[Illustration: CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
Fifth Series
ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832
CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)
NO. 5.—VOL. I. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1884. PRICE 1½_d._]
HAMPSTEAD HEATH.
Hampstead Heath! What a world of delight seemed concentrated in that
name in the days of childhood, when donkey-riding was not yet too
undignified an amusement, and a gallop ‘cross country’ through the
bracken and furze struck terror into the heart of nurse or parent, and
covered the rider with glory! Such feats of horsemanship now belong
to the irrevocable past; but yet no part of the great ‘province of
houses’ known as London brings such pleasant memories as the quaint
old village on its northern outskirts and the wild breezy heath that
bounds it. Even now, Hampstead is rather in London, than of it, and
keeps up customs that have died out elsewhere. There, on the fifth
of November, a gallant procession takes its way through its steep
winding streets, and the centuries mingle with as little regard to
accuracy as they might do in a schoolboy’s dream the night before
an examination in history. Gallant Crusaders in chain-mail, with
the red cross embroidered on their flowing white mantles, jostle
very nineteenth-century Guardsmen, who in their turn seem to feel no
surprise at seeing Charles I. in velvet doublet and lace collar talking
amicably to a motley, spangled harlequin. But were the inhabitants in
this their yearly carnival to picture the history of their village
and of the notable personages who have lived in it, they might make a
pageant as long and varied as any that imagination can invent.
The manor of Hampstead was given by Edward the Confessor to the
monks of Westminster; and subsequent monarchs conferred on them the
neighbouring manors of Belsize and Hendon. It was at Hendon Manor-house
that Cardinal Wolsey made his first halt when journeying from Richmond
to York after his disgrace. At that time, however, Hampstead itself had
no great claim to notice, its inhabitants being, we are told, chiefly
washerwomen, whose services were in great demand among the inhabitants
of London. That this peaceful if humble occupation could be carried
on, proves at least that the wolves which, according to Dame Juliana
Berners’s _Boke of St Albans_, abounded among the northern heights of
London in the fifteenth century, had been exterminated by the end of
the sixteenth. The wild-boar lingered longer; and so late as 1772,
we hear of the hunting of a deer in Belsize Park. This, however, can
scarcely be regarded as genuine sport, as it is advertised to take
place among other amusements intended to allure visitors to Belsize
House, which had been opened as a pleasure-house by an energetic
individual of the name of Howell. He describes in his advertisement
all the attractions of the place, and promises for the protection
of visitors that ‘twelve stout fellows completely armed will patrol
between Belsize and London.’
Early in the eighteenth century chalybeate wells were discovered
at Hampstead, and as they were recommended by several physicians,
the hitherto quiet village became a fashionable and dissipated
watering-place. Idle London flocked there: youths who were delighted
to show their finery in a new place; girls who were young enough to
delight in the prospect of dancing all night; gamblers of both sexes;
wits and fops. They danced, lost their money at cards and dice, talked
scandal of each other, and drank of the chalybeate well, which Sam
Weller has characterised for all generations as ‘water with a taste of
warm flat-irons,’ till Hampstead lost its novelty, and the company went
elsewhere to go through the same programme.
Among the crowd of nonentities that frequent the Hampstead Wells
there is one notable figure, that of Richard Steele. In 1712, Steele
retired from London to a small house on Haverstock Hill, on the road
to Hampstead. Here, doubtless, his friend and fellow-labourer Addison
visited him; and the two would find in the humours and follies of the
company at the Wells material for the next number of the _Tatler_,
the publication of which had now been going on for three years.
Let us picture the two friends passing together through the gay
company—Steele, radiant, we may be sure, in gay apparel, seizing at
once on the humorous characteristics of the scene; while Addison would
tone down his companion’s exuberant fancy, and draw his own thoughtful
moralisings from the follies he witnessed. On summer evenings they
would walk on the Heath, and admire the view across the swelling green
slopes to the town of Harrow, where one day was to be educated my Lord
Byron, a young gentleman who would win greater fame as a poet than even
Addison’s acquaintance—a protégé to begin with, an enemy at last—the
lame Catholic gentleman, Mr Alexander Pope.
The friendship between Steele and Addison must ever remain a puzzle.
