, where now Walpole Street runs; -the same lodgings in which the Earl of Sandwich had lived long before. -The Edward Montague, who, as Commander of the fleet, brought Charles II. -back to England, was made Earl of Sandwich for this service, and in 1663 -he came to live in Chelsea, “to take the ayre.” But there was a “Mrs. -Betty Becke,” his landlady’s daughter, who seems to have been the real -reason for this retirement, and at whom the moral Pepys sneers as “a -slut.” He writes under date of September 9, 1663: “I am ashamed to see -my lord so grossly play the fool, to the flinging off of all honour, -friends, and servants, and everything and person that is good, with his -carrying her abroad, and playing on the lute under her window, and forty -other poor sordid things, which I am grieved to hear.” Having occasion -to visit his chief here, on naval business, the Clerk of the Admiralty -finds him “all alone, with one joynte of meat, mightily extolling the -manner of his retirement, and the goodness of his diet;” and was so -perturbed, and so loyal withal, as to dare to write him, “that her -wantonness occasioned much scandal, though unjustly, to his Lordship.” -Nor was his Lordship offended by this frankness, but remained friendly to -his Secretary. - -Crossing through court and quadrangle and garden, to the western side of -the Hospital, we are allowed to enter its infirmary, and to pass into -ward No. 7. Here we stand in Sir Robert Walpole’s dining-room, unchanged -since he left it, except that the array of fine Italian pictures has gone -from the walls, and that decrepid soldiers lie about on cots, coughing -and drinking gruel from mugs. But for all this, perhaps by reason of all -this, this room, with its heavily moulded ceiling, its stately marble -mantle—in severe white throughout—is one of the most impressive relics of -by-gone grandeur in all London. The house, grand in its day, grand still -in its mutilation, was built by Sir John Vanbrugh, whose -architecture—florid and faulty, but with a dignity of its own, such as -strikes one in his masterpiece, Blenheim, called by Thackeray “a piece of -splendid barbarism”—was as heavy as his comedies were light; and served -to bring on him Swift’s epitaph: - - “Lie heavy on him earth, for he - Hath laid many a heavy load on thee.” - -This one end—all that remains of the old red-brick mansion—has been -raised a storey, but otherwise stands almost as when Walpole lived here -from 1723 to 1746, and from its chambers ruled England through his -subjects George I. and George II., whom he allowed to reign. It was from -this room that he rushed out on the arrival of the express with the news -of the death of the first George. He left his dinner-table at three p.m. -on the 14th June, 1727, and took horse at once:—so riding that he “killed -two horses under him,” says his son Horace:—and was the first to reach -the Prince of Wales at Richmond with the news. To Walpole House used to -drive, from her palace at Kensington, the wife of this same Prince of -Wales; who, now become George II., cheered her solitude by writing to her -long letters from his residence at Hanover, filled with praises of his -latest lady-love. These epistles the fair-haired, blue-eyed, -sweet-voiced woman would bring weeping to Walpole, in search of the -comfort which he graciously gave, by assuring her that now that she was -growing old she must expect this sort of thing! A little later Walpole -drove from here to Kensington, and stood beside the King at her deathbed; -Caroline commending to Walpole’s protection her husband and his monarch! -Here came Bolingbroke on his return from his exile in France, to dine at -the invitation of his great rival, whom he hated and envied. It was not -a joyful dinner for him, and Horace Walpole tells us that “the first -morsel he put into his mouth was near choking him, and he was reduced to -rise from the table and leave the room for some minutes. I never heard -of their meeting more.” Here Swift used to stride into dinner, studying -his host for the _rôle_ of Flimnap in his “Gulliver,” which he was then -writing. Here fat John Gay, then secretary or steward to Lady Monmouth, -a little farther on in Chelsea, swaggered in his fine clothes, and being -snubbed by his cynical host, put him on the stage as “Macheath” in his -“Beggar’s Opera.” Pope used to drive over in his little trap from -Twickenham, before his friend Bolingbroke’s return, to entertain Sir -Robert with the details of his row about Lady Mary Wortley Montague with -Lord Hervey; that be-rouged fop whom he pilloried in his rage, as - - “This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings.” - -The famous gardens, on which the gay and extravagant Lady Walpole spent -her time and money, have been built over by the successive additions to -the Infirmary; and we no longer can see the conservatory and grotto, -without which in those days no garden was considered complete. The bit -of ground left serves now for the convalescent soldiers, and the graceful -tree in the centre, its branches growing horizontally out from the top of -the trunk, forms a natural arbour, which they mightily enjoy upon a sunny -afternoon. Down at the lower end of the garden, a bit of rotting wooden -fence set above a sunken wall marks the line of the river-bank as it ran -before the building of the embankment. Just here, on a pleasant terrace -and in its summer-house, that royal scamp, George IV., was fond of -philandering with his fair friends; this scene suggesting a curious -contrast with the group once surely sitting or strolling here—a group -made up of no less august personages than Charles II. and the Earl of -Sandwich with the Duchess of Mazarin, followed by “her adoring old -friend” St. Evremond. For that lovely and luckless lady lived just -across the road, outside these grounds; and to her house in Paradise Row -I wish now to take you. - - * * * * * - -All that is now left of old Paradise Row is half a dozen small brick -cottages, with tiny gardens in front, and vines climbing above. Once, -when all about here was country, these dwellings must have been really -delightful, and have justified the suggestion of their name, looking out -as they did on pleasant parterres, terraced to the river. Unpretending -as they are, they have harboured many historic personages. In Paradise -Row—it is now partly Queen’s Road West—lived the first Duke of St. -Albans, Nell Gwynne’s son, not far from the more modest mansion of his -venerated grandmother, among the “neat-houses” at Millbank. Her garden -sloped down to the river, and therein she fell one day, and was drowned; -and they wrote a most woeful ballad “Upon that never-to-be-forgotten -matron, old Madame Gwynn, who died in her own fish-pond;” and it would -seem from these ribald rhymes that the lamented lady was fat and fond of -brandy! This latter weakness is also the theme of Rochester’s muse, in -his “Panegyric upon Nelly,” when he commends her scorn of cost in the -funeral rites— - - “To celebrate this martyr of the ditch. - Burnt Brandy did in flaming Brimmers flow, - Drunk at her Fun’ral: while her well-pleased Shade - Rejoic’d, e’en in the sober Fields below, - At all the Drunkenness her Death had made!” - -In old Paradise Row also lived the Earls of Pelham and of Sandwich, and -the Duchess of Hamilton. At the corner of Robinson’s Lane—now Flood -Street—stood Lord Robarte’s house, wherein he gave the famous supper to -Charles II. on the 4th of September, 1660, and was soon after made Earl -of Radnor: whence the street of that name hard by. On April 19, 1665, -Pepys visited him here, and “found it to be the prettiest contrived house -that ever I saw in my life.” It stood there until within a few weeks, a -venerable tavern known as “The Duke’s Head”: now gone the way of so much -historic brick and mortar! Latest of all our Chelsea celebrities, -Faulkner, the historian of Chelsea, lived on the corner of Paradise Row, -and what was then Ormond Row, now commonplace Smith Street. A quiet, -quaint old public-house, “The Chelsea Pensioner,” stands where Faulkner -worked with such pains, on his driest of records; yet to them we are all -glad to go for many of our facts about modern Chelsea. These poor little -plaster-fronted cottages, stretching from this corner to Christchurch -Street, now represent the once stately Ormond Row; and the swinging sign -of the “Ormond Dairy” is all we have to commemorate old Ormond House, -which stood just here. In its gardens, sloping to the river bank, -Walpole’s later house was built, as we have seen it to-day. - - [Picture: Paradise Row] - -Let us stop again before the little two-storied house, the easternmost of -Paradise Row, standing discreetly back from the street behind a prim plot -of grass; well-wrought-iron gates are swung on square gate-posts, a-top -of each of which is an old-fashioned stone globe, of the sort seldom seen -nowadays. A queer little sounding-board projects over the small door; -and above the little windows we read “School of Discipline, Instituted -A.D. 1825.” It is the oldest school of the kind in London, was founded -by Elizabeth Fry, and in it young girls, forty-two at a time, each -staying two years, “are reformed for five shillings a week,” and fitted -for domestic service. They wear very queer aprons, their hair is -plastered properly, their shoes are clumsy; and no queerer contrast was -ever imagined than that between them and the perfumed, curled, -high-heeled dame, who once lived here. She is well worth looking back -at, as we sit here in her low-ceilinged drawing-room, darkly panelled, as -are hall and staircase by which we have passed in entering. - -Hortensia Mancini, the daughter of Cardinal Mazarin’s sister, had been -married while very young to some Duke, who was allowed to assume the name -of Mazarin on his marriage. A religious fanatic, he soon shut her up in -a convent, from which she took her flight and found her way to England in -boy’s costume. There, as the handsomest woman in Europe, her coming -caused commotion among her rivals, all remembering the flutter she had -excited in Charles II. during his exile in France. Ruvigny {91} writes: -“She has entered the English court as Armida entered the camp of -Godfrey.” Indeed, this one soon showed that she, too, was a sorceress; -and Rochester, in his famous “Farewell,” acclaims her the “renowned -Mazarine, first in the glorious Roll of Infamy.” Living luxuriously and -lavishly for a while, until by the death of her royal lover she lost her -pension of £4000 yearly, she came at length to this little house as her -last dwelling-place; and even here, reduced to real poverty, unable to -pay her butcher or her baker, written down on the Parish books of 1695, -“A Defaulter of the Parish Rates:” she yet persisted in giving grand -dinners—the cost of which (so old Lysons heard) was met by each guest -leaving monies under his napkin! For all that, this modest mansion was -the favourite resort of famous men of her day; who lounged in of an -evening to discuss and speculate, to play at her basset-tables, to listen -to her music, mostly dramatic, the forerunner of Italian opera in this -country. Here came Sydney Godolphin, that rare man who was “never in the -way, and yet never out of the way;” here the king was frequently found; -here Saint Evremond was always found! How real to us is the figure of -this gallant old Frenchman, as we see him in the National Portrait -Gallery: his white hair flowing below his black cap; his large forehead; -his dark blue eyes; the great wen that grew in his later years between -them, just at the top of his nose: a shrewd, kindly, epicurean face. He -came of a noble Norman family from Denis le Guast, this Charles de Saint -Denys, Seigneur de Saint Evremond. Entering the army at an early age, he -rose rapidly to a captaincy; his bravery and his wit—a little less than -that of Voltaire, whom he helped to form, says Hallam—making him the -friend of Turenne, of the great Condè, and of others of that brilliant -band. Satirizing Mazarin, he was locked in the Bastille for three -months; and when free, he finally fled from the cardinal’s fury, and came -to England: here to end his days, waiting on this still fascinating -woman, worshipping her, advising her, writing plays for her, and poetry -to her. He held the rank of Governor of Duck Island, in the ornamental -water of St. James’s Park—an office invented for him by Charles II., and -having a fine title, a large salary, and no duties. You may throw bread -to-day to the lineal descendants of those ducks of which the King was so -fond. Saint Evremond died in 1703, and lies in the Poet’s Corner of -Westminster Abbey, near to Chaucer and Beaumont and Dryden; his adored -lady having died in 1699 in