Return to Stoke Newington.
It would be a very difficult thing to realize now in the suburb of Stoke
Newington, the Stoke Newington of Isaac Watts’ day. The mighty city has
absorbed it; the lanes, the fields, the woods, the old bridge, the old
church, and the very river have vanished. It must have been a very pretty
little rural village, comprised in a small cluster of houses; it may even
be spoken of as a kind of sequestered hermitage, amidst whose shades
those who desired it might find, if the stillness of nature could give
it, perfect peace. Even more than forty years after Watts’ death there
were only one hundred and ninety-five houses; within the memory of old
inhabitants it was still but a village. In Watts’ day it was probably
surrounded by trees; a short time before he took up his residence there,
there were seventy-seven acres of woodland in demesne, part of the
ancient forest of Middlesex, so justifying its name from Stoke, a wood
(_Stoke Newington_, the new little town in the wood). A very pleasant
retreat, the like of which we should have to look a long way from any
London suburb to discover now. The ancient houses have disappeared from
the present vicinity, and two of the last, and those in which Watts
passed his early and his later age, the houses of Hartopp and Abney, have
only just been pulled down. We have noticed the history of Fleetwood’s
house, built in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but tradition assigns to
some old houses in the village, called the “Bishop’s Place,” the frequent
visits of Henry VIII., and here, on a part of these premises, was born
Samuel Rogers, the poet; and it is a singular and noticeable thing, that
as the father of the poet died in 1793, and had lived the greater part
of his life at Stoke Newington, those who knew the poet talked with a
man who was the child of one who had probably not only seen but talked
with Isaac Watts. There is a spot in Stoke Newington still called “King
Henry’s Walk,” and when the premises supposed to be his retreat were
taken down, parts of the old wainscot were found to be richly gilt and
ornamented with paintings, although, indeed, almost obliterated.
Stoke Newington, about the period when Watts resided there, was the
residence and retreat of many celebrities. Here, as we have seen, Defoe
was educated, and for some time resided; and here, a little later,
resided another whose name has been a charm over childhood, Thomas
Day, the author of “Sandford and Merton.” Watts had only been dead two
years when John Howard came to reside in the village. The place seems
especially to have been the retreat of retired statesmen or merchants,
but all ranks seem to mingle memories in the little village. Queen
Elizabeth’s Walk is founded on the tradition that in the Manor House the
Princess Elizabeth was concealed during a part of the reign of Queen
Mary. London suburbs were wont to retain the flavour of a peculiar kind
of society, and not less really than Twickenham retained its literary
eminence; not less renowned than Clapham for its “Sect,” was Stoke
Newington eminent as the home and haunt of Nonconformist celebrities.[38]
The interest of the place, however, gathers greatly round the memories
of the houses of the Hartopp and the Abney families, for Watts is the
greatest name connected with Stoke Newington, and in both these houses he
found his home.
Watts’ biographers have hitherto not nicely discriminated the periods
of his residence; reading Southey, it might be supposed he had passed
all his life at Stoke Newington; reading Milner, it might be supposed
he not only passed the greater part of his life, but closed his days at
Theobalds. The truth is, that Thomas Gunston, the brother of Lady Abney,
purchased a house and twenty-five acres of land with the Manor of Stoke
Newington. He pulled the house down, and commenced the erection of a
very large and elegant house on the site of the old one, but he died in
1700, just before the completion of the building. He was a young man, and
Watts was young, and between the two there appears to have been a bond of
exceedingly close and tender friendship. When Thomas Gunston died he left
the house to his sister, then residing at Theobalds with her husband, Sir
Thomas Abney, and there Watts resided with them; but many years after,
probably when time had softened the stroke which seems to have been felt
very keenly, Lady Abney left Theobalds and came to her house in Stoke
Newington. Watts came with the family, and in this house were passed the
last thirteen years of his life, and there, shortly after the death of
her revered friend, Lady Abney died. The house then became the property
of the eldest daughter, Miss Elizabeth Abney, who never married, and
whose name occurs as a considerable benefactor to the neighbourhood. Upon
her death, she directed by her will the lease and estate to be sold, and
after the payment of certain legacies, the residue to be distributed to
poor Dissenting ministers, to their widows, and other objects of charity;
the sale realized £13,000.
This, then, was the spot associated with some of Watts’ earliest,
happiest days, and was the scene of their quiet close. His friendship
with Thomas Gunston was evidently founded on moral and intellectual
relationship, and when he died, he poured out his grief in a long elegy,
published in the Lyrics. It is noticeable in the poetry of Watts, and
of that day, that so many of the subjects are devoted to the memory of
friends. If a friend died, or if any other circumstance happened in life,
it seemed necessary to embody the impressions in verse, and we need not,
perhaps, regard this as altogether artificial and unnatural; in Watts’
instance, we may be sure it was not so, although many of the expressions
sound extravagant; those to which most exception is taken have scarcely
more of this characteristic than some of the similar poems of Milton; we
may, for instance, remember Lycidas:
Mourn, ye young gardens, ye unfinished gates,
Ye green enclosures and ye growing sweets
Lament; for ye our midnight hours have known,
And watched us walking by the silent moon
In conference divine, while heavenly fire,
Kindling our breasts, did all our thoughts inspire
With joys almost immortal.
And again—
Oft have I laid the awful Calvin by,
And the sweet Cowley, with impatient eye
To see these walls, pay the sad visit here,
And drop the tribute of an hourly tear.
