FROM LITTLE CHELSEA TO WALHAM GREEN.
After what has been said respecting Shaftesbury House, it may be supposed
that its associations with the memory of remarkable individuals are
exhausted. This is very far from being the case; and a long period in
its history, from 1635 to 1699, remains to be filled up, which, however,
must be done by conjecture: although so many circumstances are upon
record, that it is not impossible others can be produced to complete a
chain of evidence that may establish among those who have been inmates of
the ADDITIONAL WORKHOUSE OF ST. GEORGE'S, HANOVER SQUARE--startling as
the assertion may appear--two of the most illustrious individuals in the
annals of this country; of one of whom Bishop Burnet observed, {110} that
his "loss is lamented by all learned men;" the other, a man whose "great
and distinguishing knowledge was the knowledge of human nature or the
powers and operations of the mind, in which he went further, and spoke
clearer, than all other writers who preceded him, and whose 'Essay on the
Human Understanding' is the best book of logic in the world." After
this, I need scarcely add that BOYLE and LOCKE are the illustrious
individuals referred to.
The amiable John Evelyn, in his 'Diary,' mentions his visiting Mr. Boyle
at Chelsea, on the 9th March, 1661, in company "with that excellent
person and philosopher, Sir Robert Murray," where they "saw divers
effects of the eolipile for weighing air." And in the same year M. de
Monconys, a French traveller in England, says, "L'apres dine je fus avec
M. Oldenburg, {111} et mon fils, a deux milles de Londres en carosse pour
cinq chelins a un village nomme _le petit Chelsey_, voir M. Boyle." Now
at this period there probably was no other house at Little Chelsea of
sufficient importance to be the residence of the Hon. Robert Boyle, where
he could receive strangers in his laboratory and show them his great
telescope; and, moreover, notwithstanding what has been said to prove the
impossibility of Locke having visited Lord Shaftesbury on this spot,
local tradition continues to assert that Locke's work on the 'Human
Understanding' was commenced in the retirement of one of the
summer-houses of Lord Shaftesbury's residence. This certainly may have
been the case if we regard Locke as a visitor to his brother philosopher,
Boyle, and admit his tenancy of the mansion previous to that of Lord
Shaftesbury, to whom Locke, it is very probable, communicated the
circumstance, and which might have indirectly led to his lordship's
purchase of the premises. Be that as it may, it is an interesting
association, with something more than mere fancy for its support, to
contemplate a communion between two of the master-minds of the age, and
the influence which their conversation possibly had upon that of the
other.
Boyle's sister, the puritanical Countess of Warwick, under date 27th
November, 1666, makes the following note: "In the morning, as soon as
dressed, I prayed, then went with my lord to my house at Chelsea, which
he had hired, where I was all that day taken up with business about my
house." {112} Whether this refers to _Little Chelsea_ or not is more
than I can affirm, although there are reasons for thinking that
Shaftesbury House, or, if not, one which will be subsequently pointed
out, is the house alluded to.
Charles, the fourth Earl of Orrery, and grand-nephew to Boyle the
philosopher, was born at Dr. Whittaker's house at Little Chelsea on the
21st July, 1674. It was his grandfather's marriage with Lady Margaret
Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, that induced the witty Sir John
Suckling to write his well-known 'Ballad upon a Wedding,' in which he so
lusciously describes the bride:--
"Her cheeks so rare a white was on,
No daisie makes comparison;
Who sees them is undone;
For streaks of red were mingled there,
Such as are on the Cath'rine pear--
The side that's next the sun.
"Her lips were red; and one was thin,
Compared to that was next her chin--
Some bee had stung it newly;
But, Dick, her eyes so guard her face,
I durst no more upon her gaze,
Than on the sun in July."
The second Earl of Orrery, this lady's son, having married Lady Mary
Sackville, daughter of the Earl of Dorset, is stated to have led a
secluded life at Little Chelsea, and to have died in 1682. His eldest
son, the third earl, died in 1703, and his brother, mentioned above as
born at Little Chelsea, became the fourth earl, and distinguished himself
in the military, scientific, and literary proceedings of his times. In
compliment to this Lord Orrery's patronage, Graham, an ingenious
watchmaker, named after his lordship a piece of mechanism which exhibits
the movements of the heavenly bodies. With his brother's death, however,
in 1703, at Earl's Court, Kensington, the connection of the Boyle family
with this neighbourhood appears to terminate.
Doctor Baldwin Hamey, an eminent medical practitioner during the time of
the Commonwealth, and a considerable benefactor to the College of
Physicians, died at Little Chelsea on the 14th of May, 1676, after an
honourable retirement from his professional duties of more than ten
years.
