_Sept. 19, 1827._
This communication, accompanied by the real name and address of its
warmhearted writer, revived my recollections and kindled my feelings. I
immediately wrote to a friend, who lives in the vicinage of
Hagbush-lane, requesting him to hasten to the site of the old cottage,
which was quite as well known to him as to me, and bring me a drawing of
the place in its present state, with such particulars of the razing of
the edifice as he could obtain. His account, as I collect it from verbal
narration, corroborates that of my correspondent.
So complete has been the devastation, that a drawing of the spot whereon
the cottage stood would merely be a view of the level earth. My friend
walked over it, and along Hagbush-lane, till he came into the new road,
(leading from the King’s Head at Holloway to the lower road from London
to Kentish Town.) Immediately at the corner of the continuation of
Hagbush-lane, which begins on the opposite side of the new road, he
perceived a new hut, and near it the expelled occupant of the cottage,
which had been laid waste in the other part of the lane. On asking the
old man respecting the occasion and manner of his ejectment, he cried.
It was a wet and dreary day; and the poor fellow in tears, and his
hastily thrown up tenement, presented a cheerless and desolate scene.
His story was short. On the Thursday, (mentioned in the letter,) so
early as five in the morning, some men brought a ladder, a barrow, and a
pickaxe, and ascending the ladder began to untile the roof, while the
old man and his wife were in bed. He hastily rose; they demanded of him
to unlock the door; on his refusing they burst it open with the
pick-axe, and having thus forced an entrance compelled his wife to get
up. They then wantonly threw out and broke the few household utensils,
and hewed down the walls of the dwelling. In the little garden, they
rooted up and destroyed every tree, shrub, and vegetable; and finally,
they levelled all vestiges which could mark the place, as having been
used or cultivated for the abode and sustenance of human beings. Some of
the less destructible requisites of the cottage they trundled in the
barrow up the lane, across the road, whither the old man and his wife
followed, and were left with the few remnants of their miserable
property by the housebreakers. On that spot they put together their
present hut with a few old boards and canvass, as represented in the
engraving, and there they remain to tell the story of their unredressed
wrongs to all who desire the particulars.
The old man represents the “ringleader,” as he calls him, in this last
work of ruin, to be the foreman of a great cow-keeping landholder and
speculator, to whose field-possessions the cottage on the waste was
adjacent. Who employed this “ringleader” and his followers? Who was the
instigating and protecting accessary before and after this brutal
housebreaking, and wilful waste?
The helpless man got his living by selling small beer, and a little
meat, cooked by his wife, to others as poor and helpless as themselves;
and they eked out their existence by their garden produce. In the summer
of 1825 I heard it said, that their cottage was the resort and
drinking-place of idle and disorderly persons. I took some pains to
ascertain the fact; but could never trace it beyond--the most dubitable
authority--general report. It is quite true, that I saw persons there
whom I preferred not to sit down with, because their manners and habits
were different from my own; yet I not unfrequently took a cup of the old
man’s beer among them, and silently watched them, and sometimes talked
with them; and, for any thing that I could observe--and I know myself to
be a close observer--they were quite as honourable and moral, as persons
of more refined language and dress, who frequent respectable
coffee-houses. I had been, too, withinside the cottage, which was a
place of rude accommodation for no more than its settled occupants. It
was on the outside that the poor couple entertained their customers, who
usually sat on the turf seat against the foot-path side of the hut, or
on an empty barrel or two, or a three-legged milking-stool. On the hedge
side of the cottage was a small low lean-to, wherein the old man kept a
pig to fatten. At the front end was an enclosure of a few feet of
ground, with domestic fowls and their callow broods, which ran about
cackling, and routing the earth for their living. In the rear of the
cottage was a rod or two of ground banked off, and well planted with
potatoes, cabbages, and other garden stuff, where I have often seen the
old man fully employed in weeding and cultivating; digging up old, or
preparing for new crops, or plashing and mending his little fences.