They had talent in common, Steele having the more original genius,
Addison the more cultivated taste; but otherwise there seems no point
of contact between the natures of graceless, impulsive, erring, loving
Dick, and his cold, conscientious, methodical comrade. To our century,
as to his own, Steele is ‘Dicky;’ the king made him Sir Richard, and
on the strength of his title he took a fine house in Soho Square, and
swaggered more than ever, and increased his expenses and his debts, but
to all the world he was Dicky Steele still; whereas, had the honour of
a baronetcy befallen Mr Secretary Addison, can we doubt that to all
posterity he would have been known as ‘Sir Joseph?’ Yet these two men,
unlike each other as they were, united to perform in an unobtrusive
fashion a great work; they purified English literature, and did much
to reform English manners. In a society which had learned to regard
truth, honesty, and virtue as absurd, they showed, not the wickedness
of vice—no one would have listened to that—but its folly. When the fops
and gamblers found that they, as well as the honest men they sneered
at, could be made the subject of satire, they began to doubt if their
cherished amusements were such essential characteristics of ‘men of
spirit’ as they had fancied. The gulf that lies between the comedies
of Wycherley and those of Sheridan was first opened by the gentle
raillery of the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_. The later dramatist had
no keener moral sense than the earlier, but he lived in an atmosphere
which, though by no means pure, was healthier than that breathed by
his predecessor; and in which it was necessary that virtue, however
weak, should in the end defeat the vice that tried to trade upon its
feebleness.
Of the clear-cut grace of style that distinguished the writing of the
_Spectator_ there is no need to speak; it still remains the model
of English prose, while the tiny, whitish-brown sheet, the perusal
of which used to add to the flavour of Belinda’s morning chocolate,
was the progenitor of the immense mass of periodical literature that
surrounds us to-day. But if the two friends had done nothing more than
give us—Steele the first sketch, Addison the finished portrait, of
old-fashioned, kind, eccentric Sir Roger de Coverley, they would have
deserved a high and loving place in our memory.
Thirty years later, the figure of another literary man was to be seen
at Hampstead. Not so gorgeous as Dick, not so precise as Addison, is
slovenly, tea-drinking, long-worded Samuel Johnson; but he is their
legitimate successor, nevertheless. He, too, is a man of letters,
living by the produce of his pen, and appealing for support to the
public, and not to the kindness or charity of private patrons. Indeed,
he scorns such condescending patronage, as a certain stinging letter
to Lord Chesterfield remains to testify. In 1748, Mrs Johnson, for the
sake of the country air, took lodgings at Hampstead; and there her
husband wrote his satire, _The Vanity of Human Wishes_. Johnson did
not spend all his time at Hampstead, for he was obliged to return and
drudge in smoky London in order to provide for her comfort. Boswell
tells us that ‘she indulged in country air and good living at an
unsuitable expense; and she by no means treated her husband with that
complacency which is the most engaging quality in a wife.’ Yet Johnson
loved faithfully and mourned sincerely the querulous, exacting woman,
a quarter of a century older than himself, and cherished an undoubting
belief in her beauty; while all save him perceived that if she had ever
possessed any—which they doubted—it had long disappeared.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Hampstead became the
dwelling-place of two famous lawyers, both of them Scotch—Lords
Erskine and Mansfield. Thomas Erskine, youngest son of the tenth Earl
of Buchan, and ‘a penniless lad with a lang pedigree,’ began life
as a midshipman; but disliking the service, he, after his father’s
death, invested the whole of his little patrimony in the purchase
of an ensigncy in the 1st Foot. When, some years later, he felt his
true vocation to be the bar, he was burdened with the responsibility
of a wife and children; and it was only by the exercise of economy
nearly approaching privation that he succeeded in maintaining himself
during the three years’ study that must elapse before he was called to
the bar. Even when he received his qualification, it seemed that he
was to fail through lack of opportunity to display his talents; but
opportunity came at last, and his brilliant career led to the Lord
Chancellorship of England, a peerage, and the Order of the Thistle.
All the power of his oratory and of his ever-increasing influence was
devoted to the promotion of freedom, civil and religious. He stood up
boldly for the independence of juries against the bullying of judges;
he advocated concessions to the Catholics; and carrying his love of
mercy and justice beyond the human race, he brought into parliament a
bill for the prevention of cruelty to animals. The measure failed; for
popular feeling on the subject was then such as is expressed in the
famous couplet—
Things is come to a pretty pass,
When a man mayn’t wollop his own jackass.