Mr. Faulkner's 'History of Kensington,' published in 1820, and in which
parish the portion of Little Chelsea on the north side of the Fulham Road
stands, mentions the residence of Sir Bartholomew Shower, an eminent
lawyer, in 1693; Sir Edward Ward, lord chief baron of the Exchequer, in
1697; Edward Fowler, lord bishop of Gloucester, in 1709, who died at his
house here on the 26th August, 1714; and Sir William Dawes, lord bishop
of Chester, in 1709, who, I may add, died Archbishop of York in 1724.
But in Mr. Faulkner's 'History of Chelsea,' published in 1829, nothing
more is to be found respecting Sir Bartholomew Shower than that he was
engaged in some parochial law proceedings in 1691. Sir Edward Ward's
residence is unnoticed. The Bishop of Gloucester, who is said to have
been a devout believer in fairies and witchcraft, is enumerated among the
inhabitants of Paradise Row, Chelsea (near the hospital, and full a mile
distant from _le petit Chelsey_); and Sir William Dawes, we find from
various entries, an inhabitant of the parish between the years 1696 and
1712, but without "a local habitation" being assigned to him. All this
is very unsatisfactory to any one whose appetite craves after map-like
accuracy in parish affairs.
Bowack, in 1705, mentions that
"At Little Chelsea stands a regular handsome house, with a noble
courtyard and good gardens, built by Mr. Mart, now inhabited by Sir
John Cope, Bart., a gentleman of an ancient and honourable family,
who formerly was eminent in the service of his country abroad, and
for many years of late in Parliament, till he voluntarily retired
here to end his days in peace."
And here Sir John Cope died in 1721. Can he have been the father of the
"Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye wauking yet,
Or are ye sleeping, I would wit?
O haste ye, get up, for the drums do beat;
O fye, Cope! rise up in the morning!"
--of the Sir John Cope who was forced to retreat from Preston Pans in
"the '45," and against whom all the shafts of Jacobite ribaldry have been
levelled?
Faulkner says that this house, which was "subsequently occupied by the
late Mr. Duffield as a private madhouse, has been pulled down, and its
site is now called Odell's Place, a little eastward of Lord
Shaftesbury's;" that is to say, opposite to Manor Hall, and Sir John
Cope's house was not improbably the residence of two distinguished naval
officers, Sir James Wishart and Sir John Balchen. The former was made an
admiral, and knighted by Queen Anne in 1703, and appointed one of the
lords of the Admiralty, but was dismissed from the naval service by
George I. for favouring the interests of the Pretender, and died at
Little Chelsea on the 30th of May, 1723. In the 'Daily Courant,' Monday,
July 15, 1723, the following advertisement appears:--
"To be sold by auction, the household goods, plate, china ware,
linen, &c., of Sir James Wishart, deceased, on Thursday the 18th
instant, at his late dwelling-house at Little Chelsea. The goods to
be seen this day, to-morrow, and Wednesday, before the sale, from 9
to 12 in the morning, and from 3 to 7 in the evening. Catalogues to
be had at the sale.
"N.B. A coach and chariot to be sold, and the house to be let."
Admiral Sir John Balchen resided at Little Chelsea soon after Sir James
Wishart's death. In 1744, Admiral Balchen perished in the Victory, of
120 guns, which had the reputation of being the most beautiful ship in
the world, but foundered, with eleven hundred souls on board, in the Bay
of Biscay.
On the 31st of March, 1723, Edward Hyde, the third Earl of Clarendon,
died "at his house, Little Chelsea;" but where the earl's house stood I
am unable to state.
Mrs. Robinson, the fascinating "Perdita," tells us, in her autobiography,
that, at the age of ten (1768), she was "placed for education in a school
at Chelsea." And she then commences a most distressing narrative, in
which the last tragic scene she was witness to occurred at Little
Chelsea.
"The mistress of this seminary," Mrs. Robinson describes as "perhaps
one of the most extraordinary women that ever graced, or disgraced,
society. Her name was Meribah Lorrington. She was the most
extensively accomplished female that I ever remember to have met
with; her mental powers were no less capable of cultivation than
superiorly cultivated. Her father, whose name was Hull, had from her
infancy been master of an academy at Earl's Court, near Fulham; and
early after his marriage, losing his wife, he resolved on giving this
daughter a masculine education. Meribah was early instructed in all
the modern accomplishments, as well as in classical knowledge. She
was mistress of the Latin, French, and Italian languages; she was
said to be a perfect arithmetician and astronomer, and possessed the
art of painting on silk to a degree of exquisite perfection. But,
alas! with all these advantages, she was addicted to one vice, which
at times so completely absorbed her faculties as to deprive her of
every power, either mental or corporeal. Thus, daily and hourly, her
superior acquirements, her enlightened understanding, yielded to the
intemperance of her ruling infatuation, and every power of reflection
seemed absorbed in the unfeminine propensity.