Between his vegetables, and his live stock, and his few customers, he
had enough to do; and I never saw him idle. I never saw him sitting down
to drink with them; and if he had, there was nothing among them but the
small beer. From the early part of the spring to the end of the year
just mentioned, I have been past and loitered near the cottage at all
hours of the day, from the early dawn, before even the sun, or the
inmates had risen, till after they had gone to rest, and the moon was
high, and the stars were in their courses. Never in the hours I spent
around the place by day or night, did I see or hear any persons or
practices that would be termed disorderly by any but the worst judges of
human nature and morals--the underbred overpolite, and vulgarly
overdressed. There I have seen a brickmaker or two with their wives and
daughters sitting and regaling, as much at home, and as sober and
innocent, as parties of French ladies and gentlemen at Chedron’s in
Leicester-square; and from these people, if spoken to civilly, there was
language as civil. There I have seen a comfortably dressed man, in a
clean shirt, and a coat and hat as good as a Fleet-street tradesman’s,
with a jug of _small_ “entire” before him, leisurely at work on a pair
of shoes, joining in the homely conversation, and in choruses of old
English songs, raised by his compeers. There, too, I have heard a
company of merry-hearted labourers and holiday-making journeymen, who
had straggled away from their smithies and furnaces in the lanes of
London, to breathe the fresh air, pealing out loud laughter, while the
birds whistled over their heads from the slender branches of the green
elms. In the old man I saw nothing but unremitting industry; and in his
customers nothing but rude yet inoffensive good-nature. He was getting
his bread by the sweat of his brow, and his brow was daily moistened by
labour.
When I before related something of this poor man’s origin,[359] and his
former endurances, I little suspected that I should have to tell that,
after the parochial officers of Islington had declined to receive him
into the poor-house, the parish would suffer him to be molested as a
labourer on its waste. He has been hunted as a wild beast; and, perhaps,
had he been a younger man, and with vindictive feelings, he might have
turned round upon his enemies, and lawlessly avenged himself for the
lawless injuries inflicted on him. Vagrancy is easily tempted to
criminality, and the step is short.
It is scarcely three weeks since the old cottager was in a snug abode of
his own handmaking, with a garden that had yielded support to him and
his wife through the summer, and roots growing in it for their winter
consumption. These have been mercilessly laid waste at the coming-in of
the inclement season. Will no one further investigate the facts, and aid
him in obtaining “indemnity for the past, and security for the future?”
Respecting the rights of the parish of Islington in Hagbush-lane, as the
ancient and long disused north road into London, I do not pretend to
determine; because, after the warm discussions and strong resolutions of
its vestries, sometime ago, respecting a part of this road which had
been partially appropriated to private use, the parish may have
thoroughly good reasons for acquiescing in the entire stopping up of a
carriage thoroughfare, between the back road to Holloway and Islington
upper street, which, if now open, would be of great use. Many of the
inhabitants, however may not be so easily satisfied as a few that the
individual, who has at length wholly enclosed it, and shut it against
the public, has any more right to stop up, and take the ground of this
highway to himself, than to enclose so much of the road to Holloway
through which the mails pass.
I have often perambulated Hagbush-lane, as the old London north road,
from Old-street across the City-road, the Lower and Upper Islington, and
Holloway roads, by the Islington workhouse, on to the Bull ring field;
(which is in private hands, no one knows how;) from thence, over the
site of the destroyed cottage to the old man’s present hut; then along
the meadows; across the Highgate-archway-cut into other meadows, through
which it winds back again, and recrosses the archway-cut, and afterwards
crosses the London road, between stately elms, towards Hornsey.
Perhaps the Commissioners of Crown Lands, or Woods and Forests, may find
it convenient and easy to institute an inquiry into the encroachments of
Hagbush-lane, as a disused public road; and devise a method of obtaining
its worth, in aid of the public service.
Meantime, the aggression on the old cottager must not be forgotten. The
private wrong he has sustained is in the nature of a public wrong; and
it is open to every one to consider of the means by which these repeated
breaches of the peace may be prevented, and redress be obtained for the
poor man’s injuries.
*
[359] In the first volume of the _Every-Day Book_, No. 28, which
contains the account of Hagbush-lane and its vicinage, col. 857 to
872.
* * * * *
~Garrick Plays.~
No. XXXV.
[From the “Hectors,” a Comedy; by Edmund Prestwick, 1641.]
_A Waiting Maid wheedles an old Justice into a belief, that her Lady is
in love with him._
_Maid._ I think there never was Woman of so strange a humour as she is
for the world; for from her infancy she ever doted on old men. I have
heard her say, that in these her late law troubles, it has been no
small comfort to her, that she hath been conversant with grave
counsellors and serjeants; and what a happiness she had sometimes to
look an hour together upon the Judges. She will go and walk a whole
afternoon in Charter House Garden, on purpose to view the ancient
Gentlemen there. Not long ago there was a young Gentleman here about
the town who, hearing of her riches, and knowing this her humour, had
almost got her, by counterfeiting himself to be an old man.
_Justice._ And how came he to miss her?
_Maid._ The strangliest that ever you heard; for all things were
agreed, the very writings drawn, and when he came to seal them,
because he set his name without using a pair of spectacles, she would
never see him more.
_Justice._ Nay, if she can love an old man so--well--
_The Waiting Maid places the Justice, where he can overhear a sham
discourse of the Lady with a pretended Brother._
_Brother._ What is the matter, Sister? you do not use to be so strange
to me.