But before Erskine died, it had become law.
William Murray, Earl of Mansfield, was the eleventh of the fourteen
children of Viscount Stormont, of the castle of Scone, in Perthshire.
So poor was his lordship, that, as we are told by Mansfield’s
biographer, the only fare he could provide for those fourteen
mouths—which though high-born, were every whit as hungry as if they
had been peasants’—was oatmeal porridge. The family was Jacobite in
politics, so its fortunes were little likely to improve; but by the
influence of Bishop Atterbury, who was at heart a Jacobite too, little
Willie was admitted to Westminster School. He made good use of his
time there; and by listening to the debates in Westminster Hall he
became enamoured of the law, and resolved to devote himself to it.
Difficulties enough lay before him; but by the aid of an indomitable
perseverance, a gentle manner, and a voice so musical that none could
listen to it unmoved, he conquered them all. Throughout his legal
career he was noted for strict integrity and justice. He advocated free
trade and religious toleration, and used every effort in his power to
decrease the waste of time and money in the business of law-courts; but
his greatest title to honour is that he was the first to decide that no
slave could remain a slave on English soil.
Early in this century, the year after Waterloo was fought, Hampstead
was familiar with the forms of three men to whom life gave only scorn,
insult, and disappointment, yet whose memory lingers about it and makes
it hallowed ground. In 1816, Leigh Hunt lived at Hampstead in a part
called the Vale of Health; and there Keats, who lodged in the village,
and Shelley were his frequent visitors. Each of the three was more or
less a martyr. For the crime of describing the Prince Regent—whose
memory as George IV. is not highly honoured—as an ‘Adonis of fifty,’
Hunt was thrown into prison; while the political reviews and journals
abused his graceful poems and scholarly essays as if they had been
firebrands, to extinguish which every exertion must be made. They
succeeded in torturing him, in reducing him to poverty and dependence,
but they did not succeed in changing Leigh Hunt’s convictions. He would
not bow down to the Adonis of fifty.
Shelley was rather a visitor than a resident at Hampstead Heath;
but Keats composed not a few of his poems here. The sorrows of his
sorrowful life had not yet reached their climax in 1816. Already he
was struggling with poverty, disease, and hopeless, passionate love;
but he had not yet published those poems which were to rouse such
wrath in the bosoms of a few critics, and such delight in thousands of
readers. But at Hampstead most of them were written. Here he breathed
life into the long dead myth of Endymion, surrounding it with such a
wealth of description as seems scarcely possible to a youth of such
limited experience. Can commonplace Hampstead Heath, the chosen resort
of Bank-holiday excursionists, be the prototype of that Grecian valley
where the goddess of night stooped to kiss Endymion! Here were written
the sad story of _The Pot of Basil_ and the legend of _The Eve of St
Agnes_; here, in 1819, was composed that most exquisite _Ode to a
Nightingale_, which, even were it his only production, might place
Keats among our greater poets.
The memory loves to trace the footsteps of departed greatness; but
even did no such recollections as these endear Hampstead Heath, it
would still be precious as a spot where half-asphyxiated Londoners may
inhale a fresh untainted breeze, and children may romp to their hearts’
content. ‘I like Hampstead Heath much better than Switzerland,’ says a
small boy in one of Du Maurier’s sketches in _Punch_. ‘But you haven’t
seen Switzerland,’ objects his sister, a practical young lady a year
or two older. ‘O yes; I have seen it on the map,’ is his reply. And
if he had really visited Switzerland, the little fellow would perhaps
still have preferred the broken, sandy soil, the grass and ferns, of
Hampstead Heath.
Du Maurier is the Heath’s own artist. He lives on its borders, and most
of the backgrounds of his out-of-door sketches are borrowed from its
scenery. He may daily be seen there—till lately accompanied by his dog
Chang, the great St Bernard whose portrait has so often appeared in the
pages of _Punch_. But, alas! Chang is no more; he has fallen a victim
to consumption and heart-disease, and Hampstead weeps for him. Seldom
has any dog been so widely lamented. ‘He is mourned by a large circle
of friends,’ said the _World_, ‘and the family of which he was so long
a member is inconsolable for his loss.’
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
BY CHARLES GIBBON.
CHAPTER VII.—AN UNLOVED LIFE.