this very house. She was not buried; for -after all these years of self-effacement her devoted husband again -appears, has her body embalmed, and carries it with him wherever he -journeys. - -Mary Astell lived and died in her little house in Paradise Row; a near -neighbour of, and a curious contrast to, the Duchess of Mazarin, whom she -pointed at in her writings as a warning of the doom decreed to beauty and -to wit, when shackled in slavery to Man, and so dis-weaponed in the fight -against fate and forgetfulness. _She_ devoted herself to celibacy and -“to the propagation of virtue,” as Smollett slily put it. Congreve -satirized her, too; Swift stained her with his sneers as “Madonella;” -Addison and Steele made fun of her in their gentler way. Doubtless there -was something of _la Précieuse Ridicule_ to that generation in the aspect -of this most learned lady, who wrote pamphlets and essays; in which, -following More’s lead, she urged the higher education of her sex; and -preached as well as practised persistent protests against the folly of -those pretty women, “who think more of their glasses than of their -reflections.” She inveighed much—this in our modern manner—against -marriage, and woman’s devotion to man; putting it with point and pith, -that Woman owes a duty to Man “only by the way, just as it may be any -man’s duty to keep hogs; he was not made for this, but if he hires -himself out for this employment, he is bound to perform it -conscientiously.” One good work of hers still survives. Failing to -found among her female friends a College or Community for Celibacy and -Study, she induced Lady Elizabeth Hastings—her immortalized as the -Aspasia of the _Tatler_ by Congreve and by Steele, and to whom the latter -applied his exquisite words, “to love her is a liberal education”—and -other noble ladies to endow in 1729 a school for the daughters of old -pensioners of the Royal Hospital; and this little child’s charity was the -precursor and harbinger of the present grand asylum at Hampstead, which -clothes, educates, and cares for these girls. - - * * * * * - -It is but a step to the spacious, many-windowed brick building in the -King’s Road; on the pediment of which, in Cheltenham Terrace, we read: -“The Royal Military Asylum for the Children of Soldiers of the Regular -Army.” It is popularly known as the “Duke of York’s School,” and is -devoted to the training of the orphan boys of poor soldiers. It is a -pleasant sight to watch them going through their manœuvres in their -gravel ground; or, off duty, playing football and leap-frog. They bear -themselves right martially in their red jackets and queer caps, a few -proudly carrying their corporal’s yellow chevrons, a fewer still prouder -of their “good conduct stripes.” It was “B 65,” big with the double -dignity of both badges of honour, who unbent to my questioning; and -explained that the lads are entered at the age of ten, can remain until -fourteen, can then become drummers if fitted for that vocation, or can -give up their army career and take their chances in civilians’ pursuits. - -We may not pause long before the iron gates which let us look in on the -mansion named Blacklands; now a private mad-house, and the only remnant -of the great estate once owned by Lord Cheyne, and which covered more -than the extent of Sloane Street and Square, Cadogan and Hans Place: all -these laid out and built by Holland in 1777, and by him called Hans Town. -We might have stopped, a while ago, in front of the vast Chelsea -barracks, just to the south, to look at the faded plaster-fronted shop, -opposite. “The Old Chelsea Bun-House,” its sign assured us it was, -before its demolition last year; yet it was only the descendant of the -original house, which stood a little farther east up Pimlico Road, -formerly Jews’ Road. That once mal-odorous street is yet fragrant with -the buns baked there in the last century, when the little shop was -crowded with dainty damsels in hoops and furbelows, with gallants in wigs -and three-cornered hats, while stately flunkies strode in the street -below. “Pray, are not the fine buns sold here in our town as the rare -Chelsea buns? I bought one to-day in my walk”—Swift tells Stella in his -journal for 1712. Half-mad George III. and Queen Charlotte—she popularly -known as “Old Snuffy”—were fond of driving out to Chelsea Bun-House, to -sit on its verandah munching buns, much stared at by the curious crowd. -The old building was torn down in 1839, “to the general regret in London -and its environs,” its crazy collection of poor pictures, bogus antiques, -and genuine Chelsea ware being sold by auction; all of which is duly -chronicled in “The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction” of -April 6, 1839. - -Turning back again to Paradise Row, we glance across the road at a great -square mansion standing in spacious grounds, used as the Victoria -Hospital for Children, a beneficent institution. This is Gough House, -built by that profane Earl of Carberry, who diced and drank and dallied -in company with Buckingham and Rochester and Sedley. Early in the last -century it came into possession of Sir John Gough, whence the name it -still retains. Nearly two centuries of odd doings and of queer social -history tenant these walls; but we can pause no longer than to glance at -the little cots standing against the ancient wainscotting of the stately -rooms, and the infant patients toddling up the massive oak staircases. - - [Picture: Tite street] - -We turn the corner, and pass through Tite Street, and so come, in -refreshing contrast with its ambitious artificiality, to a bit of genuine -nature—a great garden stretching from Swan Walk and the Queen’s Road, and -fronting just here on the Embankment. On one of the great stone posts of -this entrance—once the water-gate—we read: “The Botanic Garden of the -Society of Apothecaries of London, A.D. 1673;” on the other: “Granted to -the Society in Perpetuity by Sir Hans Sloane, Bart., A.D. 1723.” These -grounds remain intact as when in this last-named year four acres of Lord -Cheyne’s former domain were made over to the Society of Apothecaries for -“The Chelsea Physick Garden;” with permission to build thereon a -barge-house and offices, for their convenience when they came up the -river. The buildings were demolished in 1853, but the gardens have -bravely held out against the Vandal hordes of bricklayers and builders; -and in them all the herbs of Materia Medica which can grow in the open -air are cultivated to this very day for the instruction of medical -students, just as when Dr. Johnson’s Polyphilus—the universal genius of -the _Rambler_—started to come out here from London streets to see a new -plant in flower. The trees are no longer so vigorous as when Evelyn, so -fond of fine trees, praised them; and of the twelve noble Cedars of -Lebanon planted by the hand of Sir Hans, but one still stands; and this -one, even in its decrepitude, is nearly as notable, it seems to me, as -that glorious unequalled one in the private garden of Monseigneur the -Archbishop of Tours. In the centre stands the statue of Sir Hans Sloane, -put up in 1733, chipped and stained by wind and weather. For, in this -garden Hans Sloane studied, and when he became rich and famous and bought -the manor of Chelsea, he gave the freehold of this place to the -Apothecaries’ Company on condition that it should be devoted for ever to -the use of all students of nature. - -Westward a little way, we come to “Swan House.” This modern-antique -mansion stands on the site of, and gets its name from, the “Old Swan -Tavern,” which has been gone these fifteen years now, and which stood -right over the river, with projecting wooden balconies, and a land -entrance from Queen’s Road. It and its predecessor—a little lower down -the river—were historic public-houses resorted to by parties pleasuring -from town; and this was always a house of call for watermen with their -wherries, as we find so well pictured in Marryat’s “Jacob Faithful.” -Here Pepys turned back on the 9th of April, 1666; having come out for a -holiday, and “thinking to have been merry at Chelsey; but being come -almost to the house by coach near the waterside, a house alone, I think -the Swan,” he learned from a passer-by that the plague had broken out in -this suburb, and that the “house was shut up of the sickness. So we with -great affright . . . went away for Kensington.” The old fellow—he was -young then—was fond of taking boat or coach, “to be merry at Chelsey”; -often with Mrs. Knipp, the pretty actress; sometimes with both her and -his wife, and then he drily complains to his diary—“and my wife out of -humour, as she always is when this woman is by.” Yet the critics claim -that he had no sense of fun! Until the “Old Swan” was torn down, it -served as the goal for the annual race which is still rowed on the first -day of every August from the “Old Swan Tavern” at London Bridge, by the -young Thames watermen, for the prize instituted in 1715 by Doggett—that -fine low comedian of Queen Anne’s day: a silver medal stamped with the -white horse of Hanover (in commemoration of the First George’s -coronation), and a waterman’s orange-coloured coat full of pockets, each -pocket holding a golden guinea. - - [Picture: Statue of Sir Han’s Sloane in the Botanic Gardens] - -Just beyond, at Flood Street, begins Cheyne Walk; still, despite almost -daily despoiling, despite embankments and gas and cabs, the most -old-fashioned, dignified, and impressive spot in all London. Those of -its modest brick houses which remain have not been ruined by too many -modern improvements; they are prim and respectable, clad in a sedate -secluded sobriety, not at all of this day. Their little front gardens -are unpretending and almost sad. Between them and the street are fine -specimens of old wrought iron in railings and in gates, in last century -brackets for lamps, in iron extinguishers for the links they used to -carry. The name “Hans Sloane House” is wrought in open iron letters, in -the gate of No. 17; in others, the numbers alone are thus worked in the -antique pattern. “Manor House” has an attractive old plaster front; on -another a shining brass plate, dimly marked “Gothic House” in well-worn -letters, is just what we want to find there. In No. 4 died, on the night -of the 22nd December, 1880, Mrs. John Walter Cross, more widely known as -George Eliot. And in this same house lived for many years Daniel -Maclise, the painter of the two grandest national pictures yet produced -in England; “the gentlest and most modest of men,” said his friend -Charles Dickens. Here he died on the 25th of April, 1870, and from here -he was carried to Kensal Green. - - [Picture: No. 4, Cheyne Walk] - -In No. 15 lived for a long time that youthful genius, Cecil Lawson; whose -admirable works, rejected at one time by the Royal Academy, have been -hung in places of honour, since. One would be glad to have stepped from -his studio into that next door, No. 16, and to have seen Dante Gabriel -Rossetti at work there. {109} His house—now again known by its ancient -and proper title, “Queen’s House”—stands back between court and garden, -its stately double front bowed out by a spacious central bay, the famous -drawing-room on the first floor taking the whole width. This great bay, -as high as the house, is not so old, however; and must be an addition of -more recent years; for the house itself plainly dates from the days of -the Stuarts. Indeed, it shows the influence, if not the very hand, of -the admirable Wren; not only in the external architecture, but in the -perfect proportion to all its parts of the panelling, the windows, the -doorways within. All the hall-ways and the rooms, even to the kitchen, -are heavily wainscotted; and there mounts, up through the whole height of -the interior, a spiral staircase, its balustrade of finest hand-wrought -iron. So, too, are the railings and the gateway of the front courtyard, -as you see them in our sketch; and, while much of their dainty detail has -been gnawed away by the tooth of time, they still show the skill, the -patience, and the conscience of the workers of that earlier day. The -iron crown which once topped this gate has long since been taken away; -but we may still trace in twisted iron the initials “C. R.,” and we may -still see these same initials in larger iron lettering within the pattern -of the back-garden railings. Catherine of Braganza, Queen of England, is -the name they are believed to commemorate; and legend says that this -house was once tenanted by, and perhaps built for, that long-suffering -consort of Charles II. I like to fancy her within these walls—the -brilliant brunette stepping down from Lely’s canvas at Hampton Court or -at Versailles; whose