⁂ The groves round London within a few years have been nearly destroyed
by the speculating builders.
* * * * *
J. R. P.’s note may be an excuse for observing, that the “grove” best
known, perhaps, to the inhabitants of London is that at Camberwell--a
spacious roadway and fine walks, above half a mile in length, between
rows of stately trees, from the beginning of the village and ascending
the hill to its summit, from whence there is, or rather was, the finest
burst of scenery the eye can look upon within the same distance from
London. The view is partially obstructed by new buildings, and the
character of the “grove” itself has been gradually injured by the
breaking up of the adjacent grounds and meadows into brick-fields, and
the flanking of its sides with town-like houses. This grove has been the
theme of frequent song. Dr. Lettsom first gave celebrity to it by his
writings, and pleasant residence on its eastern extremity; and it was
further famed by Mr. Maurice in an elegant poem, with delightful
engravings on wood. After the death of the benevolent physician, and
before the decease of the illustrator of “Indian Antiquities,” much of
the earth, consecrated by their love and praise, “passed through the
fire” in sacrifice to the Moloch of improvement. In a year or two “Grove
Hill” may be properly named “Grove Street.”
Hampstead, however, is the “place of groves;”--how long it may remain so
is a secret in the bosom of speculators and builders. Its first grove,
townward, is the noble private avenue from the Hampstead-road to
Belsize-house, in the valley between Primrose hill and the hill whereon
the church stands, with Mr. Memory-Corner Thompson’s remarkable house
and lodge at the corner of the pleasant highway to the little village of
West-end. In the neighbourhood of Hampstead church, and between that
edifice and the heath, there are several old groves. Winding southwardly
from the heath, there is a charming little grove in Well Walk,
with a bench at the end; whereon I last saw poor Keats, the poet of
the “Pot of Basil,” sitting and sobbing his dying breath into a
handkerchief,--gleaning parting looks towards the quiet landscape he had
delighted in--musing, as in his Ode to a Nightingale.
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,--
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm south,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow
[Illustration: ~West Wickham Church, Kent.~]
----From Beckenham church we walked about two miles along a nearly
straight road, fenced off from the adjoining lands, till we reached West
Wickham. It was from a painted window in this church that I made the
tracing of St. Catherine engraved in the _Every-Day Book_, where some
mention is made of the retired situation of this village.
“Wickham Court,” the ancient manor-house adjacent to the church, was
formerly the residence of Gilbert West, the translator of Pindar, and
author of the “Observations on the Resurrection of Christ.” for which
the university of Oxford conferred on him the degree of doctor of laws.
“He was very often visited by Lyttelton and Pitt, who, when they were
weary of faction and debates, used, at Wickham, to find books and quiet,
a decent table, and literary conversation.”[236] It was in West’s
society, at Wickham, that lord Lyttelton was convinced of the truth of
Christianity. Under that conviction he wrote his celebrated
“Dissertation on the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul,” which,
until the appearance of Paley’s “Horæ Paulina,” was an unrivalled
treatise. Mr. Pitt, (the great earl of Chatham,) during his intimacy
with West, formed a walk at Wickham Court. In a summer-house of the
grounds, Mr. West inscribed the following lines, in imitation of
Ausonius, a Latin poet of the fourth century, “Ad Villam:”--
Not wrapt in smoky London’s sulphurous clouds,
And not far distant stands my rural cot;
Neither obnoxious to intruding crowds,
Nor for the good and friendly too remote.
And when too much repose brings on the spleen,
Or the gay city’s idle pleasures cloy;
Swift as my changing wish I change the scene,
And row the country, now the town enjoy.
The ancient manor of West Wickham was vested in sir Samuel Lennard,
bart., from whom it passed to his daughter Mary, the present dowager
lady Farnaby, who resides in the manor-house, and with whose permission
we were permitted a look at the hall of the mansion, which contains in
the windows some painted remains of armorial bearings on glass, removed
from the windows of the church. A view in Hasted’s “History of Kent”
represents the towers of this mansion to have been surmounted by
sextagon cones, terminated at the top with the fleur de lis, a bearing
in the family arms; these pinnacles have been taken down, the roofs of
the towers flattened, and the walls castellated. By a charter of free
warren, in the eleventh year of Edward II., a weekly market was granted
to West Wickham, but it is no longer held, and Wickham, as a town, has
lost its importance.
The manor-house and church are distant from the village about half a
mile, with an intervening valley beautifully pleasant, in which is a
road from Hayes Common to Addington and Croydon. The church is on a
hill, with an old lich-gate, like that at Beckenham, though not so
large. At this spot W. sat down, and made the sketch here represented by
his graver. Although I had been in the edifice before, I could not avoid
another visit to it. At the north-east corner, near the communion table,
are many ancient figured tiles sadly neglected, loose in the pavement;
some displaced and lying one upon the other. Worst of all,--and I mean
offence to no one, but surely there is blame somewhere,--the ancient
stone font, which is in all respects perfect, has been removed from its
original situation, and is thrown into a corner. In its place, at the
west end, from a nick (not a niche) between the seats, a little
trivet-like iron bracket swings in and out, and upon it is a wooden
hand-bowl, such as scullions use in a kitchen sink; and in this
hand-bowl, of about twelve inches diameter, called a font, I found a
common blue-and-white Staffordshire-ware halfpint basin. It might be
there still; but, while inveighing to my friend W. against the
depravation of the fine old font, and the substitution of such a paltry
modicum, in my vehemence I fractured the crockery. I felt that I was
angry, and, perhaps, I sinned; but I made restitution beyond the extent
that would replace the baptismal slop-basin.
The fragments of old painted glass in the windows of this church are
really fine. The best are, St. Anne teaching the virgin to read; whole
lengths of St. Christopher wading, with the infant Saviour beating the
globe in his hand; an elderly female saint, very good; and a skeleton
with armour before him. Some years ago, collectors of curiosities paid
their attentions to these windows, and carried off specimens: since then
wires have been put up on the outside. On the walls are hung pennons,
with an iron helmet, sword, spurs, gloves, and other remains of a
funereal pageant. A small organ stands on the floor: the partitions of
some of the pewings are very ancient.
*
[236] Dr. Johnson.
* * * * *
~Topography.~