"All that I ever learned," adds Mrs. Robinson, "I acquired from this
extraordinary woman. In those hours when her senses were not
intoxicated, she would delight in the task of instructing me. She
had only five or six pupils, and it was my lot to be her particular
favourite. She always, out of school, called me her little friend,
and made no scruple of conversing with me (sometimes half the night,
for I slept in her chamber) on domestic and confidential affairs. I
felt for her very sincere affection, and I listened with peculiar
attention to all the lessons she inculcated. Once I recollect her
mentioning the particular failing which disgraced so intelligent a
being. She pleaded, in excuse of it, the unmitigable regret of a
widowed heart, and with compunction declared that she flew to
intoxication as the only refuge from the pang of prevailing sorrow."
Mrs. Robinson remained more than twelve months under the care of Mrs.
Lorrington,
"When pecuniary derangements obliged her to give up her school. Her
father's manners were singularly disgusting, as was his appearance,
for he wore a silvery beard, which reached to his breast, and a kind
of Persian robe, which gave him the external appearance of a
necromancer. He was of the Anabaptist persuasion, and so stern in
his conversation, that the young pupils were exposed to perpetual
terror; added to these circumstances, the failing of his daughter
became so evident, that even during school-hours she was frequently
in a state of confirmed intoxication."
In 1772, three years afterwards, when Mrs. Robinson was fourteen, her
mother, Mrs. Darby, was obliged, as a means of support, to undertake the
task of tuition.
"For this purpose, a convenient house was hired at Little Chelsea,
and furnished for a ladies' boarding-school. Assistants of every
kind were engaged, and I," says Mrs. Robinson, "was deemed worthy of
an occupation that flattered my self-love, and impressed my mind with
a sort of domestic consequence. The English language was my
department in the seminary, and I was permitted to select passages
both in prose and verse for the studies of my infant pupils; it was
also my occupation to superintend their wardrobes, to see them
dressed and undressed by the servants, or half-boarders, and to read
sacred and moral lessons on saints' days and Sunday evenings.
"Shortly after my mother had established herself at Chelsea, on a
summer's evening, as I was sitting at the window, I heard a deep
sigh, or rather groan of anguish, which suddenly attracted my
attention. The night was approaching rapidly, and I looked towards
the gate before the house, where I observed a woman, evidently
labouring under excessive affliction. I instantly descended and
approached her. She, bursting into tears, asked whether I did not
know her. Her dress was torn and filthy; she was almost naked, and
an old bonnet, which nearly hid her face, so completely disfigured
her features, that I had not the smallest idea of the person who was
then almost sinking before me. I gave her a small sum of money, and
inquired the cause of her apparent agony. She took my hand, and
pressed it to her lips. 'Sweet girl,' said she, 'you are still the
angel I ever knew you!' I was astonished. She raised her bonnet;
her fine dark eyes met mine. It was Mrs. Lorrington. I led her into
the house; my mother was not at home. I took her to my chamber, and,
with the assistance of a lady, who was our French teacher, I clothed
and comforted her. She refused to say how she came to be in so
deplorable a situation, and took her leave. It was in vain that I
entreated--that I conjured her to let me know where I might send to
her. She refused to give me her address, but promised that in a few
days she would call on me again. It is impossible to describe the
wretched appearance of this accomplished woman. The failing to which
she had now yielded, as to a monster that would destroy her, was
evident, even at the moment when she was speaking to me. I saw no
more of her; but, to my infinite regret, I was informed, some years
after, that she had died, the martyr of a premature decay, brought on
by the indulgence of her propensity to intoxication--in the workhouse
of Chelsea!"
Mrs. Robinson adds, that--
"The number of my mother's pupils in a few months amounted to ten or
twelve; and, just at a period when an honourable independence
promised to cheer the days of an unexampled parent, my father
unexpectedly returned from America. The pride of his soul was deeply
wounded by the step which my mother had taken; he was offended even
beyond the bounds of reason.
* * * * *
"At the expiration of eight months, my mother, by my father's
positive commands, broke up her establishment, and returned to
London."