superb black eyes were celebrated by the court poet, -Edmund Waller, in an ode on her birthday, and were characterized by -sedate John Evelyn as “languishing and excellent”; and who was pronounced -to be “mighty pretty” by that erudite and studious critic of female -beauty, Samuel Pepys. She wears the black velvet costume so becoming to -her, and divides her days between pious rites and frisky dances—devoted -equally to both! A narrow, bigoted, good woman, this: yet, withal, -simple, confiding, affectionate, modest, patient under neglect from her -husband, and under insult from his mistresses; deserving a little longer -devotion than the six weeks Charles vouchsafed to her after their -marriage, never deserving the lampoons with which Andrew Marvel befouled -her. - - [Picture: Gateway of Rossetti’s old house] - -When this front courtyard of “Queen’s House” happened to be dug up, not -long ago, three sorts of bricks were unearthed: those of modern make, -those of the Stuart time, those of the Tudor type. These latter were the -same narrow flat ones spoken of as being found in More’s chapel and wall; -and were evidently the wreckage of the water-gate once standing here, -giving entrance, together with the water stairway, from the river—running -close alongside then—to the palace of Henry VIII. And in the foundations -of “Queen’s House” are to be seen remains of that Tudor stone-work; -while, in the cellars of the adjacent houses are heavy nail-studded doors -and windows, and similar survivals of that old Palace. It was built just -here by the King, who had learned to like Chelsea, in his visits to More. -He had bartered land elsewhere—presumably stolen by him—for the old Manor -House standing farther west, near the Church, which belonged to the -Lawrence family. That not suiting him, he built this new Manor House—a -little back from the river bank, and a little east of where Oakley Street -now runs—its gardens reaching nearly to the present Flood Street, Manor -Street having been cut through their midst. It was of brick, its front -and its gateway much like that of St. James’s Palace, as it looks up St. -James’s Street; that built just before this, by Wolsey, and “conveyed” to -himself by the King. An old document describes the Manor House, as the -“said capital messuage, containing on the first floor, 3 cellars, 3 -halls, 3 kitchens, 3 parlours, 9 other rooms and larders; on the second -floor, 3 drawing rooms and 17 chambers, and above, Summer-rooms, closets -and garrets; 1 stable and 1 coach-house.” That seems not so very grand -in the eyes of our modern magnificence. - -I have been able to trace the great grounds of the palace, covered in -part with streets and houses as they now are, and in part forming the -rear gardens of this end of Cheyne Walk. And in these gardens are still -standing here and there remnants of the ancient encircling walls. The -fine garden of Queen’s House was originally a portion of the palace -grounds, and stood intact even to Rossetti’s time; something of its -extent then being shown in our sketch. The noble lime trees still stand -there, and among them two strange exotic trees, their leaves unknown to -the local gardeners. This garden is now partly built on by new mansions, -partly usurped by their gardens. In two of the latter—spreading out into -both—stands the mulberry tree planted by the hand of the Princess -Elizabeth, still sturdy in its hale old age. At the back of other houses -a little farther west, notably in the garden of Mr. Druse, stand some -very ancient trees; and I saw there, not very long ago—but gone, for ever -now—a bit of crumbling wall, and an arch, within which were the old -hinges whereon a gate was once hung. That gate gave entrance from the -land side, by a path leading across the fields from the King’s Road, to -the palace grounds; and through it, Seymour slipped on his secret visits -to Katherine Parr, as we know by a letter of hers: “I pray you let me -have knowledge over night, at what hour ye will come, that your portress -may wait at the gate to the fields for you.” And she and Seymour had -their historic romps under these very trees with the Princess Elizabeth, -then a girl of thirteen. Within doors, too, there were strange pranks -“betwixt the Lord Admiral, and the Lady Elizabeth’s Grace,” as was later -confessed by Katherine Aschyly, her maid. When the young lady learned -that Miss Aschyly and Her Cofferer were under examination in the Tower, -says the old chronicler, “She was marvelous abashede, and ded weype very -tenderly a long Time, demandyng of my Lady Browne wether they had -confessed anything!” Katherine Parr did not enjoy these frolics, and -sometimes was furious with jealousy on finding them out; but for all -that, she patiently returned to her persistent pious writing, too kindly -a nature to harbour malice or suspicion. - - [Picture: Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s garden] - -Elizabeth had come to live in the Manor House, at the age of four, that -she might grow up in that healthful air: her father placing, with his -customary delicacy, the daughter of Anne Boleyn under the care and -tuition and example of his latest wife, the staid and studious Katherine -Parr. To this latter, the King had given, on their marriage, the Manor -House as her jointure; and there she lived in great state, after Henry’s -death. Already before their marriage, even then a wistful widow, she had -been bewitched by Seymour; and had meant to marry him, but for being -forced to submit to the King’s will to make her his queen. Once queen, -she seemed to subdue her passion for Seymour; says the naïve ancient -chronicler, “it does not appear that any interruption to connubial -comforts arose out of that particular source.” The estimable monarch -rotted to death at the end of January, 1546–7, and the month of May was -made merry to his widow—but thirty-five years old—by her secret marriage -with Seymour. He was a turbulent, unscrupulous, handsome rascal, a -greedy gambler, an insane intriguer; brother of the Protector Somerset, -maternal uncle of King Edward VII., brother-in-law of the King; and he -had tried to marry the Princess Elizabeth, then a girl of thirteen or -fourteen, even while coquetting with the Queen-Dowager Katherine Parr. -The girl with her Boleyn blood doubtless delighted in the mystery of the -secret visits, which she knew of, and in the secret marriage later, which -she surely suspected. The Queen-Dowager must have found it a trying and -turbulent task to train her, and had more comfort in her other pupil, -little Lady Jane Grey; who came here often for a visit, and for sympathy -in the studies in which she was already a prodigy, even then at the age -of eleven. She is a pure and perfect picture, this lovely and gentle -girl, amid all these cruel and crafty creatures; but we cannot follow her -farther in the touching tragedy, in which she played the innocent -usurper, the blameless martyr. Nor can we say more of Katherine -Parr—probably poisoned by her husband—nor of his death on the block, nor -of the rascally and wretched record of the future owners of this Manor -House; but let us come directly down to the year 1712, when it was sold -by Lord William Cheyne, lord of the manor, widely known as “Lady Jane’s -husband,” to Sir Hans Sloane. It was looked on then as a grand place, -and Evelyn, visiting Lord Cheyne and Lady Jane, notes in his diary that -the gardens are fine, the fountains “very surprising and extraordinary.” -These had been designed by Winstanley, him who built Eddystone -Lighthouse, and who perished therein. - -Hans Sloane had come up to London, a young Irish student of medicine; -and, frequenting the Botanical Gardens in Chelsea, just in view of this -Manor House, he must often have looked at and perhaps longed to live in -the roomy old mansion. After his return from Jamaica, he pursued his -studies with such success that he was made President of the Royal Society -on the death of Sir Isaac Newton, in 1727. He became a famous physician, -was doctor to the Queens Anne and Caroline, as well as to George I., who -made him a baronet in 1716; the first physician so ennobled in England. -As he grew in wealth he bought much property in Chelsea, first this Manor -House—wherein he lived for fourteen years, and wherein he died—then -More’s house, then land in other quarters of this suburb. His name is -perpetuated in Sloane Square and in Hans Place, and his property now -forms the estate of the Earl of Cadogan, whose ancestor, the famous -General Cadogan, a Colonel of the Horse Guards in Marlborough’s wars, -married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of Sir Hans Sloane; so that -the present Earl of Cadogan is “Lord of the Manor and Viscount Chelsey.” - -But greater than his riches, better than all his other services, is the -fact that Sir Hans Sloane was the founder of the British Museum. The -extraordinary collection in Natural History, of books and of manuscripts, -with which his house in Bloomsbury was filled, and which then overflowed -into his Chelsea house, was left by him to the Nation, on the payment to -his estate of only £20,000; it having cost him not less than £50,000. -Parliament passed the appropriation, the purchase was perfected, and this -little pond has now grown into the great ocean of the British Museum; on -the shores of which, we who come to scoop up our small spoonfuls of -knowledge are cared for so courteously by its guardians. - - * * * * * - -There was an Irish servant of Sir Hans Sloane, one Salter, who -established himself in 1695 as a barber in a little house in Cheyne Walk -which stood on the site of the present Nos. 17 and 18: “six doors beyond -Manor Street,” contemporary papers say, and I have no doubt this is the -correct site. Salter was a thin little man, with a hungry look as of one -fond of philosophy or of fretting; and Vice-Admiral Munden, just home -from years of service on the Spanish coast, dubbed him, in a freak, Don -Saltero, a title he carried to his death. He took in all the papers, and -had musical instruments lying about—he himself twanged Don-like the -guitar—that his customers might divert themselves while awaiting their -turns. His master had given him a lot of rubbish, for which his own -house had no more room, as well as duplicates of curiosities of real -value in the Museum in Bloomsbury. To these he added others of his own -invention: the inevitable bit of the Holy Cross, the pillar to which -Jesus was tied when scourged, a necklace of Job’s tears; and, as the -little barber rhymed in his advertisements in 1723, just after De Foe had -set the town talking with his new book— - - “Monsters of all sorts here are seen, - Strange things in Nature as they grew so; - Some relics of the Sheba Queen, - And fragments of the famed Bob Crusoe.” - -So that “my eye was diverted by ten thousand gimcracks on the walls and -ceiling,” as Steele puts it in the _Tatler_, describing a Voyage to -Chelsea. For Don Saltero’s museum, barber’s shop, reading-room, -coffee-house had become quite the vogue, and a favourite lounge for men -of quality. Old St. Evremond was probably among the first to be shaved -here; Richard Cromwell used to come often and sit silently—“a little, and -very neat old man, with a most placid countenance, the effect of his -innocent and unambitious life.” Steele and Addison and their friends -were frequent visitors “to the Coffee House where the Literati sit in -council.” And there came here one day about 1724 or 1725, a young man of -eighteen or twenty years, out for a holiday from the printing-press at -which he worked in Bartholomew Close—Benjamin Franklin by name, recently -arrived from the loyal Colonies of North America, and lodging in Little -Britain. He had brought with him to London a purse of asbestos, which -Sir Hans Sloane, hearing of, bought at a handsome price, and added to his -museum. To this museum he gave the young printer an invitation, and -probably told him about Don Saltero’s. It was on Franklin’s return from -there—the party went by river, of course—that he undressed and leapt into -the water, and, as he wrote in his letters, “swam from near Chelsea the -whole way to Blackfriars Bridge, exhibiting during the course a variety -of feats of activity and address, both upon the surface of the water, as -well as under it. This sight occasioned much astonishment and pleasure -to those to whom it was new.” - - [Picture: Don Saltero’s] - -It is a far cry from Dick Steele to Charles Lamb, yet the latter too -makes mention of the “Don Saltero Tavern” in one of his letters; saying -that he had had offered to him, by a fellow clerk in the India House, all -the ornaments of its smoking-room, at the time of the auction-sale, when -the collection