_CHURCH ROW AND ST. JOHN’S CHURCH._
The High Street, Hampstead, is a continuation of Rosslyn Street, as
Rosslyn Street is of the Hampstead Road. In my earliest days the way
to Church Row and the church—which, being the oldest part of the town,
deserves the earliest notice—was through some narrow passages to the
left of High Street, called Church Lane and Perrin’s Court, disagreeable
purlieus now happily altered.
Church Row was then the private and superior part of the old town of
Hampstead, which, lying under the shadow of the church, still preserves
an air of old-fashioned gentility and retirement.
The houses of red brick, with a string-course of the same material along
their fronts, with narrow windows, dormers in the roofs, and fan-lighted
hall doors, exhibit a style of domestic architecture common from James
II.’s time to that of the Georges.
They remind one of the houses in Bush Lane, City, rebuilt after the
Great Fire. We gather the meaning of the word ‘row’ from the fact that
the houses on the north side of the way are much older than those on the
left; these date no further back than the rebuilding of the church in
1745.
The door and gateway of No. 8, on the right, are clearly of an early
date, as is also the weather-boarded, bow-fronted house on the same side
of the way, and the double-gabled house nearest the church.
Several of these houses had originally very fine gardens, with stables
and coach-house in the rear, and were occupied by rich City men, Riga,
Turkey, and Spanish merchants, some of whose names may still be found
under the moss of the churchyard stones and in the obituary columns of
the magazines of the day. Others of these houses were of less pretension,
as we find from Mr. Abraham’s ‘Book of Assessments,’ some being rated at
£50 and £60 per annum, and others at £14, £15, and even less.
[Illustration: _Church Row, Hampstead._]
But Church Row has had residents memorable for attributes more enduring
and higher than riches, and for their sakes as long as Hampstead exists,
and living minds delight in recalling the scenes and associations
connected with men and women of genius, the place hallowed as the
sometime home of Mrs. Barbauld and her niece, Lucy Aikin, will always be
for English-speaking people endowed with a personal interest.
From 1785 to 1802, Mrs. Barbauld, whose writings achieved a wide and
distinguished popularity in the literature of the last century, resided
here in the house (in my time No. 8) on the right-hand side of the
way going from the town towards the church, noticeable for a large
wrought-iron gate.
Her husband, Rochmount Barbauld, a native of Germany, was the pastor of a
small congregation of Dissenters, whose place of meeting for worship was
the Presbyterian chapel on Red Lion Hill, now Rosslyn Hill.
They were not rich, and from the time of their marriage, in 1774, had
assisted their income by receiving a few pupils, a course they continued
on coming to Hampstead, Mrs. Barbauld herself receiving a class of
little boys. It appears to have been quite an aristocratic school, and
the education and training of the children a labour of love to both the
pastor and his wife.
She, in her early home, had enjoyed those advantages that have so often
helped to strengthen and enlarge learned and literary tastes in women,
an almost masculine education, and the society of highly-cultured and
liberal-minded men. She was the only daughter of Dr. Aikin, who himself,
we are told, was a man of sound scholarship, and the friend of Drs.
Priestley, Enfield, and Doddridge, the latter of whom for some time
resided in the family.[61]
[Illustration: _Back View of Houses, Church Row._]
Her first poems were published the year before her marriage, and
were followed by her ‘Hymns in Prose,’ for children, hymns that were
themselves full of poetry—at least, to the _perception of one child’s
heart_—and were accepted by hundreds of parents with gratitude and
admiration. Other works followed, and she assisted her brother, Dr.
John Aikin, in the delightful series of stories entitled ‘Evenings at
Home.’ But the fruits of her training and associations are best seen
in her critical and graver writings, which display ‘a strong, logical,
and correctly-thinking mind’[62]—nay, in some of them a breadth and
liberality of thought quite beyond the times in which she lived;
and it required in that day some courage to publish them. Take, for
instance, her ‘Observations on the Devotional Taste,’ on ‘Sects and
Establishments,’ a page of which I append.[63]
At the present day some of her suggestions have become opinions, and
are openly preached; but her anticipatory expression of them reads
rather like inspiration than the simple sequence of logical reasoning.