Nearly opposite to the workhouse is the West Brompton Brewery, formerly
called "Holly Wood Brewery," and immediately beyond it an irregular row
of six houses, which stand a little way back from the road, with small
gardens before them. The first house is now divided into two, occupied,
when the sketch was made in 1844, by Miss Read's academy (Tavistock
House) and Mrs. Corder's Preparatory School; the latter (Bolton House) to
be distinguished by two ornamented stone-balls on the piers of the
gateway, was a celebrated military academy, at which many distinguished
soldiers have been educated. [Picture: Bolton House gateway] The academy
was established about the year 1770, by Mr. Lewis Lochee, who died on the
5th of April, 1787, and who, in 1778, published an 'Essay on
Castrametation.' "The premises," says Mr. Faulkner, "which were laid out
as a regular fortification, and were open to view, excited much attention
at the time." When balloons were novelties, and it was supposed might be
advantageously used in the operations of warfare, they attracted
considerable notice; and, on the 16th of October, 1784, Mr. Blanchard
ascended from the grounds of the Military Academy, near Chelsea. The
anxiety to witness this exhibition is thus described in a contemporary
account:--
"The fields for a considerable way round Little Chelsea were crowded
with horse and foot; in consequence of which a general devastation
took place in the gardens, the produce being either trampled down or
torn up. The turnip grounds were totally despoiled by the multitude.
All the windows and houses round the academy were filled with people
of the first fashion. Every roof within view was covered, and each
tree filled with spectators."
Mr. Blanchard, upon this occasion, ascended with some difficulty,
accompanied by a Mr. Sheldon, a surgeon, whom he landed at Sunbury, from
whence Blanchard proceeded in his balloon to Romsey, in Hampshire, where
he came down in safety, after having been between three and four hours in
the air.
After Mr. Lochee's death, his son, Mr. Lewis Lochee, continued the
establishment which his father had formed, but, unfortunately for
himself, engaged in the revolutionary movements which agitated Flanders
in 1790; where, "being taken prisoner by the Austrians, he was condemned
to be hanged. He, however, obtained permission to come to England to
settle his affairs, upon condition of leaving his only son as a hostage;
and, upon his return to the Continent, he suffered the punishment of
death." {120}
"His son, a schoolfellow of mine," adds Mr. Faulkner, "afterwards married
a daughter of the late Mr. King, an eminent book auctioneer of King
Street, Covent Garden, and, lamentable to relate, fell by his own hands,"
8th of December, 1815.
The residence beyond Mr. Lochee's Military Academy is named WARWICK
HOUSE--why, unless, possibly, the name has some reference to Boyle's
brother-in-law, the Earl of Warwick, I am at a loss to determine. The
next house is Amyot House. Then comes MULBERRY HOUSE, formerly the
residence of Mr. Denham, a brother of the lamented African traveller,
Colonel Denham. The fifth house is called HECKFIELD LODGE, an arbitrary
name bestowed by its late occupant, Mr. Milton, the author of two clever
novels, 'Rivalry,' and 'Lady Cecilia Farrencourt,' recently published,
and brother to the popular authoress, Mrs. Trollope. And the sixth and
last house in the row, on the west side of which is Walnut-tree Walk,
leading to Earl's Court and Kensington, is distinguished by the name of
Burleigh House, which, some one humorously observed, {121} might possibly
be a contraction of "hurley burley," the house being a ladies' school,
and the unceasing work of education, on the main Fulham Road, appearing
here for the first time to terminate. [Picture: Burleigh House (1844)]
The following entry, however, in the parish register of Kensington,
respecting the birth of the fourth Earl of Exeter, on the 21st of May,
1674, may suggest a more probable derivation:--"15 May. Honble. John
Cecill, son and heir apparent of the Rt. Honble. John Lord Burleigh and
the Lady Anne his wife born at Mr. Sheffield's."
William Boscawen, the amiable and accomplished translator of Horace,
resided at Burleigh House; and here he died, on the 6th of May, 1811, at
the age of fifty-nine. He had been called to the bar, but gave up that
profession in 1786, on being appointed a commissioner for victualling the
navy. An excellent classical scholar, and warmly attached to literary
pursuits, Mr. Boscawen published, in 1793, the first volume of a new
translation of Horace, containing the 'Odes,' 'Epodes,' and 'Carmen
Saeculare.' This, being well received, was followed up by Mr. Boscawen,
in 1798, by his translation of the 'Satires, Epistles, and Art of
Poetry,'--completing a work considered to be in many respects superior to
Francis's translation. As an early patron and zealous friend of the
Literary Fund, Mr. Boscawen's memory will be regarded with respect.
Within five days of his death, he wrote a copy of verses for the
anniversary meeting, which he contemplated attending:--
"Relieved from toils, behold the aged steed
Contented crop the rich enamell'd mead,
Bask in the solar ray, or court the shade,
As vernal suns invite, or summer heats invade!
But should the horn or clarion from afar
Call to the chase, or summon to the war,
Roused to new vigour by the well-known sound,
He spurns the earth, o'erleaps the opposing mound,
Feels youthful ardour in each swelling vein,
Darts through the rapid flood, and scours the plain!