was dispersed. - -This was in 1807, and the place was then turned into a tavern; its -original sign—“Don Saltero’s, 1695,” in gold letters on a green -board—swinging between beams in front, until the demolition of the old -house only twenty years ago. {125} - - * * * * * - -A little farther on, just west of Oakley Street, on the outer edge of the -roadway of Cheyne Walk, stood, until within a few months, another old -sign, at which I was wont to look in delight, unshamed by the mute -mockery of the passing Briton, who wondered what the sentimental prowler -could see to attract him in this rusty relic. It stood in front of the -little public-house lately burned to the ground—“The Magpie and Stump:” -two solid posts carrying a wide cross-piece, all bristling with spikes -for the impalement of the climbing boy of the period; “MAGPIE AND STUMP, -QUOIT GROUNDS,” in dingy letters on the outer side, once plain for all -rowing men to read from the river; above was an iron Magpie on an iron -Stump, both decrepid with age, and a rusty old weathercock, too stiff to -turn even the letter _E_—alone left of the four points of the compass. -Between these posts might still be traced the top stone of an old -water-staircase, embedded now in the new-made ground which forms the -embankment garden here; just as you might have seen, only the other day, -the water-stairs of Whitehall Palace, which have now been carted away. -Up this staircase Queen Elizabeth has often stepped, on her frequent -visits to the rich and powerful Earl of Shrewsbury, her devoted subject -and friend. For, on the river slope, just back of Cheyne Walk here, -stood, until the second decade of this century, Shrewsbury House, another -one of Chelsea’s grand mansions. It was an irregular brick structure, -much gabled, built about a quadrangle; although but one storey in height -it was sufficiently spacious, its great room being one hundred and twenty -feet in length, wainscotted in finely carved oak, and its oratory painted -to resemble marble. In a circular room there was concealed a trap-door, -giving entrance to a winding stairway, which led to an underground -passage; believed to have opened on the river wall at low tide, and to -have twisted inland to the “Black Horse” in Chelsea, and thence to -Holland House, Kensington. Local gossip claims that it was used by the -Jacobites of 1745, and perhaps of 1715, too; for they made their -rendezvous by the river at this tavern, and here drank to their “King -over the water.” In the grounds of the “Magpie and Stump” is a wooden -trapdoor, through which I once descended by stone steps into a paved -stone passage, sufficiently wide and high for two to pass, standing -erect. This bit is all that remains of the old tunnel—the river portion -being used as a coal-hole, the inland end soon stopped up and lost in -neighbouring cellars. - - [Picture: Cheyne Walk, with the Magpie and Stump] - -The wife of this Earl of Shrewsbury is well worth our attention for a -moment, by reason of her beauty, her character, her romantic career, her -many marriages. Elizabeth Hardwick of Derby became Mrs. Barley at the -age of fourteen, and was a wealthy widow when only sixteen; she soon -married Sir William Cavendish, ancestor of the Duke of Devonshire; to be -widowed soon again, and soon to become the wife of Sir William St. Loo, -Captain of Queen Elizabeth’s Guard. His death left her still so lovely, -witty, attractive, as to captivate the greatest subject in the land; and -she became the Countess of Shrewsbury; having risen regularly in riches, -position, power, with each of her marriages. After the death of her -fourth husband she consented to remain a widow. At her death, seventeen -years later, she bequeathed this Chelsea mansion to her son William, -afterward the first Duke of Devonshire; together with the three grandest -seats in England—Hardwick, Oldcoates, Chatsworth—all builded by her at -successive stages of her eventful career. - -Hard by here we trace the site of another notable mansion—the ancient -palace of the Bishops of Winchester—which stood a little back from the -river bank, just where broad Oakley Street runs up from opposite the -Albert Suspension Bridge. It was only two storeys high and of humble -exterior, yet it contained many grand rooms, lavishly decorated. On the -wall of one of the chambers, there was found, when the building was torn -down early in the century, a group of nine life-size figures, admirably -done in black on the white plaster; believed to have been drawn by -Hogarth in one of his visits to his friend Bishop Hoadley, here. - -A step farther westward along Cheyne Walk and we turn into Lawrence -Street; at the upper end of which, at the corner of Justice Walk, we -shall find, in the cellars of “The Prince of Wales” tavern and of the -adjoining houses, the remains of the ovens and baking-rooms of the famous -Chelsea China factory. For it stood just here during the short forty -years of its existence, having been established in 1745. Why it failed -and why the factory was torn down, no one seems to know; for its work was -extremely fine, and its best ware—turned out from 1750 to 1765—was equal -to that of Sèvres. Skilled foreign artizans had been brought over, and -an extraordinary specimen of unskilled native workman appeared in Dr. -Samuel Johnson. The old scholar conceived the idea that he could make -china as admirably as he could make a dictionary; but he never mastered -the secret of mixing, and each piece of his cracked in the baking! He -used to come out here twice a week, his old housekeeper carrying his -basket of food for the day; and was made free of the whole factory, -except the mixing-room. They presented him with a full service of their -own make, properly baked, however; which he gave or bequeathed to Mrs. -Piozzo, and which, at the sale of her effects, was bought by Lord -Holland. In “Holland House by Kensington”—to use its good old title—I -have seen it, carefully preserved among the other famed _curios_. - - [Picture: A Chelsea corner] - -“This is Danvers Street, begun in ye Yeare 1696,” says the quaint old -lettering in a corner house of Cheyne Walk; and this street marks the -site of Danvers House, which had formed part of More’s property—perhaps -the “new buildinge”—and which had gone to his son-in-law, Roper. It came -afterward to be owned by Sir John Danvers, a gentleman-usher of Charles -I., and he made a superb place of it; of which the deep foundations and -the fallen columns now lie under Paultons Square, at the upper end of the -street. Sir John Danvers was the second husband of Magdalen Herbert, a -woman notable for her famous family of boys: her first son was that -strong and strange original, Lord Herbert of Cherbury; her fifth son was -George Herbert, of undying memory. The poet lived here for a while. -Donne, the preacher, then at Oxford, used to stop at her house on his -visits to London; and when he became Vicar of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West, -in the Strand, near Isaac Walton’s old shop in Chancery Lane, and had -converted the Gentle Angler, these two certainly strolled often out here -together. Donne preached Lady Danvers’ funeral sermon in Old Chelsea -Church in 1627; notable as one of his most touching discourses. - - * * * * * - -In the embankment gardens we have passed a statue recently placed there; -a man seated in a chair, uncouth of figure, with bent brow and rugged -face. And in the wall of the corner house behind we stop to look at a -small memorial tablet, still more recently placed; a medallion portrait -of the same face, and beneath, this inscription: “Thomas Carlyle lived at -24, Cheyne Row, 1834–81.” For this is not the house in which he lived, -and the tablet was fixed on this one with queer common sense, his own -being in Chancery at that time! It is to be found farther up in this -little dull street running from Cheyne Walk just here; in which there is -nothing that is not commonplace, save the little cottage covered with -vines, in the wall above which is a stone with odd old-fashioned -lettering—“This is Gt. Cheyne Row, 1708.” About the middle of the row of -small dreary brick houses, the one once numbered 5, now 24, is that in -which he dwelt for nearly fifty years, and wherein he wrote his -commination service large on all mankind; talking more eloquently, and -more loquaciously withal, in praise of silence, than any man who ever -scolded all through life that he might do honour to the strong arm and -the still tongue! - - [Picture: Statue of Thomas Carlyle, by Boehm] - -The look-out across the narrow street from his front windows—“mainly into -trees,” he wrote to Sir William Hamilton, on moving here—shows now -nothing but a long, low, depressing wall, above which rises a -many-windowed model dwelling-house; and it is surely one of the least -inspiring prospects in all London: while from the back he could see -nothing of interest except the westernmost end of the old wall of Henry -VIII.’s Manor House garden, which still stands here. It gave him a hint -in his pamphlet, “Shooting Niagara;” wherein, sneering at modern bricks -and bricklayers, he says: “Bricks, burn them rightly, build them -faithfully with mortar faithfully tempered, _they_ will stand. . . . We -have them here at the head of this garden, which are in their third or -fourth century.” - -Long before his day, there had lived, almost on this same spot, another -“Hermit of Chelsea,” in the person of Dr. Tobias Smollett; who came here -to live in retirement in 1750, fresh from the fame of his “Roderick -Random;” seeking such seclusion partly on account of his daughter’s -health and his own, and partly for the sake of his work. Here he wrote -“Ferdinand Count Fathom,” finished Hume’s “History of England,” and began -his translation of “Don Quixote;” and here took place those Sunday -dinners, the delicious description of which, and of the guests, he has -put into the mouth of young Jerry Melford, in “Humphrey Clinker.” Here -were spent some of his happiest days, with his work and with his friends -from town; Johnson, Garrick, Sterne, John Wilkes, John Hunter: the latter -probably coming from Earl’s Court, Kensington, where his place—mansion, -museum, and menagerie in one—stood till very lately. Smollett was as -well known in the streets of Chelsea, in his day, as Carlyle in ours—“a -good-sized, strongly-made man, graceful, dignified, and pleasant.” - - [Picture: Carlyle’s house, Great Cheyne Row] - -It was a fine old place, with extensive grounds, which Smollett took; -being the ancient Manor House of the Lawrences, once owned by Henry -VIII., as we have seen. The house stood exactly on the site of this -block of two-storied brick cottages called “Little Cheyne Row,” between -Great Cheyne Row and Lawrence Street. Its early history has little that -need detain us, until, in 1714, it came to be called Monmouth House, from -its new owner, the Duchess of Monmouth and Buccleuch; who came here with -John Gay as her domestic steward or secretary, and who here lived to the -age of ninety. She had been an ornament of Charles II.’s court, a real -jewel amidst all the pinchbeck and paste of his setting. She was the -widow of his son, the hapless Duke of Monmouth; “who began life with no -legal right to his being, and ended it by forfeiting all similar right to -his head.” It is to this gracious and gentle _chatelaine_ that Sir -Walter Scott sings his “Lay of the Last Minstrel”: - - “For she had known adversity, - Though born in such a high degree; - In pride of power, in beauty’s bloom, - Had wept o’er Monmouth’s bloody tomb.” - -Smollett left the place for ever, in 1769, and a little later, went to -die in Spain; a brave, silent, sad man, for all the fun in his books, and -already broken in health by the untimely death of his daughter. The -Chelsea historian, Faulkner, writing in 1829, says that Monmouth House -was then “a melancholy scene of desolation and ruin.” It was finally -torn down and carted away in 1834. - - [Picture: The Chelsea Rectory] - -The grounds of Monmouth House—now built over by a great -board-school—stretched back to those of the Rectory of St. Luke’s, a step -to the northward. The Rectory is an irregular brick building, delightful -to the eye, set in an old-fashioned lawn with great trees; its -tranquillity assured by a high brick wall. It is a very old house, was -built by the Marquis of Winchester, and granted by him to the parish on -May 6th, 1566, at the request of Queen Elizabeth. Glebe Place, just at -hand, shows the site of the glebe land given in her time, in exchange for -the older parsonage, which stood still farther west, behind Millman’s -Row, now Millman’s Street. - -The historic interest of this Chelsea Rectory, however, is dwarfed