_Lady._ I do not indeed; but now methinks I cannot conceal any thing;
yet I could wish you could now guess my thoughts, and look into my
mind; and see what strange passions have ruled there of late, without
forcing me to strain my modesty.
_Broth._ What, are you in love with anybody? Come, let me know the
party; a brother’s advice may do you no harm.
_Sist._ Did you not see an ancient gentleman with me, when you came
in?
_Broth._ What, is it any son or kinsman of his?
_Sist._ No, no. (_She weeps._)
_Broth._ Who then?
_Sist._ I have told you--
_Broth._ What, that feeble and decrepit piece of age--
_Sist._ Nay, brother--
_Broth._ That sad effect of some threescore years and ten--that antic
relique of the last century--
_Sist._ Alas, dear brother, it is but too true.
_Broth._ It is impossible.
_Sist._ One would think so indeed.
_Broth._ I grant, you may bear a reverence and regard, as to your
father’s ashes, or your grandsire’s tomb.
_Sist._ Alas, brother, you know I never did affect those vain though
pleasing braveries of youth, but still have set my mind on the more
noble part of man, which age doth more refine and elaborate, than it
doth depress and sink this same contemptible clod.
_Justice._ I see, she loves me.
* * * * *
[From “Hey for Honesty,” a Comedy, by T. Randolph, 1651.]
_To Plutus._
Did not Will Summers break his wind for thee?
And Shakespeare therefore writ his comedy?
All things acknowledge thy vast power divine,
Great God of Money, whose most powerful shine
Gives motion, life; day rises from thy sight,
Thy setting though at noon makes pitchy night.
Sole catholic cause of what we feel and see,
All in this all are but the effects of thee.
_Riches above Poverty; a syllogism._
--My _major_, That which is most noble, is most honorable. But Poverty
is more noble. My _minor_ I prove thus. Whose houses are most ancient,
those are most noble. But Poverty’s houses are most ancient; for some
of them are so old, like Vicarage houses, they are every hour in
danger of falling.
_Stationer’s Preface before the Play._
Reader, this is a pleasant Comedy, though some may judge it satirical,
’tis the more like Aristophanes, the father; besides, if it be biting,
’tis a biting age we live in; then biting for biting. Again, Tom
Randal, the adopted son of Ben Jonson, being the Translator hereof,
followed his father’s steps. They both of them loved Sack, and
harmless mirth, and here they shew it; and I, that know myself, am not
averse from it neither. This I thought good to acquaint thee with.
Farewell. Thine, F.J.
* * * * *
[From the “Example,” a Tragi-Comedy, by Jas. Shirley, 1638.]
_The humour of a wary Knight, who sleeps all day, and wakes all night,
for security.--He calls up his Household at midnight._
_Plot._ Dormant, why Dormant, thou eternal sleeper
Who would be troubled with these lethargies
About him? are you come, dreamer?
_Dormant (entering.)_ Would I were so happy. There’s less noise in a
steeple upon a Coronation-day. O sleep, sleep, tho’ it were a dead
one, would be comfortable. Your Worship might be pleased to let my
fellow Old-rat watch as well as I.
_Plot._ Old-rat! that fellow is a drone.
_Dorm._ He has slept this half hour on the iron chest. Would I were in
my grave to take a nap; death would do me a courtesy; I should be at
rest, and hear no noise of “Dormant.”
_Plot._ Hah! what’s the matter?
_Dorm._ Nothing but a yawn, Sir, I do all I can to keep myself waking.
_Plot._ ’Tis done considerately. This heavy dulness Is the disease of
souls. Sleep in the night!
_Dorm._ Shall I wake my fellow Old-rat? he is refreshed.
_Plot._ Do; but return you with him: I have business with both--
_Dorm._ To hear us join in opinion of what’s a clock!
They talk of Endymion: now could I sleep three lives.
(_exit._)
_Plot._ When other men measure the hours with sleep,
Careless of where they are and whom they trust,
Exposing their condition to danger
Of plots, I wake and wisely think prevention.
Night was not made to snore in; but so calm,
For our imaginations to be stirring
About the world; this subtle world, this world
Of plots and close conspiracy. There is
No faith in man nor woman. Where’s this Dormant?
_Dorm. (re-entering with Old-rat.)_ Here is the sleepy vermin.
_Old._ It has been day this two hours.
_Plot._ Then ’tis time for me to go to bed.
_Dorm._ Would my hour were once come!
_Plot._ Keep out daylight, and set up a fresh taper.
_Dorm._ By that time we have dined, he will have slept out his
first sleep.
_Old._ And after supper call for his breakfast.
_Plot._ You are sure ’tis morning?
_Dorm._ As sure as I am sleepy.