It was a little time before the father spoke again. But without being
able to see his face, even without being able to hear him breathe,
Philip felt that he was struggling with something in himself. Perhaps
it was only a struggle to regain that composure of manner which he had
temporarily lost. In this he succeeded. But was that all Mr Hadleigh
was struggling with in those few moments of silence? At anyrate, when
he spoke, his voice was steadier than before; more like its ordinary
tone, but without its hardness.
‘Before I proceed, may I ask what was the purport of the two letters
you received?’
‘The one was simply urging me on no account to fail to start in the
_Hertford Castle_ as arranged, and assuring me of such welcome as I
might desire.’
‘That was not much to write about. And the other?’
‘The other inclosed a note which I am to deliver personally to a firm
of solicitors in the City, and requesting that I should bring with me
the packet they would intrust to my care.’
‘Is that all?’
‘That is all, sir.’
‘One question more. Are you _very_ anxious to make this journey, which
may end in nothing? Is there no one here who could persuade you to give
it up altogether?’
Philip was a good deal perplexed as to how he should answer this
question. There was Some one who could have persuaded him to stay at
home; but the sweet voice of that Some one was again whispering in his
ear, ‘It was your mother’s wish that you should go;’ and besides, there
was the natural desire of youth to see strange countries and peoples.
‘I thought, sir, that this question of my going out to Uncle Shield had
been all settled long ago,’ he replied awkwardly, for he knew that any
reference to the command laid upon him by his mother always disturbed
his father.
‘That is not an answer to my questions.’
‘Well, I consider it my duty to go.’
‘And you wish to go?’
‘I do—now. Even setting aside the prospects he holds out to me, I feel
that I must go.’
The father made a mental note of the fact that his son gave no reply to
the second question; but he did not press it farther at this moment.
He seemed to draw breath, and then went on in a low voice: ‘I think,
Philip, you have not found me an exacting parent. Although I have never
failed to point out to you the way in which it would please me most to
see you walk, I have never insisted upon it. And I will own that on
your part your conduct has been up to a certain point satisfactory.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘That certain point is your procrastination in the choice of your
future career. You have shown that you do not care about business—and
my own conviction is that you are unfitted for it—and you will not
decide upon a profession. Although you have dabbled in medicine and
law, you have not entered earnestly upon the study of either. I have
been patient with this wavering state of mind which you have displayed
ever since you left the university. I do not wish to force you into any
occupation which you may dislike, and would, therefore, certainly fail
in; for then you would console yourself by blaming me for being the
cause of your failure.’
‘Oh, no, no—do not think me so ungrateful.’
‘But I did hope,’ continued the father calmly, without heeding the
interruption, ‘that before you came to think of marriage, you would
have settled with yourself upon some definite course of action in the
future.’
‘Your reproaches are just, sir,’ answered Philip earnestly and with
some agitation, ‘and I deserve them. But this journey will decide what
I am to be and do.’
‘I did not mean to reproach you,’ said the father, and again there was
that distant note of sadness which sounded so strangely in his voice;
‘but it seemed to me right to remind you of these things before telling
you the rest. I reproach myself more than you.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘Listen. My young life was passed in a home which had been suddenly
stricken down from wealth and ease to poverty. On every hand I heard
the one explanation given for my father’s haggard looks, my mother’s
wasting illness, for my poor sister’s white face and constant
drudgery with her needle, and for my own unsatisfied hunger; and that
explanation was—the want of money.... I resolved that I should conquer
this demon that was destroying us all—I resolved that I should have
money.’
Here he paused, as if the memory of that time of misery proved too
painful for him. Philip’s sympathetic nature was drawn closer to his
father at that moment than it had ever been before. He rose impulsively
and grasped his arm. In the darkness the forms of the two men were
indistinguishable to each other; but with that sympathetic touch each
saw the other clearly in a new light.
‘My poor father,’ murmured Philip, clenching his teeth to keep down the
sob that was in his throat.
There was silence; and at that moment a pale gleam of moonlight stole
across the room. But it seemed only to darken the corner in which the
two men stood.
By-and-by Mr Hadleigh gently removed his son’s hand.
‘Sit down again, Philip, or go over to the window so that I may see
you.’
Philip walked quietly to a place opposite the window, and putting his
hands behind him, rested them on the ledge of a bookcase, leaning back
so that the light fell full upon his frank, handsome face, making it
look very pale in his anxiety. He knew that his father was gazing
earnestly at him, and as he could not see him, he was glad to hear his
voice again, which in some measure took away the uncomfortable feeling
produced by the singular position.