Moreover, she was living in times when for women to have opinions at
all—or at least to print them—was regarded as unfeminine, and looked
upon with disfavour. Mrs. Barbauld herself, in her ‘Life of Richardson,’
tells us how the accomplished and clever Mrs. Delany found fault with a
conversation in ‘Sir Charles Grandison,’ in which the words ‘intellect’
and ‘ethics’ occur, as being too scholastic to be spoken by a woman;
and Dr. Johnson ‘did not greatly approve of literature as a career for
women,’ though he condoned it in the case of little Fanny Burney and
Miss Mulso, afterwards well known as Mrs. Chapone, or, as she used to
be styled in my young days, _Madame Chapone_, without a course of whose
letters no young lady was supposed to have finished her education. But
Johnson affected, in Mrs. Barbauld’s case, to underrate her talents.
When, however, at the very height of her literary reputation, he heard of
her devoting herself to the culture of the young minds entrusted to her
own and her husband’s care, she had, we are told, ‘his highest praise.’
No one, according to Mrs. Piozzi, ‘was more struck with this voluntary
descent from possible splendour to painful duty than the Doctor.’ But
why ‘painful duty’? I imagine that to Mrs. Barbauld the divine gift of
teaching, as she, and Pestalozzi, and Dr. Arnold, and a few others, have
taught, was as spontaneous and irrepressible as her writing poetry. The
first-fruits of her genius had been for children. The publication of her
‘Early Lessons’ was an era in their first steps to knowledge, and her
contemporaries declared it unrivalled amongst books for children. She
had taught when quite a girl in her father’s school, for the simple love
of teaching, and thus I do not believe that the step she took was one
regarded by her as a descent. She had made a name that was destined to
live, and the estimation in which her writings were held lost nothing by
her ceasing to write, though the reputation of them enhanced that of the
Hampstead School. No doubt she regarded her acceptance of the position
from quite another point of view than did the learned Doctor, who had
essayed school-keeping as a means to an end, and failed, while the lady
entered upon it _con amore_, and her method was altogether different from
the scholastic system then in vogue. She was the friend, companion, and
confidant of her pupils; she sympathized with all their small troubles,
shared their joys, and catered for their amusement. Howitt, in his
‘Northern Heights of London,’ tells how a lady calling on her found Mrs.
Barbauld in the midst of making paper plumes, ruffs, and collars, for the
boys who were about to play in private theatricals.
No; I feel sure there was no feeling of descent in her change of
occupation, no sense of ‘painful duty’ in the teaching that helped to
mould the minds of boys like Thomas Denman, afterwards Lord Denman, Lord
Chief Justice of England, and of William Gell, subsequently Sir William
Gell, the antiquary and topographer of Greece and Pompeii, neither of
whom in after-life forgot their indebtedness to her. She had, as a
writer, known the triumph of success. Her poems, published in 1778, had
passed through four editions in the year. She had won the praise of
Charles James Fox, who particularly admired her songs; had been eulogized
by Garrick as ‘She who sang the sweetest lay’; and was regarded by
Wordsworth as the ‘first of literary women’; while Crabb Robinson, who
did not see her till she had reached old age, was enthusiastic in his
admiration of her intellect, and charmed with her appearance even then.
It is amusing, from a woman’s standpoint, to mark the generous praise and
admiration of these men, and compare it with the stinted commendation
and personality of the ‘sweet Queen’s’ ex-reader, and of Mrs. Chapone.
Some time after Miss Burney’s return to her father’s house, Mr. and Mrs.
Barbauld called upon her, whereupon she writes in her journal that the
latter is altered at this period, ‘but not for the worse to me, since
the first flight of her youth has taken with it a great portion of an
almost set smile, which had an air of determined complacency and prepared
acquiescence that seemed to result from a _sweetness that never risked
being off guard_. I remember,’ she runs on, ‘Mrs. Chapone saying to me,
“She is a very good young woman, as well as replete with talent, but why
must one always smile so? It makes my jaws ache to look at her;”’ and
then Miss Burney sums up her literary merit as ‘the authoress of the most
useful works, next to Mrs. Trimmer, that have been written for children,
though this with the world is probably her very secondary merit. Her many
pretty poems, and particularly songs, being generally esteemed. But many
more have written these as well. For children’s books she began the new
walk, which has since been so well cultivated, to the great information
as well as the utility of parents.’