"Thus a lorn Muse, who, worn by cares and woes,
Long sought retirement's calm, secure repose,
With glad, though feeble, voice resumes her lay,
Waked by the call of this auspicious day."
Alas! the hand which on May morning had penned this introduction to an
appeal in the cause of literary benevolence,--that hand was cold; and the
lips by which, on the following day, the words that had flowed warmly
from the heart were to have been uttered,--those lips were mute in death
within a week.
On the 16th of April, 1765, Mr. James House Knight, of Walham Green,
returning home from London, was robbed and murdered on the highroad in
the vicinity of Little Chelsea; the record of his burial in the parish
register of Kensington is, "Shot in Fulham Road, near Brompton." For the
discovery of the murderers a reward of fifty pounds was offered; and, on
the 7th of July following, two Chelsea pensioners were committed to
prison, charged with this murder, on the testimony of their accomplice,
another Chelsea pensioner, whom they had threatened to kill upon some
quarrel taking place between them. The accused were tried, found guilty,
hanged, and gibbeted; one nearly opposite Walnut-tree Walk, close by the
two-mile stone, the other at Bull Lane, a passage about a quarter of a
mile farther on, which connects the main Fulham Road with the King's
Road, by the side of the Kensington Canal. In these positions, for some
years, the bodies of the murderers hung in chains, to the terror of
benighted travellers and of market-gardeners, who
"Wended their way,
In morning's grey,"
towards Covent Garden, until a drunken frolic caused the removal of a
painful and useless exhibition. A very interesting paper upon London
life in the last century occurs in the second volume of Knight's
'London;' in which it is observed that "a gibbet's tassel" was one of the
first sights which met the eye of a stranger approaching London from the
sea.
"About the middle of the last century, similar objects met the gaze
of the traveller by whatever route he entered the metropolis. '_All_
the gibbets in the Edgware Road,' says an extract from the newspapers
of the day in the 'Annual Register' for 1763, 'on which _many_
malefactors were being hung in chains, were cut down by persons
unknown.' The _all_ and the _many_ of this cool matter-of-fact
announcement conjure up the image of a long avenue planted with
'gallows-trees,' instead of elms and poplars,--an assemblage of
pendent criminals, not exactly 'thick as leaves that strew the brook
in Valombrosa,' but frequent as those whose feet tickling Sancho's
nose, when he essayed to sleep in the cork forest, drove him from
tree to tree in search of an empty bough.
"Frequent mention is made in the books, magazines, and newspapers of
that period, of the bodies of malefactors conveyed after execution to
Blackheath, Finchley, and Kennington Commons, or Hounslow Heath, for
the purpose of being there permanently suspended. In those days the
approach to London on all sides seems to have lain through serried
files of gibbets, growing closer and more thronged as the distance
from the city diminished, till they and their occupants arranged
themselves in rows of ghastly and grinning sentinels along both sides
of the principal avenues."
This picture is not over-coloured; and it is to the following occurrence
in the main Fulham Road that the removal of these offensive exhibitions
is to be attributed. Two or three fashionable parsons, who had
sacrificed superabundantly to the jolly god at Fulham, returning to
London, where they desired to arrive quickly, had intellect enough to
discover that the driver of their post-chaise did not make his horses
proceed at a pace equal to their wishes, and, after in vain urging him to
more speed, one of them declared that, if he did not use his whip with
better effect, he should be made an example of for the public benefit,
and hanged up at the first gibbet. The correctness of the old saying,
that "when the head is hot the hand is ready," was soon verified by the
postboy being desired to stop at the gibbet opposite Walnut-tree Walk,
which order, unluckily for himself, he obeyed, instead of proceeding at a
quicker pace. Out sprung the inmates of his chaise; they seized him,
bound him hand and foot, and throwing a rope, which they had fastened
round his body, over the gibbet, he soon found himself, in spite of his
cries and entreaties, elevated in air beside the tarred remains of the
Chelsea pensioner.