by its -personal appeal to all of us, for that it was the home of three notable -boys; named, in the order of their ages, Charles, George, and Henry -Kingsley. They came here in the year 1836; their father, the Rev. -Charles Kingsley, having received the living of St. Luke’s, Chelsea, from -Lord Cadogan. So their beloved west-country life was exchanged for the -prim, parochial prosiness, which made such a doleful difference to them -all. For these boys were born, it seems to me, with the instant love of -life and movement in their blood. Charles has shown it in almost -everything he wrote; Henry gave utterance to it in his books only in a -less degree, because it found vent in his years of wandering; while -George—better known as “The Doctor”—appears for a little while at -spasmodic intervals at his home on Highgate Hill, then plunges into space -again, and is vaguely heard of, now yachting in the South Seas, now -chatting delightfully in a Colorado mining-camp. Henry, the youngest, -was a sensitive, shy lad, delicate in health; and the old dames in this -neighbourhood tell of his quiet manner and modest bearing. Many of the -poor old women about here have a vivid remembrance of “the boys,” and -speak of the whole family with respect and affection. Henry was born in -1830, studied at King’s College, London, for a little over two years, -1844–6; his name was entered at Worcester College, Oxford, March 6th, -1850; where he kept ten terms, leaving at Easter, 1853, without taking -his degree. The Australian “gold-digging fever” was then raging, and he -started for that country with two friends. There he did all sorts of -things: tried mining, tried herding, became a stockman, was in the -mounted police; and after about five years of these varied vocations, -returned to England with no gold in his pockets. It was all in his -brain; a precious possession of experience of life and of men, to be -coined into the characters and the scenes which have passed current all -over the globe. All his Australian stories are admirable, and “Geoffrey -Hamlyn”—his first work, produced soon after his return, in 1859—is the -best tale of colonial life ever written. His parents had intended that -he should take holy orders, hoping perhaps that he should succeed his -father in the living of old St. Luke’s; but he felt himself utterly -unfitted for this profession, as he also, although with less reason, -believed himself unfitted for that of the journalist. This latter he -tried for a while when he came back to England; and indeed, as a -correspondent he displayed dash enough, and after the surrender of Sedan, -was the first man to enter within the French lines. He found at length -his proper place as an essayist and a novelist. In all his works, there -is to me a strange and nameless charm—a quaint humour, a genuine -sentiment, an atmosphere all his own, breezy, buoyant, boyish; seeming to -show a personality behind all his creations—that of their creator—a fair, -frank, fresh-hearted man. He had true artistic talent in another -direction, too, inherited from his grandfather; and he may have been just -in judging himself capable of gaining far greater reputation as a painter -than as a novelist, even. His skill in drawing was amazing, and the few -water-colours and oils left to his family—and unknown outside of its -members—are masterpieces. On his return from Australia, he lived for a -while with his mother at “The Cottage,” at Eversleigh; never caring for -Chelsea after the death of his father. He was married in 1864 by Charles -Kingsley and Gerald Blunt, the present Rector of Chelsea. On May 24th, -1876, “on the vigil of the Ascension,” only forty-six years of age, he -died at Cuckfield, Sussex, which quiet retreat he had chosen twelve -months before. - -Henry Kingsley especially appeals to us, just here, for that he has given -us, in “The Hillyars and Burtons,” so vivid a picture of modern -Chelsea—its streets and by-ways, its old houses and its venerable church, -in delightful detail, as he saw them when a boy. The Hillyar family is a -romantic reproduction of that ancient Chelsea family, the Lawrences; in -“The Burtons” he gives us his reminiscence of the Wyatt household, living -at Wargrave, Henley-on-Thames. The brave girl, Emma Burton, is a -portrait of Emma Wyatt. The old home of the Burtons—“the very large -house which stood by itself, as it were, fronting the buildings opposite -our forge; which contained twenty-five rooms, some of them very large, -and which was called by us, indifferently, Church Place, or Queen -Elizabeth’s Place”—_this_ was the only one of the grand mansions just -here in Chelsea left standing when the Kingsleys came here. “It had been -in reality the palace of the young Earl of Essex; a very large -three-storied house of old brick, with stone-mullioned windows and -doorways.” You may see a print of it in “kind old Mr. Faulkner’s” book, -as he found it in 1830, dilapidated then, and let out to many tenants. -Later, it sunk lower still; and finally the grand old fabric—“which had -been trodden often enough by the statesmen and dandies of Queen -Elizabeth’s court, and most certainly by that mighty woman herself”—was -demolished between 1840–42. The boy of ten or twelve then, Henry -Kingsley, must have had the same feelings of wonder and regret, which he -puts into the speech of Jim Burton, as he looked on this historic pile, -roofless, dis-windowed, pickaxed to pieces. He is not quite correct in -letting Jim Burton fix its site on the south side of Paultons Square; it -stood between that square and Church Street, exactly where now stands a -block of poor little one-storied houses, “Paulton Terrace, 1843,” painted -on its pediment; and at the back, built in with some still more wretched -little dwellings, you shall still see part of the palace wall of Thomas -Cromwell, Earl of Essex, the son of the Putney blacksmith. - -From this ancient site I often walk, in company with the Burton brothers, -Joe and Jim, their sister Emma and Erne Hillyar behind, down old Church -Lane, now Church Street, haunted by historic shades, to where, at its -foot, stands “Chelsea Old Church.” - -“Four hundred years of memory are crowded into that dark old church, and -the great flood of change beats round the walls, and shakes the door in -vain, but never enters. The dead stand thick together there, as if to -make a brave resistance to the moving world outside, which jars upon -their slumber. It is a church of the dead. I cannot fancy any one being -married in that church—its air would chill the boldest bride that ever -walked to the altar.” So Joe Burton well says, sitting in his “old -place”—the bench which stood in front of Sir Thomas More’s monument, -close to the altar-rails. But for all that, it is not a depressing but -rather a delightful old church, if you sit here of a summer afternoon; -the sun streaming in from the south-west, slanting on the stone effigies, -and the breeze breathing in through the little door beside More’s -monument, shaking the grass outside, and the noble river sparkling beyond -the embankment garden. To me it has more of fascination than any church -in London. Its entire absence of architectural effect in its varying -styles; its retention to this day of the simplicity of the village -church, even as when built; its many monuments and mural tablets, each -one a page of English history; its family escutcheons; its tattered -battle flags hung above; the living memories that are built in with every -dead stone: all these combine to make it the quaintest, the most -impressive, the most lovable of churches. Dean Stanley was fond of -calling it one of the Chapters of his Abbey. This is not the place for a -description of the monuments, nor for details of their inscriptions; -which make us think, as they did the boy Jim Burton, that these buried -here “were the best people who ever lived.” Only the tenant of one plain -stone coffin is modest in his simple request cut thereon: “Of your -Charitie pray for the soul of Edmund Bray, Knight.” As for most of the -others, I quite agree with Jim, that the Latin, in which their long -epitaphs are written, was the only language appropriate; the English -tongue being “utterly unfit to express the various virtues of these -wonderful Chelsea people;” among whom, it strikes me, too, that “Sir -Thomas More was the most obstinately determined that posterity should -hear his own account of himself.” His black marble slab, set deep under -a plain grey Gothic arch, is placed on the chancel wall, just where he -used to stand in his “surplisse;” above it is his punning crest, a Moor’s -head on a shield; and on it is cut his own long Latin inscription, sent -by him to his friend Erasmus, who thought it worth printing in his -collection of “Tracts and Letters” (Antwerp, 1534). Twice have the -characters been recut; and each time has care been taken, for his -memory’s sake, to leave blank the last word of the line, which describes -him as “troublesome to thieves, murderers and _heretics_.” To the sturdy -old Catholic these were all equal—all criminals to be put out of the way. -The irony of chance has placed, on the wall close beside his tomb, a -tablet which keeps alive the name of one of the Tyndale family, a -descendant of that one whose books More burnt, and whose body he would -probably have liked to burn, also! More’s two wives are buried here, as -well as others of his family; but whether his body lies here, or in a -Tower grave, no one knows. - - [Picture: A Corner in Chelsea Old Church] - -Three of Chelsea’s grandest ladies lie under monuments in the church. -Lady Dacre, with her husband Gregory—“their dogs at their feet”—rests -under a Gothic canopy, richly wrought with flowers; tomb and canopy all -of superb white marble. Its sumptuousness is all the more striking in -that it contrasts so strongly with the simplicity ordered by her dying -injunctions, as she wrote them on December 20, 1594, when decreeing the -establishment of her almshouses—venerable cottages still standing in -Tothill Street, Westminster, not far from the little street named for -her. In her will she says: “And I earnestly desire that I may be buried -in one tombe with my lord at Chelsey, without all earthlie pompe, but -with some privat freindes, and nott to be ripped, and towling for me, but -no ringing, after service ys done.” - -Opposite where she lies, reposes in white marble of the size of life, -under a pillared arch on a black marble pedestal, another noted Chelsea -dame, Lady Jane Cheyne; and on the marble her worthy husband Charles, -transformed here into Carolus, records in sounding Latin the good she did -in her life. Notably did she benefit this church, towards the -re-building of which she gave largely. - -The great Duchess of Northumberland—mother of Elizabeth’s Leicester, -grandmother of Sir Philip Sidney—was laid to rest under a magnificent -tomb; of which there now is left, to keep alive her memory, here against -the wall, only a slab beneath a noble arch, and faded gilt escutcheons -beautifully wrought. - -And now, glancing about at the monumental marble and brass of these -soldiers, statesmen, citizens, simple and stately, we are ready to agree -with straight-thinking Jim Burton: “But, on the whole, give me the -Hillyars, kneeling humbly, with nothing to say for themselves.” It is -the Lawrence family, as I have explained, who are called “The Hillyars” -by Henry Kingsley; and his preference—a memory, no doubt, of the Sunday -visits of his boyhood to the rector’s pew, which directly faces these -tombs—refers to that quaint monument in the Lawrence chapel; where, under -a little arch, supported by columns, kneel wife and husband face to face, -he in his armour, his three simple-seeming sons in ruffs kneeling behind -him; she in her heavy stiff dress, her six daughters on their knees -behind in a dutiful row, decreasing in size to the two dead while yet -babies on the cushion before her. Says Jim: “I gave them names in my own -head. I loved two of them. On the female side I loved the little wee -child, for whom there was very small room, and who was crowded against -the pillar, kneeling on the skirts of the last of her big sisters. And I -loved the big lad, who knelt directly behind his father; between the -Knight himself and the two little brothers, dressed so very like -blue-coat boys, such quaint little fellows as they were.” - -In this Lawrence chapel we see a strange survival of a common custom of -the pre-Reformation times; when a great family was wont to build and own -its private chapel in the parish church; using it for worship during -life, for burial in death, and deeding or bequeathing it, as they did any -other real estate. When Sir Thomas Lawrence became Lord of the Manor, he -partly bought, and partly built, this chapel; and now, although it forms -the entire east end of the north aisle, it has not been modernized like -the rest of the church, but retains its high-backed pews and other -ancient peculiarities unchanged since the church was repaired in 1667; -for it is still private property, belonging to the family to whom it has -descended from the Lawrences, and to them goes the income derived from -its pews. - -Before going out through the main door we stop to look at the wooden rack -to which the old books are chained, and underneath, at the little -mahogany shelf, for convenience in reading them: these bring back to us -the monkish days. Here is the Bible, kept since that time when it was so -costly a volume; here the Prayer-book, the Church Homilies, Foxe’s -Martyrology: this latter then nearly as sacred as the Scriptures. In the -porch now stands the bell which hung for nearly two hundred years in the -tower, given to the church by “the Honourable William Ashburnham, -Esquire, Cofferer to His Majesty’s Household, 1679;” so its lettering -tells us. - -Going, one foggy night of that winter, perhaps from that Ashburnham House -of which we have seen the site, he lost his way, slipped, and fell into -the river; and would have been lost, good swimmer though he was, unable -to see the shore, but that he heard this church clock strike nine, and so -guided, swam safely toward it. He gave to the church, just then being -rebuilt with Lady Cheyne’s funds, this bell, with a sum sufficient to -have it rung for five minutes every night at nine. So was done for many -years—the ringer receiving “a penny each night and a penny for his -candle”—until about half a century ago the fund vanished, somehow, -somewhere; and this bell has never been rung since! - -Outside, the tiny graveyard is crowded with slabs and monuments, many of -them ugly, some curious, a few fine: from the stately stone tomb of Sir -Hans Sloane and his wife—a marble urn entwisted with Æsculapian serpents, -under a marble canopy—to the simple slab, worn with wind and weather, of -Dr. Chamberlayne and his family; of whom the daughter, Anne, more famous -than any of the others, “long declining wedlock, and aspiring above her -sex and age, fought under her brother with arms and manly attire, in a -fire-ship against the French, on the 30th June, 1690: a maiden heroine!” -This “Casta Virago” was then but twenty-three, and did not grow in -courage with her years; for she soon after consented to marry one John -Spraggs, and then died! Here and there, amid unknown graves, we may find -those of Magdalen Herbert; Mrs. Fletcher, wife of the Bishop of London, -mother of the Fletcher of the famous firm “Beaumont and Fletcher”; -Shadwell, the poet-laureate; Woodfall, the publisher of “Junius”; Sir -John Fielding, the blind magistrate of Bow Street, half-brother of the -novelist. - -Amid these English names is written the name of an historic Frenchman; -and his historic grave is hid somewhere in a corner of this churchyard, -past finding out. {160} The church record reads: “Burial—A.D. 1740, May -18, Brigadier John Cavallier”; and this dry detail of the interment of -“only an old officer, who had always behaved very bravely,” is all that -is told there of Jean Antoine Cavallier, the Camissard, the leader of the -French Huguenots in their long, fierce fight against the cruel and -lawless enforcement of Louis XIV.’s Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; -refusing to be apostatized, expatriated, or exterminated. They became -the Covenanters of France, and Cavallier—a baker’s apprentice, with a -genuine genius for war, the soul of the strife, elected their leader -before he was twenty—was their Black Douglas: one even more furious and -more ferocious. After fire and slaughter and pillage for two years; -affronting the daylight, blazing up the night; amazing the whole world -and horrifying their enemies; banded like bandits in the hills of Le Puy, -singly like guerillas along the range of the Cevennes; praying, -prophesying, slaying:—they were in the end circled about by the Grand -Monarque’s soldiery under Villars, shut out from Dutch and English aid, -from escape by sea, forced to capitulate. Cavallier was let go to -Jersey, was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the island, and finally -closed his stormy career peacefully in London. Here he lies, in an -unknown grave, in this alien soil; and the Cévenols, up in their hills, -still talk of him and of his war two hundred years ago, to-day as if it -were yesterday. - - * * * * * - -As we stand here, the broad embankment, with its dainty gardens, -stretches between us and the river; spanned just above by old Battersea -Bridge, the only wooden bridge left to the Thames, since that of Putney -has gone. For centuries there had been a ferry just here, granted by -James I. to some of his “dear relations” for £40. In 1771 this bridge -was built for foot-passengers only, was enlarged later, and is soon to be -pulled down; its rude and reverend timbers are already propped up here -and there. Stand midway on it with me, while the ceaseless stream of men -flows by, caring nothing for that at which you and I are looking. - -On our right, along the southern shore, stretches Battersea Park, fringed -with its great masses of cool foliage; where not long ago were marshes -and meadows, and the barren, bleak, Battersea Fields. In those fields -was fought the famous duel in 1829, between the Duke of Wellington and -Lord Winchelsea. And long before that, in the reeds along that shore was -hid Colonel Blood, intending to shoot Charles II. while bathing, as was -the King’s custom, “in the Thames over against Chelsey; but his arm was -checked by an awe of Majesty.” So, at least, Blood had the impudence to -narrate, when on his trial for his audacious and almost successful -attempt to steal the royal regalia from the Tower in May, 1671. Whether -the King was touched by the narrative, or whether, as has been hinted, -his impecunious Majesty was implicated in the plot to rob the crown; it -is certain that he pardoned the daring adventurer, and gave him a yearly -pension of £500. - - [Picture: Old Battersea Church, where Blake was married, showing the - window from which Turner sketched] - -Beyond the Bridge, back of us, rises the square, squat tower of St. -Mary’s, Battersea, builded in the worst churchwarden style; and otherwise -only notable for that therein was married Blake the madman; that there -Turner loved to sit at the vestry window and sketch; and that there lie -the remains and stand the magnificent monument of St. John Bolingbroke, -and of his second wife, niece of Madame de Maintenon: both their epitaphs -written by him. Not far from the church, on the river bank next to the -mill, still stands one wing of the great seventy-roomed Bolingbroke -House; in which St. John was born, to which he returned from his stormy -exile, there to pass his remaining days in study, and there to die. -Through its many old-time chambers with the famous “sprawling Verrio’s” -ceiling paintings, I will lead you into the historic cedar-room, on the -river front—Bolingbroke’s favourite retreat, whose four walls, panelled -with cedar from floor to ceiling, are still as redolent as when -Pope—Bolingbroke’s guest—began in it his “Essay on Man,” inspired thereto -by his host; whose wit, scholarship, philosophy had, during his exile, -inspired also Voltaire and made him own his master. Here in this room -were wont to meet Bolingbroke and Pope, Chesterfield and Swift—that -brilliant quartette who hated, plotted against, and attacked Walpole. -His house—Sir Robert’s—forms part of the great mass of Chelsea Hospital, -dim in the distance before us; between, stretches the old Dutch front of -Cheyne Walk, near at hand resolving itself into most ancient houses, with -quaint windows in their sloping roofs; their red tiles and -chocolate-brown bricks showing dark behind the green of the old -lime-trees. The setting sun lingers lovingly on the square church tower, -venerable with the mellow tints of time; and presently the moon comes up, -washing out all these tints, except that of the white wall-tablets; and -from out the grey mass shines the clock-face, even now striking nine, as -it did for the “Hon. William,” just then soused in the river, more than -two hundred years ago. Farther beyond the bridge are two buildings, -which also bring the old and the new close together; the “World’s End -Tavern,” at the end of the passage of that name, famous three centuries -ago as a rendezvous for improper pleasure parties, and introduced in -Congreve’s “Love for Love,” in that connection. Just west of the sedate -little “public,” “The Aquatic Stores,” are two tiny houses set back from -the embankment; stone steps lead down to their minute front gardens; -vines clamber up the front of the westernmost house to an iron balcony on -its roof. That balcony was put there for his own convenience by Joseph -Mallord William Turner, the painter; in that house, No. 119, Cheyne Walk, -he lived for many years, and in that front room he died, on the 18th -December, 1851. To that upper window, no longer able to paint, too -feeble to walk, he was wheeled every morning during his last days that he -might lose no light of the winter sun on his beloved Thames. In -Battersea Church you may sit in the little vestry window wherein he was -wont to sketch. The story of his escape from his grand and gloomy -mansion in Queen Anne Street, is well known; he never returned to it, but -made his home here with the burly Mrs. Booth. After long hunting, his -aged housekeeper, in company with another decrepid dame, found him in -hiding, only the day before his death. The barber’s son of Maiden Lane -lies in the great cathedral of St. Paul’s, and the evil that he did is -buried with him—his eccentricity, his madness if you will—but he lives -for all time, as the greatest landscape painter England has known. - - [Picture: The Western End of Cheyne Walk] - -The long summer afternoon is waning, and the western sky, flaming with -fading fires, floods broad Chelsea Reach with waves of dusky gold. The -evening mist rises slowly, as yet hiding nothing, but transforming even -commonplace objects in a weird unwonted way. Those pretentious blocks of -new mansions loom almost lordly now; that distant railway bridge is only -a ghost of graceful glimmering arches; money-making factory chimneys and -commercial wharves pretend to picturesque possibilities; clumpish barges, -sprawling on the mud, are no longer ugly; and a broad-bottomed coasting -schooner, unloading stone at a dock, is just what we would choose to see -there. And here at the end of this bridge is a fragment of “real old -Chelsea,” left intact for our delectation—a cluster of drooping trees on -the bank, an unaccountable boat-house, stone steps leading down to the -bit of beach, whereon are skiffs drawn up, and cordage lying about, and -sail-wrapped spars. Out on the placid Reach there is but little -movement; the river steamboats are anchored in a dark mass near the -shore, and the last belated one edges up to its mooring beside them for -the night; a burly barge drifts slowly by under its dusky brown sails, or -a “dumb-barge” floats with the tide, its crew of one man busied with his -long sculls and his not-dumb blasphemy; a puffing tug with a red light in -its nose drags tortuously a long line of tarpaulin-covered canal boats. -As each of these moving objects breaks the burnished waves into bits of -golden gloom, the whole still surface of the stream becomes alive for us -with a fairy flotilla, born of the brain, yet real enough to our vision. -There float ancient barges, six and eight-oared, gorgeous with gilding or -severely simple; those of brilliant noblemen, of the City guilds, of -Royalty itself. We seem to see Henry VIII. rowing up, on a visit to -More; Elizabeth coming to call on Lord Charles Howard of Effingham, him -who scattered the “Spanyard’s Invinsable Navye” for her; the first -Charles, impatient to dote on his “dear Steenie.” Even the commonest of -these curious craft is freighted, for our fancy, with a nameless cargo, -not on its bills of lading. So do we gaze across the river of Time that -flows between us and the group of famous men and historic women, moving -in the twilight of the past on Chelsea’s shore. And we ask, with Marcus -Piso, friend of the younger Cicero: “Is it by some mutual instinct, or -through some delusion, that when we see the very spots where famous men -have lived, we are far more touched than when we hear of the things that -they have done, or read something that they have written? It is thus -that I am affected at this moment.” - - [Picture: Turner’s last dwelling-place] - -Here