‘You know that I gained my object,’ Mr Hadleigh proceeded, with a
mingling of bitterness and regret in his voice; ‘but at what a cost!...
All the lightness of heart which makes the lives of even the poorest
children happy at times—all the warmth of hope and enthusiasm which
brightens the humblest youth, were gone. It was not hope that led me
on: it was determination. All emotion was dead within me: at twenty I
was an old man; and in the hard grasping struggle with which I fought
against the demon Poverty, and won the favour of the greater demon,
Wealth—even love itself was sacrificed.’
He paused again; but this time Philip did not speak or move. There was
something so pitiful as well as painful in this confession that he was
dumb.
‘They—father, mother, sister—all died before I had broken down the
first barrier between me and fortune. I shed no tears: each death in
poverty hardened me more and more.... It was—your mother who enabled me
to break down the first barrier’——
‘Ah, I am glad of that,’ exclaimed the son with a burst of happy relief.
‘Wait. I did not know what love was: I did not love her.’ (Philip
started, but remained silent.) ‘She had money: I married her for it.
She did not love me; but she had quarrelled with the man she did love,
and accepted me in her mad chagrin. We understood each other, and I was
content—she was not. From the day of her marriage to the day of her
death, her life was one weary lamentation that in her moment of passion
I had crossed her path—a life of self-scourging and regret for the man
she loved. I saw it, and knew it; but I did not know what love was, and
I could not pity it. I did know something of hate; and I believed she
hated me.... Had she only cared for me a little, it might have been
different,’ he added in a lower voice, and as if speaking to himself.
‘You wrong her, father, you wrong her,’ said Philip in a husky,
tremulous voice.
‘It may be; but I did not know then, what I understand too well now.
A pity, a pity—for it might have been so different! As it was, her
brother turned from her too, and would not forgive her. He hated me—he
hates me: because the lover she had deserted was his close friend; and
whilst I prospered, his friend failed. In a few years the man had lost
everything he possessed, and died—some say by his own hand: killed
by me, as your mother seemed to believe, and as Austin Shield does
believe. I had ruined his life, he said, and I was as much responsible
for his death, as if I had given him poison or shot him. These were the
last words Shield ever spoke to me.’
‘It must have been in mere passion. He cannot believe that now, or he
would not send for me.’
‘I do not know. I went on my way, unheeding his words, and would have
forgotten him, but for your mother’s grief. I had no home-life; but I
did my duty, as it seemed to me. The money which had been brought to
me was repaid with compound interest: all that money could buy was at
your mother’s command: all that she could wish for her children was
supplied to them, and you all seemed satisfied. But I was not with
you—you were hushed and lifeless in my presence, and seemed only happy
in my absence. Sitting in this room, I have heard your voices raised
in gladness, and if I passed in amongst you, seeking for that strange
something which the Demon Wealth with all his gold could not supply,
it seemed as if the Demon sat upon my shoulder, frightening you and
rendering you speechless. So I lived alone, although so near you, and
my Familiar became kinder and kinder to me, until I wearied of him. I
sought I did not know what, and could not find it.’
He stopped, breathing heavily, as if suppressing his emotion.
‘Oh, if you had only spoken to us as you are speaking to me now,
father!’ cried Philip, so earnestly that it sounded like a reproach.
‘It would have been better,’ was the sad reply. ‘I tell you these
things that you may understand the proposal I am about to make to you.
I now know what love is, and as too often happens, the knowledge comes
too late. But it will help me in my effort to make two people happy.
Can you guess who they are?’
‘I am afraid you must inform me.’
‘Yourself and Ma—Miss Heathcote. I propose that you should stay at home
and marry as soon as may be agreeable to the lady. I shall settle upon
you a sufficient fortune to enable you to live comfortably; but I shall
expect you to enter some profession. Do you consent?’
Here was a proposal at which Philip’s whole nature jumped gleefully.
But that voice was in his ears, and he overcame the temptation.
‘It was my mother’s wish that I should go, if my uncle ever summoned
me,’ he said in a respectful but decisive voice, ‘and I must go.’
‘So be it,’ rejoined the father, and there was a note of bitterness in
his tone; ‘I shall not again attempt to alter your plans.’
There was a peculiar emphasis on the ‘I.’