The reverend perpetrators of the deed drove off, leaving the luckless
postboy to protest, loudly and vainly, to "the dull, cold ear of death,"
against the loathsome companionship. When the first market-gardener's
cart passed by, most lustily did he call for help; but every effort to
get free only tended to prolong his suspense. What could the carters and
other early travellers imagine upon hearing shouts proceeding from the
gibbet, but that the identical murderer of Mr. Knight had by some miracle
come to life, and now called out, "Stop! stop!" with the intention of
robbing and murdering them also? And they, feeling that supernatural
odds were against them, ran forwards or backwards, not daring to look
behind, as fast as their feet could carry alarmed and bewildered heads,
leaving the fate of their carts to the sagacity of the horses. Finding
that the louder he called for help the more alarm he excited, the
suspended postboy determined philosophically to endure the misery of his
situation in dignified silence. But there he was suffered to hang
unnoticed; or, if remarked, it was only concluded that another criminal
had been added to the gibbet, as its second tassel. The circumstance,
however, of a second body having been placed there speedily came to the
knowledge of a magistrate in the neighbourhood, who had taken an active
part in the apprehension of Mr. Knight's murderers; and he proceeded,
without delay, to the spot, that he might satisfy himself as to the
correctness of the report. Judge, however, his astonishment on hearing
himself addressed by name from the gibbet, and implored, in the most
piteous manner, to deliver from bondage a poor postboy, whose only
offence was that he would not goad on two overworked horses to humour a
pair of drunken gentlemen. These "drunken gentlemen" are said to have
been men of rank and influence: their names have never transpired, but
the outrage with which they were charged led to the immediate removal
from the Fulham Road of the last pair of gibbets which disgraced it.
Upon the ground which was occupied by the gibbet where the kind-hearted
postboy was strung up, a solitary cottage stood some years ago; and
tradition asserted, that both the murderer and his gibbet were buried
beneath it. [Picture: Solitary cottage] This cottage is now pulled down;
Lansdowne Villas and Hollywood Place have been erected on the spot, and
villas and groves continue to the 'Gunter Arms,' a public-house that
takes its name from Richard Gunter, the well-known confectioner, by the
side of which is Gunter Grove. This is now the starting-point of the
Brompton omnibuses, which formerly did not go beyond Queen's Elm. Edith
Grove, a turning between Lansdowne Villas and Gunter Grove, is in a
direct line with Cremorne Gardens.
Proceeding on our road towards Fulham, the next point which claims
attention is the extensive inclosure of the West of London and
Westminster Cemetery Company,--a company incorporated by act of
parliament 1st of Victoria, cap. 180. The burial-ground was consecrated
on the 12th of June, 1840, and extends from the Fulham Road to what is
called, generally, "Sir John Scott Lillie's Road," and sometimes
"Brompton Lane Road," which, in fact, is a continuation, to North End,
Fulham, of the line of the Old Brompton Road,--the point, as the reader
may recollect, that we turned off from at the Bell and Horns, in order to
follow the main Fulham Road to Little Chelsea. The public way on the
east of the burial-ground is called Honey Lane, and on the west the
boundary is the pathway by the side of the Kensington Canal. The
architect of the chapel and catacombs is Mr. Benjamin Baud. The cemetery
is open for public inspection, free of charge, from seven in the morning
till sunset, except on Sundays, when it is closed till half-past one
o'clock. The first interment took place on the 18th of June, 1840, from
which time, to the 22nd of November, there were thirty-four burials, the
average number being then four per week. It is scarcely necessary to
add, that a considerable average increase has taken place; but the first
step in statistics is always curious.
One of the most interesting instances of longevity which the annals of
the West of London and Westminster Cemetery Company present occurs on a
stone in the north-east corner of the burial-ground, where the age
recorded of Louis Pouchee is 108; but this does not agree with the burial
entry made by the Rev. Stephen Reid Cattley--"Louis Pouchee, of St.
Martin's in the Fields, viz., 40 Castle Street, Leicester Square, buried
Feb. 21, 1843, aged 107."
This musical patriarch, however, according to a statement in the 'Medical
Times,' {128} was admitted as a patient to St. George's Hospital November
24, 1842. January 4, went out, and died, about three months afterwards,
of diarrhoea and dysentery.
Another instance of longevity, though not so extraordinary, is one which
cannot be contemplated without feeling how much influence the
consciousness of honest industry in the human mind has upon the health
and happiness of the body. A gravestone near a public path on the
south-east side of the burial-ground marks the last resting place of
Francis Nicholson, landscape-painter, who died the 6th March, 1844, aged
91 years.
Mr. Nicholson originally practised as a portrait-painter, but the
simplicity and uprightness of his heart did not permit him to tolerate or
pander to the vanities of man (and woman) kind. To flatter was with him
an utter impossibility; and, as he could not invariably consider the
"human face divine," he was incapable of assuming the courtly manners so
essential in that branch of the profession. He never, indeed, quite
forgave himself for an approach to duplicity committed at this time upon
an unfortunate gentleman, who sat to him for his portrait, and who
squinted so desperately, that in order to gain a likeness it was
necessary to copy moderately the defect. The poor man, it seemed,
perfectly unconscious of the same, on being invited to inspect the
performance, looked in silence upon it a few moments, and, with rather a
disappointed air, said--
"I don't know--it seems to me--does it squint?"