walks Sir Thomas More with his wife and daughters; here George -Herbert muses “with a far look in his immortal eyes;” here come Donne and -Isaac Walton to visit his mother, Magdalen Herbert. Swift strolls here, -alone as he likes best; he has been looking at the hay-makers, just -inshore above, in the hot summer day, and is about to bathe in the -river—the “more than Oriental scrupulosity” of his bodily care -contrasting so keenly with his fondness for moral filth. Here come his -friend Atterbury, the learned theologian, from his great garden in Church -Lane; and Dr. Arbuthnott, Queen Anne’s famous physician; and another -noted doctor, Sir John Shadwell, father of the poet laureate. Locke -leaves the summer-house in the Earl of Shaftesbury’s garden, just above -where now is St. George’s Workhouse: he has just begun his great essay, -while living here as tutor for the son. Pym, Charles’ enemy, who lives -on the waterside, stops to look at learned Sir Joseph Banks, who, after a -stormy voyage around the world with Captain Cook, now tranquilly sits -fishing here; Samuel Johnson strides buoyantly by to his china-making or -plods pensively back, downcast with his failure; Hans Sloane walks -arm-in-arm with his friend Sir Isaac Newton, who has come out here from -his house in Leicester Square; behind them saunter Addison and Dick -Steele, and a more queerly-consorted couple, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas -Carlyle. St. Evremonde goes with one strangely resembling him -superficially—Leigh Hunt, who lived at the present No. 10, Upper Cheyne -Row; and who, “with his delicate, worn, but keenly intellectual face, his -large luminous eyes, his thick shock of wiry grey hair, and little cape -of faded black silk over his shoulders, looks like an old French abbé.” -Shelley is near them, having come a long way from his lodgings in Hans -Place; where he has for a neighbour a certain Joseph Balsamo, calling -himself the Count Cagliostro, living in Sloane Street. The Dandy D’Orsay -cautiously threads his way, for he is in hiding from his creditors. -Turner passes, gazing on his river; and Maclise, who lives here on the -bank and dies here too, painting the Thames. Dante Gabriel Rossetti and -his near neighbour George Eliot go by; and, last of all, Henry Kingsley -with the boy Joe Burton, whom he loves, and whom we love, too. - -The puffing tug shrieks, and puts to flight these vagrant fancies of an -American, sentimentalizing in Chelsea; and so ends his stroll, his -returning footsteps echoing the words of Goethe, and reminding him that, -after all, “You find in Rome only what you take there.” - - [Picture: Battersea bridge and Church from Turner’s house] - - THE END. - - - - -INDEX. - - -ABBEY, Westminster, 33, 152 - -“Absalom and Achitophel,” 50 - -Addison, Joseph, 23, 63, 65, 66, 80, 94, 122, 178 - -Albert Suspension Bridge, 131 - -“Alcyon,” 63 - -Alma, Battle of the, 73 - -Almshouses, Lady Dacre’s, 155 - -Anne, Queen, 105, 119, 177 - -Apsley House, 13 - -Aquatic Shores, 169 - -Arbuthnot, Dr., 177 - -Armada, 53, 174 - -Armida, 91 - -Aschyly, Katherine, 116 - -Ashburnham, Hon. Wm., 158, 166 - -„ House, 63, 158 - -Ashe, Miss, 79 - -Aspasia, 93 - -Astell, Mary, 93 - -Atterbury, 177 - -Aubrey, John, 38 - -Augustine, 47 - -Australia, 147, 148 - - * * * * * - -BADAJOS, 73 - -Balaclava, 73 - -Balsamo, Joseph, 178 - -Banks, Sir Joseph, 177 - -Barbican, 78 - -Barley, Mrs., 130 - -Bartholomew Close, 122 - -Basle, 48 - -Bastille, 93 - -Battersea Bridge, 31, 57, 161, 165 - -,, Church, 165, 169 - -,, Fields, 33, 162 - -„ Park, 76, 162 - -Beaufort, Duke of, 52 - -,, House, 52, 58 - -„ Stairs, 20 - -,, Street, 37, 57 - -Beaumont, Francis, 93 - -„ and Fletcher, 159 - -Becke, Mrs. Betty, 81 - -“Beggar’s Opera,” The, 85 - -Belgravia, 20 - -Bishop’s Stairs, 20 - -“Black House,” The, 129 - -Blackfriars Bridge, 125 - -Blacklands, 17, 96 - -Blake, 165 - -Blenheim, 83 - -Blessington, Lady, 14 - -Blood, Colonel, 162 - -Bloody Bridge, 23 - -Bloomfield, Robert, 80 - -Bloomsbury, 120, 121 - -Blunt, Rev. Gerald, 148 - -Boleyn, Anne, 42, 116 - -Bolingbroke House, 165 - -,, St. John, 84, 85, 165, 166 - -Booth, Mrs., 170 - -Botanic Gardens, 101, 119 - -Bow Street, 160 - -Bowack, 37, 53 - -Braganza, Catherine of, 111 - -Bramah, 58 - -Bray, Edmund, Knight, 152 - -Bristol, Earl of, 51 - -Britons, 33 - -Brown, Ford Madox, 109 - -Browne, Lady, 116 - -Brunel, 58 - -Brussels, 47 - -Buckingham, 1st Duke of, 50 - -,, 2nd „ 50, 51, 98 - -,, Palace, 23 - -Bucklersbury, 34 - -Bulwer, Lady, 32 - -Bun House, The, 97 - -Burleigh, Lord, 32, 50 - -Burlington, Earl of, 52 - -Burney, Dr., 80 - -„ Fanny, 80 - -Burton, Emma, 149, 151 - -,, “Jim,” 150, 151, 152, 156 - -„ “Joe,” 151, 178 - -Butterfly Alley, 28 - -Byron, Lord, 31 - - * * * * * - -CADOGAN, Doctor, 63 - -,, Earl of, 119, 146 - -„ Place, 96 - -Cæsar, 33 - -Cagliostro, Count, 178 - -Camden House, 57 - -Camera Square, 28 - -Camissards, The, 160 - -Canterbury, 45 - -Carberry, Earl of, 98 - -Carlyle, Thomas, 137, 141, 178 - -Caroline, Queen, 84, 119 - -Carolina, North, 61 - -Catherine of Braganza, 111 - -Cavallier, Jean Antoine, 160, 161 - -Cavendish, Sir Wm., 130 - -Cecil, Lord Robert, 50 - -Cedars of Lebanon, 101 - -Cevennes, 161 - -Cévenols, 161 - -Chamberlayne, Anne, 159 - -Chamberlayne, Doctor, 159 - -Chancery Lane, 134 - -Charles I., 50, 134, 174, 177 - -„ II., 23, 64, 70, 75, 81, 86, 88, 91, 93, 111, 112, 142, 162 - -Charlotte, Queen, 97 - -Charterhouse, The, 46 - -Chatsworth, 131 - -Chaucer, Geoffrey, 93 - -Chelsea, “direct connection with London,” 13; “Village of Palaces,” 17; -“A quiet country village,” 18; ancient aspect, 19–23; causes of its early -settlement, 20; earliest history, 33; etymology of name, 33; present -appearance, 24–31; mentioned, 13, 14, 17, 18, 20, 23, 24, 27, 28, 31–34, -42, 46, 57, 61, 63, 67, 70, 80, 81, 85, 89, 102, 113, 119, 120, 122, 125, -126, 129, 130, 131, 141, 142, 146, 148, 149, 153, 154, 173, 174, 179 - -Chelsea Barracks, 28, 96 - -„ Bun House, 97 - -„ China Factory, 132 - -,, Church, Old, 24, 44, 53, 113, 134, 151 - -„ „ St. Luke’s, 145, 146 - -„ Farm, 62 - -„ Hermit of, 138 - -,, Historian of, 89, 142, 150 - -„ Hospital, 23, 28, 67, 81, 82, 95, 166 - -,, Little, 53, 57 - -,, Manor House, 106, 113, 116, 118, 119, 138 - -„ Pensioner, 89 - -„ “Physick Garden,” 101 - -„ Reach, 31, 170, 173 - -,, Rectory, 145 - -„ Suspension Bridge, 76 - -Chelsey, 19, 33, 34, 44, 50, 51, 69, 105, 155, 162 - -„ Colledge, 70, 81 - -„ Viscount, 120 - -Cheltenham Terrace, 95 - -Cherbury, Lord Herbert of, 134 - -Chesterfield, Lord, 78, 166 - -Cheyne, Lady Jane, 118, 155, 158 - -„ Lord, 96, 101, 118 - -„ Row, Great, 20, 137 - -„ ,, Little, 141 - -,, ,, Upper, 178 - -„ Walk, 28, 32, 57, 106, 114, 120, 126, 129, 132, 133, 137, 141, 166, 169 - -Chillianwallah, Battle of, 76 - -China Factory, 132 - -Chiswick, 52 - -Christchurch Street, 89 - -Chudleigh, Miss, 79 - -Church Lane, 20, 151, 177 - -Church, Old Chelsea, 24, 44, 53, 113, 134, 151 - -„ Place, 149 - -,, Street, 32, 150, 151 - -Cicero, 49, 174 - -“Citizen of the World,” 80 - -Coldstream Guards, 74 - -Colet, Dean, 41 - -College, King James’s, 69, 77 - -„ Fields, 76 - -Colorado, 146 - -Commonwealth, The, 50 - -Condé, 93 - -Congreve, William, 94, 95, 169 - -“Connoisseur,” The, 80 - -Cook, Captain, 178 - -Covenanters, 160 - -Craufield, Earl of Middlesex, 50 - -Cremorne, Lady, 62 - -„ Gardens, 62, 63, 81 - -„ Viscount, 62 - -Cressy, 34 - -Cromwell, Richard, 122 - -„ Thomas, 150 - -Cross, Mrs. John Walter, 106 - -Cubitt, 20 - -Cuckfield, 148 - -Cummings, Polly, 126 - -Cunningham, Peter, 67 - - * * * * * - -DACRE, Lady, 49, 50, 154 - -Dacre’s, Lady, Almshouses, 155 - -Danvers House, 133, 134 - -,, Sir John, 134 - -,, Street, 133 - -Davies, Rev. R. H., 160 - -Dawson, Thomas, 62 - -Dead March, The, 74 - -De Foe, Daniel, 121 - -Devonshire, Duke of, 52, 130, 131 - -Dickens, Charles, 109 - -Dissolution, The, 68 - -Doggett, 105 - -Don Quixote, 141 - -Don Saltero, 121 - -Donne, Dr. John, 134, 177 - -D’Orsay, 178 - -Douglas, Black, The, 161 - -Drury Lane Theatre, 78 - -Druse, Mr., 115 - -Dryden, John, 50, 93 - -Duck Island, 93 - -Dutch War, 27, 70 - -Duke of York’s School, 95 - -“Duke’s Head,” The, 89 - -Dunbar, Battle of, 68 - - * * * * * - -EARL’S Court, 141 - -Eddystone Lighthouse, 118 - -Edge Hill, 70 - -Edict of Nantes, 27, 91, 160 - -Edward the Confessor, 33 - -,, VII., 117 - -Eliot, George, 32, 106, 178 - -Elizabeth, Princess, 115, 116, 117 - -,, Queen, 32, 63, 129, 145, 150, 155, 174 - -Elizabeth’s, Queen, Guard, 130 - -,, Place, 149 - -Embankment, The, 17, 28, 86, 98, 109, 134, 161 - -Erasmus, 37, 40, 41, 44, 48, 153 - -Esmond, Harry, Colonel, 24, 65 - -“Essay on Man,” The, 166 - -Essex, Earl of, 149, 150 - -“Evelina,” 80 - -Evelyn, John, 51, 67, 70, 101, 111, 118 - -Eversleigh, 148 - -Evremond, St., 86, 92, 93, 122, 178 - - * * * * * - -FAIRFAX, General, 50 - -Faulkner, 89, 142, 150 - -“Ferdinand Count Fathom,” 138 - -Fetter Lane, 58 - -Fielding, Henry, 80 - -„ Sir John, 159 - -Fire Fields, 23 - -Fletcher, Mrs., 159 - -,, John, 159 - -Flimnap, 85 - -Flood Street, 88, 106, 113 - -“Folly,” The, 62 - -Fox, Sir Stephen, 67 - -Foxe’s “Martyrology,” 158 - -Franklin, Benjamin, 122, 125, 178 - -French Gardeners, 27 - -Fry, Elizabeth, 90 - -Fulham, 32, 63, 66 - -Fuller’s “Worthies,” 45 - -Furnivall’s Inn, 46 - - * * * * * - -GALLOWAY, Count, 91 - -Garrick, David, 78, 141 - -Gay, John, 19, 85, 142 - -Geflitfullic, 33 - -“Geoffrey Hamlyn,” 147 - -George I., 83, 105, 119 - -„ II., 83, 84 - -,, III., 97 - -„ IV., 86 - -George and Garter, The, 51 - -Gibbons, Grinling, 75 - -Giggs, Margery, 41 - -Glebe Place, 145 - -Gloucester, 68 - -Godfrey, 91 - -Godolphin, Sydney, 92 - -Goethe, 179 - -Goldsmith, Oliver, 79 - -“Gorbudic,” 49 - -Gore House, 14 - -Gorges, Sir Arthur, 63 - -Gothic House, 106 - -Gough House, 17, 98 - -„ Sir John, 98 - -Grand Monarque, The, 161 - -Granville, Lord, 61 - -Great Cheyne Row, 20, 137 - -Green Arbour Court, 79 - -Grey, Lady Jane, 118 - -Grocyn, 41 - -Guilds, City, 174 - -Gwynne, Nell, 32, 63, 67, 68, 87 - -“Gwynne, Nell,” The, 66 - - * * * * * - -HALL, Mrs. S. C., 32 - -Hallam, Henry, 92 - -Halle, 58 - -Hamilton, Duchess of, 88 - -„ Sir William, 138 - -Hampstead, 95 - -Hampton Court, 23, 24, 111 - -Hanover, 84, 105 - -Hans Place, 31, 32, 96, 119, 178 - -„ Town, 96 - -Hardwick, Elizabeth, 130 - -„ House, 131 - -Hastings, Lady Elizabeth, 95 - -Hedderly, J., the photographer, 27 - -Henry VIII., 38, 42, 49, 112, 117, 138, 141, 174 - -„ „ Palace, 112 - -Herbert, George, 134, 174 - -„ Lord of Cherbury, 134 - -,, Magdalen, 134, 159, 178 - -Herkomer, Hubert, 74 - -Hermit of Chelsea, 138 - -Herrnhuters, The, 61 - -Hervey, Lord, 85 - -Heywood, Ellis, 38 - -Hill, John, 68 - -“Hillyars and Burtons,” 149, 156 - -Hoadley, Bishop, 131 - -Hogarth, 131 - -Holbein, 38, 44, 47, 48 - -Holborn Viaduct Station, 79 - -Holland, 58, 96 - -,, House, 14, 57, 130, 133 - -„ Lord, 133 - -House of Commons, 47, 48 - -Howard of Effingham, Lord, 174 - -Huguenots, The, 160 - -Hume’s “History of England,” 141 - -“Humphrey Clinker,” 141 - -Hundred of Ossulston, The, 33 - -Hunt, Leigh, 79, 178 - -Hunter, John, 141 - - * * * * * - -INDIA House, 14, 125 - -Infirmary, The, 67, 70, 82, 85 - -Inkerman, 73 - -Invalides, The, 67 - -Islington, 14 - - * * * * * - -“JACOB FAITHFUL,” 102 - -Jacobites, The, 130 - -Jacobs, Mrs. Mary, 125 - -Jamaica, 119 - -James I., 50, 162 - -Jersey, 161 - -Jewish Burial Ground, 52 - -Jew’s Road, 97 - -Jones, Inigo, 52, 57 - -Johnson, Samuel, 79, 101, 132, 141, 177 - -“Junius,” 159 - -Justice Walk, 132 - -Justina, Maria, 57 - - * * * * * - -KENSAL Green, 109 - -Kensington, 14, 17, 37, 84, 105, 133, 141 - -,, House, 57 - -King’s Bench, 47 - -„ College, 146 - -,, Road, 20, 23, 24, 28, 37, 53, 57, 63, 95, 115 - -King James’s College, 69, 77 - -Kingsley, Charles, 145, 146, 148 - -,, George, 145, 146 - -,, Henry, 145–150, 156, 178 - -,, Rev. Charles, 146 - -Knightsbridge, 13 - -Knipp, Mrs., 105 - -Knyff, L., 37 - - * * * * * - -LACY, 78 - -Lamb, Charles, 14, 125 - -„ Lady Caroline, 31 - -Landon, Letitia E., 31 - -Lawrence family, 113, 141, 149, 156 - -„ Sir Thomas, 157 - -„ Manor House, 113, 141 - -„ Chapel, 156, 157 - -,, Street, 132, 141 - -Lawson, Cecil, 109 - -“Lay of the Last Minstrel,” 142 - -Le Puy, 161 - -Leicester, Earl of, 155 - -,, Square, 178 - -Lely, Sir Peter, 111 - -Linacre, 41 - -Lincoln’s Inn, 46 - -Lindsey, Earl of, 58 - -„ House, 17, 57, 58 - -Little Britain, 122 - -„ Cheyne Row, 141 - -Locke, John, 177 - -London, 13, 14, 19, 24, 31, 47, 53, 61, 69, 74, 90, 97, 101, 106, 122, -134, 138, 146, 152, 159, 161 - -London Bridge, 44, 105 - -Louis XIV., 67, 160 - -“Love for Love,” 169 - -Lover’s Walk, 53 - -Lucknow, 73 - -Lysons, Samuel, 92 - - * * * * * - -MACAULAY, T. B., 18, 70 - -Maclise, Daniel, 106, 178 - -“Magpie and Stump,” 