Still I behold some melancholy scene,
With many a pensive thought and many a sigh between.
Two days ago we took the evening air,
I and my grief.
Amidst the exaggerations, however, which a prosaic age may fancy it
detects, there is no reason for including expressions which it would
certainly be impossible to appropriately use now; the poet calls upon
the dusky woods and echoing hills, the flowery vales overgrown with
thorns, the brook that runs warbling by, the lowing herd, and the moaning
turtle, the curling vine with its amorous folds, and the stately elms,
the reverent growth of ancient years, standing tall and naked to the
blustering rage of the mad winds. These are images which must have
been simply natural and appropriate when the piece was written; all is
changed, entirely changed now, unless some exception be made for the
elms which are, or were, recently standing. The death of this amiable,
excellent, and promising young man stands out as probably the most
intense grief of Watts’ life. As there was a community of taste, leisure
for the indulgence of the pursuits of the intellect and the heart, and
the strong wish to gratify the instincts of a noble nature, it is not
wonderful that Watts poured out his feelings in so lengthy a poem.
The young man appears to have come of a high-spirited family; his father,
John Gunston, befriended many of the ministers when they fell beneath
the arm of persecution; and when the eminent Dr. Manton was imprisoned
in the Gate House for refusing the Oxford Oath, the Lady Broughton, his
keeper, placing the keys at his disposal, allowed him an opportunity of
visiting his friend, Mr. Gunston, at Newington. Thus we have the early
and tender connection of Watts with this village. And not long since
the old house was standing. An amiable and accomplished man of our time
writes, in a letter dated May, 1840: “On my return to town I stopped at
Stoke Newington, and paid a promised visit to an old friend and colleague
at Abney House, where he has charge of the literary education of some
twenty candidates for the ministry. The house—that in which Dr. Watts
lived for more than a generation, composed his precious hymns, and at
last died—afforded me, in its noble antique apartments, in its still rich
embellishments, its surrounding grounds (said to contain the bones of
Oliver Cromwell), and, above all, its sacred associations, more delight
than I can express.”[39]
On the spot where the house stood, with its beautiful grounds, gardens,
and trees extending round, is now laid out the Abney Park Cemetery,
amongst whose forests of tombs may be detected innumerable names very
dear to the memories of modern Nonconformists: since the closing of
Bunhill Fields, Abney Park Cemetery has become what it was, a sort of
_santa croce_, or _campo santo_ of revered and hallowed dust.
Though now within a short walk of the great city, it seemed a sequestered
village when Watts resided there. The roads were probably not of the
best, and there were no lights upon them. The woods intervening and in
the neighbourhood, would furnish shelter for many social annoyances,
and even dangers. But it was nearer to London than the more stately and
palace-like abode of Theobalds, and, noble as it was, it was altogether
a plainer habitation. Watts was probably, after the death of Sir Thomas
Abney, very much the modest master of both abodes. Until within a short
period of its dissolution the house contained such memories of Watts as
adorned the walls of Theobalds. We have seen that he was a painter,
and the fashion at that time was to adorn the wainscoting and walls
and panels. There were noble rooms in the mansion, and thus were they
relieved, mostly by subjects of a classical, mythical, and allegorical
character. He painted four characters of Youth and Age, Mirth and Grief,
for two of the parlours, “where,” says Dr. Robinson, “they are at this
present day.” To the time of its fall the mansion testified to the taste
and elegance with which it was fitted up, the painted room displaying
costly ornaments, and altogether a fine specimen of the age in which it
was arranged; the mouldings gilt, and the whole of the panels and sides
painted with subjects from “Ovid,” and on the window-shutters pictorial
decorations, supposed to have been the production of the pencil of
Watts, emblematical of Death and Grief, and evidently alluding to the
decease of Mr. Gunston. The elms, to which reference has been already
made, continued to excite attention to the last. Planted long before the
building was commenced, they continued to wave their widowed branches
after it had passed away. Dr. Robinson mentions a portrait of Watts which
long continued in the house, an indifferent portrait of him when a young
man, in a blue night-gown, wig and band, and three or four duplicate
mezzotinto prints of him when older by G. White, 1727, clerically
habited, with a Bible in his right hand, and under him in capitals:
ISAAC WATTS
“In Christo mea vita latet, mea gloria Christus, hunc lingua,
hunc calamus celebrat nec magis, tacebit. In uno Jesu omnia.”
And on the upper corner “To live is Christ, to die is gain.”
Here his last days were passed; Dr. Gibbons does not mention in what
year the family left Theobalds to return to Stoke Newington, but it
must have been about thirteen years before his death; and during this
time, although his life was clouded by many pains and infirmities, he
still continued the active operations of his pen, and, as we shall have
occasion to see, the active operations of his mind, employing himself
especially in attempting to solve what seems to many the insolvable
question of the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead. But as he descended
towards the closing years it seems that he suffered greatly from some
members of his own family. In a letter from the Rev. John Barker to
Dr. Doddridge, written nearly two years before Watts’ death, we read:
“The behaviour of Dr. Watts and the wretch Buckston towards Dr. Isaac
is a most marvellous, infamous, enormous wickedness; Lady Abney, with
inimitable steadiness and prudence, keeps our friend in peaceful
ignorance, and his enemies at a becoming distance, so that in the midst
of the persecution of that righteous man he lives comfortably; and when a
friend asks him how he does, answers, ‘Waiting God’s leave to die.’”[40]
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