"Squint!" replied Nicholson, "no more than you do."
"Really! well, you know best of course; but I declare I fancied there was
a _queer look_ about it!"
The opening of the Water-Colour Exhibition, in 1805, may be dated as the
commencement of Mr. Nicholson's fame and success in London. In
conjunction with Glover, Varley, Prout, and others, an advance in the art
of watercolour painting was made, such as to astonish and call forth the
admiration of the public.
In a manuscript autobiography which Mr. Nicholson left behind him, and
which is full of curious anecdotes, he gives the following account of the
formation of that exhibition.
"Messrs. Hills and Pyne asked me to join in the attempt to establish
such a society, which I readily agreed to. It was a long time before
a number of members sufficient to produce so many works as would be
required to cover the walls of the exhibition room in Brook Street
could be brought to join it. Artists were afraid they might suffer
loss by renting and fitting up the room, the expense being certain
and the success very doubtful. After a great while the society was
formed, and, in the first and second exhibition, the sale of drawings
was so considerable, and the visitors so numerous, that crowds of
those who had refused to join were eager to be admitted into the
society."
[Picture: Nicholson's Grave] Since the annexed sketch of Mr. Nicholson's
grave was taken, the stone bears the two additional melancholy
inscriptions of Thomas Crofton Croker, son-in-law of Francis Nicholson,
who died 8th August, 1854, and Marianne, widow of Thomas Crofton Croker,
who died 6th October, 1854; and an iron railing has been erected on
either side of the grave.
[Picture: St. Mark's Chapel] Opposite to the Cemetery gates is Veitch's
Royal Exotic Nursery.
St. Mark's Chapel, within the grounds of the college, stands opposite to
St. Mark's Terrace, a row of modern houses immediately beyond the
cemetery. The grounds extend to the King's Road, and contain about
eleven acres, surrounded by a brick wall; and the entrance to the
National Society's training college is from that road. Stanley House, or
Stanley Grove House, which was purchased in 1840 for upwards of 9000
pounds by the society, stood upon the site of a house which Sir Arthur
Gorges, the friend of Spenser, allegorically named by him Alcyon, {131}
built for his own residence; and upon the death of whose first wife, a
daughter of Viscount Bindon, in 1590, the poet wrote a beautiful elegy,
entitled 'Daphnaida.' In the Sydney papers mention is made, under date
15th November, 1599, that, "as the queen passed by the faire new
building, Sir Arthur Gorges presented her with a faire jewell." He died
in 1625; and by his widow, the daughter of the Earl of Lincoln, the house
and adjacent land, then called the "Brickhills," was sold, in 1637, to
their only daughter, Elizabeth, the widow of Sir Robert Stanley; which
sale was confirmed by her mother's will, dated 18th July, 1643. The
Stanley family continued to reside here until 1691, when by the death of
William Stanley, Esq., that branch of this family became extinct in the
male line.
The present house, a square mansion, was built soon afterwards; and the
old wall, propped by several buttresses, inclosing the west side of the
grounds, existed on the bank of the Kensington Canal until it was washed
down by a very high tide. This new or square mansion remained unfinished
and unoccupied for several years. In 1724 it belonged to Henry Arundel,
Esq. and on the 24th May, 1743, Admiral Sir Charles Wager, a
distinguished naval officer, died here, and was buried in Westminster
Abbey. After passing through several hands, Stanley Grove became the
property of Miss Southwell, afterwards the wife of Sir James Eyre, Lord
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, who sold it in 1777 to the Countess of
Strathmore.
Here her ladyship indulged her love for botany by building extensive
hot-houses and conservatories, and collecting and introducing into
England rare exotics.
"She had purchased," says her biographer, "a fine old mansion, with
extensive grounds well walled in, and there she had brought exotics
from the Cape, and was in a way of raising continually an increase to
her collection, when, by her fatal marriage, the cruel spoiler came
and threw them, like loathsome weeds, away."
Mr. Lochee, before mentioned, purchased Stanley Grove from the Countess
of Strathmore and her husband, Mr. Bowes. It was afterwards occupied by
Dr. Richard Warren, the eminent physician, who died in 1797, and who is
said to have acquired by the honourable practice of his profession no
less a sum than 150,000 pounds. In January 1808, Mr. Leonard Morse, of
the War Office, died at his residence, Stanley House, and about 1815 it
was purchased by the late Mr. William Richard Hamilton, who ranks as one
of the first scholars and antiquaries of his day. Between that year and
1840 Mr. Hamilton resided here at various periods, having occasionally
let it. He made a considerable addition to the house by building a
spacious room as a wing on the east side, in the walls of which casts
from the frieze and metopes of the Elgin marbles were let in.