126, 130 - -Maiden Lane, 170 - -Maintenon, Madame de, 165 - -Mancini, Hortensia, 90 - -Manor House, 106, 113, 116, 118, 119, 138 - -„ Lawrence, 113, 141 - -,, Street, 113, 121 - -Marryat, 102 - -Martyrology, 158 - -Marvell, Andrew, 112 - -Mary Queen of Scots, 49 - -Mazarin, Cardinal, 90, 93 - -,, Duchess of, 86, 91, 94 - -Melford, Jerry, 141 - -Mercians, The, 33 - -Millbank, 87 - -Millman’s Row, 145 - -,, Street, 53, 145 - -Milton, John, 78 - -_Mirror_, _New York_, The, 14 - -“Mirror of Literature,” 98 - -Mitford, Mary Russell, 32 - -Monk, General, 74 - -Monmouth, Duchess of, 85, 142 - -„ Duke of, 142 - -,, House, 142, 145 - -Montague, Edward, 81 - -,, “Lady Mary Wortley, 85 - -“Monthly Recorder,” 70 - -Moravian Burial Ground, 53 - -,, Chapel, 54, 58 - -Moravians, The, 58, 61 - -More, Sir Thomas: his house, 34; its site, 37; its gardens, 37; its -gatehouse, 38, 52; the “newe buildinge,” 39, 133; his religious zeal, 39; -his wit, 40; his “Utopia,” 41; his family and friends, 40, 41; his -career, 46, 47; his downfall, 42; death, 43; grave, 44; monument, 151, -153; existing relics of, 52–54, 112; portraits of, 47, 48; quotations -from, 37, 38, 40; mentioned, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44, 47–49, 53, 54, 57, 58, -94, 112, 113, 119, 133, 151, 153, 174 - -Moricæ, The, 41 - -Morten, Cardinal, 46 - -Munden, Vice-Admiral, 121 - -Museum, British, 33, 57, 78, 120 - -Myddleton, Sir Hugh, 69 - - * * * * * - -NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, 48, 92 - -New England, 125, 126 - -„ Inn, 46 - -„ River, 14, 69 - -Newgate, 79 - -Newton, Sir Isaac, 119, 177 - -“Niagara, Shooting,” 138 - -Norfolk, Duchess of, 34 - -Norfolk, Duke of, 39 - -Normans, The, 19, 28 - -North American Colonies, 122 - -Northumberland, Duchess of, 155 - -Nostell Priory, 48 - - * * * * * - -OAKLEY Street, 113, 126, 131 - -Oak-Apple Day, 75 - -Offa, King, 33 - -Old Church, Chelsea, 24, 44, 53, 113, 134, 151 - -Old Magpye Stairs, 20 - -Oldcoates, 131 - -Orford, Earl of, 81 - -Ormond Row, 89 - -Ossulston, Hundred of, 33 - -Oxford, 46, 134, 146 - - * * * * * - -PARADISE ROW, 86–89, 93, 98 - -Parr, Catherine, 115–118 - -Paulton Terrace, 150 - -Paultons Square, 134, 150 - -Pelham, Earl of, 88 - -Penn, Granville, 62 - -,, William, 62 - -Pennsylvania, 58, 61, 62 - -Pepys, Samuel, 19, 67, 81, 88, 102, 111 - -Petersham, Lady Caroline, 79 - -Pimlico, 23 - -,, Road, 97 - -Piozzi, Mrs., 133 - -Poet’s Corner, 93 - -Poictiers, 34 - -Polyphilus, 101 - -Pope, Alexander, 51, 52, 85, 166 - -Pound Lane, 20 - -Pretender, The, 66 - -Prince Rupert, 69, 70 - -“Prince of Wales,” The, 132 - -Putney, 150, 162 - -Pym, 177 - - * * * * * - -QUEEN Anne Architecture, 18, 28 - -,, „ Street, 170 - -„ Elizabeth’s Place, 149 - -Queen’s Elm, 32 - -„ House, 109, 112, 114 - -„ Road, 87, 98, 102 - - * * * * * - -RADNOR, Earl of, 88 - -„ Street, 88 - -“Rambler,” The, 101 - -Ranelagh, Earl of, 77, 78, 81 - -„ Gardens, 77, 79, 80 - -„ House, 78, 80, 81 - -„ Stairs, 20 - -Reade, Charles, 13 - -Rectory, Chelsea, 145 - -Red Lion Passage, 80 - -Reformation, The, 157 - -Renatus, Christian, 54 - -Restoration, The, 50, 62, 68, 75 - -Reuss, Countess, 57 - -Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 27, 91, 160 - -Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 79 - -Ricci, Sebastian, 74 - -Richard III., 34 - -Richmond, 84 - -Robarte, Lord, 88 - -Roberts, Miss, 31 - -Robinson’s Lane, 88 - -Rochester, Earl of, 87, 91, 98 - -“Roderick Random,” 138 - -Romans, The, 19, 28 - -Roper, Margaret, 43, 45, 46 - -„ William, 38, 133 - -Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 109, 114, 178 - -„ House, The, 109, 112 - -Royal Academy, 109 - -„ Hospital, 78 - -„ Society, 69, 119 - -Rupert, Prince, 69, 70 - - * * * * * - -ST. ALBANS, Duke of, 87 - -„ Dunstan’s, Canterbury, 45 - -„ ,, in the West, 134 - -„ Evremond, 86, 92, 93, 122, 178 - -„ George’s Workhouse, 177 - -„ James’s Palace, 113 - -,, ,, Park, 20, 93 - -,, ,, Street, 113 - -„ Katherine’s Docks, 20 - -St. Lawrence, Old Jewry, 46 - -„ Loo, Sir William, 130 - -„ Luke’s, Chelsea, 145, 146 - -„ Mary’s, Battersea, 165 - -„ Paul’s, 69, 170 - -,, ,, School, 41 - -Sackville, Thomas, 49 - -Salisbury, Earl of, 50 - -Saltero, Don, 121 - -“Saltero’s, Don,” 122, 125, 126 - -Sandford Manor House, 63, 65 - -Sand’s End, 31, 63, 65 - -Sandwich, Earl of, 81, 86, 88 - -School of Discipline, 90 - -„ Duke of York’s, 95 - -Scott, Sir Walter, 142 - -Seddon, John P., 109 - -Selwyn, George, 79 - -Sepoy Mutiny, 75 - -Sèvres, 132 - -Seymour, Admiral, 115–117 - -Shadwell, Sir John, 177 - -,, Thomas, 159 - -Shaftesbury, Earl of, 177 - -Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 32, 178 - -Shore, Jane, 34 - -Shrewsbury, Countess of, 131 - -,, Earl of, 129, 130 - -„ House, 129, 131 - -Sidney, Sir Philip, 155 - -“Slaves of Virtue,” 58 - -Sloane, Elizabeth, 120 - -„ Hans, House, 106 - -,, ,, Sir, 52, 58, 101, 102, 118–120, 122, 159, 177 - -„ Square, 96, 119 - -,, Street, 96, 178 - -Smith Street, 89 - -Smollett, Tobias, 24, 80, 94, 138, 141, 142 - -Society of Apothecaries, 101 - -,, Royal, 69, 119 - -Somerset, the Protector, 117 - -_Spectator_, The, 80 - -Spenser, Edmund, 63 - -Spilsberg, Convent of, 39 - -Spraggs, John, 159 - -Spring Gardens, 79 - -Stanley, Dean, 152 - -,, House, 17, 63 - -“Steenie,” 50, 174 - -“Stella,” 24, 97 - -Steele, Sir Richard, 23, 94, 95, 122, 125, 178 - -Sterne, Laurence, 79, 141 - -Strype, John, 52 - -Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, 24 - -Sunderland, Lady, 51 - -Swan House, 102 - -„ “Walk,” 98 - -“Swan, Old,” 102, 105 - -“Swan,” The, 19, 105 - -Swift, Jonathan, 24, 83, 84, 97, 166, 177 - - * * * * * - -TANGIERS, 69 - -_Tatler_, The, 23, 95, 122 - -Taverns: - - Aquatic Stores, 169 - - Black Horse, 129 - - Chelsea Pensioner, 89 - - Don Saltero’s, 122, 125, 126 - - Duke’s Head, 89 - - Magpie and Stump, 126, 130 - - Nell Gwynne, 66 - - Prince of Wales, 132 - - Swan, 19, 105 - - „ Old, 102, 105 - - World’s End, 169 - -Thackeray, 65, 83 - -Thames, The, 18, 31, 37, 38, 44, 162, 169, 178 - -Thames Watermen, 105 - -Thomson, James, 44 - -Threadneedle Street, 46 - -Tite Street, 17, 98 - -Tothill Street, 155 - -Tours, Archbishop of, 102 - -Tower, 42, 50, 116, 154, 165 - -„ Chapel, 44 - -„ Hill, 43 - -,, Wharf, 43 - -“Tracts and Letters,” 153 - -Trinobantes, 20 - -Turenne, 93 - -Turner, 165, 169, 170, 178 - -Twickenham, 85 - -Tyndale, 153 - - * * * * * - -VALE, The, 27 - -Vanbrugh, Sir John, 83 - -Vanhomrigh, Mrs., 24 - -Vauxhall, 78 - -Verrio, 165 - -Versailles, 111 - -Victoria Hospital for Children, 98 - -Village of Palaces, 17 - -Villars, Marshall, 161 - -Villiers, George, 50, 51 - -Voltaire, 92, 166 - - * * * * * - -WALLER, Edmund, 111 - -Walpole, Horace, 78, 84 - -„ House, 17, 81, 84, 166 - -,, Lady, 85 - -„ Sir Robert, 79, 81–85, 89, 166 - -„ Street, 81 - -Walton, Isaac, 134, 178 - -Wargrave, Henley-on-Thames, 149 - -Warwick, Earl of, 34, 65 - -Waterloo, 74 - -Wellington, Duke of, 73, 162 - -Westminster, 20, 33, 47, 155 - -,, Hall, 43 - -Whitehall, 20, 129 - -William and Mary, 37, 73 - -William Rufus’s Hall, 47 - -Willis, N. P., 14 - -Wilkes, John, 141 - -Wilkie, the Painter, 74 - -Winchelsea, Lord, 162 - -Winchester, Bishop of, 131 - -,, Marquis of, 145 - -Windsor Castle, 48 - -Winstanley, 118 - -Wolsey, Cardinal, 38, 42, 113 - -Woodfall, 159 - -Worcester, Battle of, 68 - -,, College, Oxford, 146 - -,, Marquis of, 52 - -“World’s End,” The, 169 - -Wren, Sir Christopher, 73, 110 - -Wyatt family, The, 149 - - * * * * * - -YORKSHIRE, 79 - - * * * * * - -ZIMRI, 50 - -Zinzendorf, Count, 54, 57, 58 - - * * * * * - - UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON. - - - - -FOOTNOTES. - - -{26} This illustration and those on pages 114 and 123, have been made -from photographs by J. Hedderly, and are admirable specimens of the many -taken by him during a long and laborious life, and which have genuine -artistic merit as well as historic value in their preservation of the -features of Old Chelsea. Hedderly’s was the curious case of a man living -for fifty years in daily contact with the ancient and the odd, and yet -always keen to appreciate it and accurate in seizing it. On his death, -in 1885, his plates went to his daughter, and the photographs can be -bought from George White, Printer, 396, King’s Road, just at the end of -Park Walk: by whose permission these photographs have been re-drawn. - -{31} One of her school-mates here, by the way, was that Miss Roberts who -wrote so well about India; another was Lady Caroline Lamb, heroine of the -scissors-stabbing scene for Byron’s sake. And among other scholars here -at other times we find names famous in later life, as that of Lady -Bulwer, of Mrs. S. C. Hall, of Miss Mary Russell Mitford. The latter -lady lived for several years after her school days at No. 33, Hans Place. -In No. 41 lodged Percy Bysshe Shelley, at one time. These two last-named -houses have been raised two stories, and renewed; while Nos. 22 and 25 -have been recently torn down and rebuilt. Thus every house in Hans Place -having historic association has been ruined for us, and others of no -interest from our point of view in this stroll are left intact in their -age—a queer fatality which I find to have pursued too many buildings of -old London! - -{48} The painting in the National Portrait Gallery is a copy by an -unknown—withal a skilful—hand, of Holbein’s crayon sketch, now in Windsor -Castle. Its most striking feature is More’s mouth: these lips seem to -speak to us at once with sweetness and with sternness. - -{57} In our reproduction of this rare print in the British Museum of -about the year 1682, Lindsey House is seen on the river bank at the -extreme left; behind it is a building in the Dutch style, concerning -which I can find no record anywhere; More’s mansion stands on the slope -half-way up to King’s Road, in the midst of its “great extent of -profitable garden and pleasure ground;” behind and to its left are the -stables and out-buildings. Just beyond King’s Road, on the left, may be -seen the small settlement named then and known now as “Little Chelsea.” -In the far distance, rise, on their wooded slopes, Holland, Camden, and -Kensington Houses. The gate-house of Inigo Jones shows plainly towards -the front, and from it the broad walk—now Beaufort Street—leads to the -river and the ferry, just at the spot where now springs Battersea Bridge. - -{58} You may see a picture of such a scene—the sermon to a group of -negroes—in the old Moravian chapel in Fetter Lane. Here, too, are many -relics of interest of the man: his chair, with claw feet and curious -carvings; his queer old-German Hymn-book, printed in 1566, with metal -clasps and corners; and his portrait, life-size and in oil. - -{80} There lies on my desk, as I write, a copper token, which I lately -picked up in a shabby shop of Red Lion Passage, High Holborn. It is -about the size of a penny piece, and on it is stamped “RANELAGH HOUSE, -1745:” these raised letters as clearly cut as on the day when coined. It -pleases me to wonder which and how many of the men I mention above may -have handed in this piece at the entrance gate. - -{91} Henri, Marquis of Ruvigny, fled from France on the Revocation of -the Edict of Nantes, came to England, was here naturalized, and received -the title of Count of Galloway. - -{109} In the embankment garden, just in front, has lately been placed a -memorial to the poet and painter: his bust in bronze modelled by Ford -Madox Brown, the painter, surmounting a graceful drinking fountain -designed by John P. Seddon, the architect; both life-long friends of -Rossetti. - -{125} This house was kept, in 1790, by a Mrs. Mary Jacob, a New England -woman, and I have seen a letter from her to her brother in America, in -which she says, in her old-fashioned spelling: “I keap a Coffe Hous, -which I can Scarcely macke a bit of Bred for myself, but it Ennabels me -to keep a home for my Sons.” This letter is prized as a relic by the -family, none of whom have any notion of how “Polly Cummings”—her maiden -name in New England—found her way to Chelsea and to Don Saltero’s! - -{160} I quote this sentence from a letter sent to me by the Reverend R. -H. Davies, Incumbent of the Old Church, Chelsea, to whom I am indebted -for courtesies in this connection: “To my mind, there is no doubt that -his grave is somewhere in the open part of the churchyard; but, as the -grave-stone has disappeared, it would be too great a work to excavate the -whole with the hope of finding the coffin-plate.” - - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD CHELSEA*** - - -******* This file should be named 62807-0.txt or 62807-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/2/8/0/62807 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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