When Mr. Hamilton proceeded as envoy to the court of Naples in 1821,
Stanley Grove House became the residence of Mrs. Gregor, and is thus
described by Miss Burney, who was an inmate at this time, in the
following playful letter {133} to a friend, dated 24th September, 1821:--
"Whilst you have been traversing sea and land, scrambling up rocks
and shuddering beside precipices, I have been stationary, with no
other variety than such as turning to the right instead of the left
when walking in the garden, or sometimes driving into town through
Westminster, and, at other times, through Piccadilly. Poor Miss
Gregor continues to be a complete invalid, and, for her sake, we give
up all society at home and all engagements abroad. Luckily, the
house, rented by Mrs. Gregor from William Hamilton, Esq. (who
accompanied Lord Elgin into Greece) abounds with interesting
specimens in almost every branch of the fine arts. Here are statues,
casts from the frieze of the Parthenon, pictures, prints, books, and
minerals; _four_ pianofortes of different sizes, and an excellent
harp. All this to study does Desdemona (that's me) seriously
incline; and the more I study the more I want to know and to see. In
short, I am crazy to travel in Greece! The danger is that some
good-for-nothing bashaw should seize upon me to poke me into his
harem, there to bury my charms for life, and condemn me for ever to
blush unseen. However, I could easily strangle or stab him, set fire
to his castle, and run away by the light of it, accompanied by some
handsome pirate, with whom I might henceforward live at my ease in a
cavern on the sea-shore, dressing his dinners one moment, and my own
sweet person the next in pearls and rubies, stolen by him, during
some of his plundering expeditions, from the fair throat and arms of
a shrieking Circassian beauty, whose lord he had knocked on the head.
Till these genteel adventures of mine begin, I beg you to believe me,
dear Miss ---,
"Yours most truly,
"S. H. BURNEY."
Theodore Hook notes, in one of his manuscript journals, "5th July, 1826.
W. Hamilton's party. Stanley Grove."
About 1828, Stanley Grove was occupied by the Marquess of Queensberry;
and, in 1830-31, by Colonel Grant, at the rent, it was said, of 1000
pounds per annum.
On the west side of the house the National Society added a quadrangle,
built in the Italian style after the design of Mr. Blore; and, in the
grounds near the chapel, an octagonal building as a Practising School,
for teaching the poor children of the neighbourhood.
[Picture: Practising School]
Crossing the Kensington Canal over Sandford Bridge, [Picture: Sandford
Bridge] sometimes written "Stanford" and "Stamford," we enter the parish
of Fulham. The road turning off on the west side of the canal is called
"Bull Lane;" and a little further on a footway existed not long since,
known as Bull Alley; both of which passages led into the King's Road, and
took their names from the Bull public-house, which stood between them in
that road. [Picture: Bull Alley] Bull Alley is now converted into a
good-sized street, called Stamford Road, which has a public-house (the
Rising Sun) on one side, and a bookseller's shop on the other. Here, for
a few years, was a turnpike, which has been recently removed and placed
lower down the road, adjoining the Swan Tavern and Brewery, Walham Green,
established 1765. [Picture: No. 4, No. 3 Stamford Villas] Houses are
being built in all directions opposite several "single and married
houses," with small gardens in front and the rear, known as STAMFORD
VILLAS, where, at No. 2, resided, in 1836 and 1837, Mr. H. K. Browne,
better known, perhaps, by his _sobriquet_ of "Phiz," as an illustrator of
popular periodical works.
No. 3 and No. 4 are shown in the annexed cut, and No. 3 may be noticed as
having been the residence of Mr. Kempe, the author of 'A History of St.
Martin-le-Grand,' the editor of the 'Losely Papers,' and a constant
contributor, under the signature of A. J. K., to the antiquarian lore of
the 'Gentleman's Magazine.' Mr. Kempe died here on 21st August, 1846.
The three last houses of the Stamford Villas are not "wedded to each
other," and in the garden of the one nearest London, Mr. Hampton, who
made an ascent in a balloon from Cremorne, on the 13th June, 1839, with
every reasonable prospect of breaking his neck for the amusement of the
public, came down by a parachute descent, without injury to himself,
although he carried away a brick or two from the chimney of the house,
much to the annoyance of the person in charge, who rushed out upon the
aeronaut, and told him that he had no business to come in contact with
the chimney. His reply exhibited an extraordinary coolness, for he
assured the man it was quite unintentional upon his part.
The milestone is opposite the entrance to No. 20 Stamford Villas, which
informs the pedestrian that it is one mile to Fulham; and passing Salem
Chapel, which is on the right hand side of the main road, we reach the
village of Walham Green.