She tells us that Mrs. Barbauld’s brother, Mr. Aikin, had a very fine
countenance, and describes Mr. Barbauld as ‘a very characteristic
figure, but well bred and sensible.’ Crabb Robinson is more clear in
his delineation of him, and says he had ‘a slim figure, a weazen face,
and a shrill voice. He talked a good deal, and was fond of dwelling
on controversial points of religion. He was by no means destitute of
ability.’ Amongst Mrs. Barbauld’s guests at Church Row in 1798 was Miss
Mary Galton, afterwards Mrs. Schemelpennick, one of the shining lights in
that brilliant company that met in Mrs. Montague’s drawing-rooms on the
occasions of her literary assemblies, which brought together all the wit
and talent of the town.
Amongst these celebrities Mrs. Barbauld was a welcome guest, and many of
these gifted men and women visited her in Church Row.
She appears to have been as charming in person as she was rich in
intellect. A small portrait of her in the _European Magazine_ of March,
1786, suggests, from the sweetness of expression and refinement of
the features, the composed beauty of countenance which Crabb Robinson
describes her as possessing at sixty-two years of age.
In 1802 the Barbaulds removed from Hampstead. Through the kindness of a
friend, I have before me the copy of a letter from Rochmount Barbauld
to the celebrated Dr. Parr, dated March 29, 1802, in which he says:
‘We are on the point of leaving this charming spot, in order to remove
to Stoke Newington, thus exchanging the beauties of nature for the
pleasures of the heart and mind—for the advantage, I mean, of living
close to Dr. Aikin.’ This closes all questions as to the time when the
Barbaulds removed from Hampstead, which one writer has asserted to have
been in 1799. It was at Stoke Newington that Crabb Robinson paid his
first visit to them in 1805-6. We have seen his personal description
of Mr. Barbauld, but he added to it the suggestive expression that at
that time the afflictive disease was lurking in him which in a few years
broke out, and, as is well known, caused a sad termination to his life.
This was the circumstance that made their removal to Stoke Newington a
necessity, in order that Mrs. Barbauld should be near her brother for
advice, assistance, and protection. No wonder Mrs. Le Breton, in her
recollections of her, calls her life a brave and beautiful one. Of Mrs.
Barbauld, Crabb Robinson says: ‘She bore the remains of great personal
beauty; she had a brilliant complexion, light hair, blue eyes, a small
elegant figure, and her manners were agreeable, with something of the
generation departed.’
[Illustration: _Mrs. Barbauld._]
When he next saw her she was quite aged, and her husband had been dead
many years; but she still kept the calm sweetness of countenance that had
charmed him on the occasion of his first visit. One of her poems, written
in her declining days, is so characteristic of her quiet faith and the
serenity of her mind that we cannot forbear quoting it:
‘Life, we’ve been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
’Tis hard to part when friends are dear,
Perhaps ’twill cause a sigh, a tear;
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not “Good-night!” but in some brighter clime
Bid me “Good-morning!”’
And it was in some such mood that death found her in the eighty-second
year of her age.
On leaving Church Row, the school—probably on account of her husband’s
malady—being given up, Mrs. Barbauld immediately recommenced her literary
labours, and compiled a selection of essays from the _Spectator_,
_Tatler_, and _Guardian_, with an introductory one of her own. This work
appeared the year after her removal from Church Row, and was followed
by her ‘Life of Richardson,’ whose correspondence she had edited. Her
husband died in 1808, and the ‘widow recorded her feelings in a poetical
dirge to his memory,’ a form of diverting feelings with which I have no
sympathy, especially as the ebullition appears to have been published! I
better understand her seeking relief in other literary occupation. She
wrote a poem in 1811 in which she more naturally refers to her husband.
She had also edited a collection of the British novelists, published
in 1810, with an introductory essay of her own, and biographical and
critical notices.
Placidity and cheerfulness continued with her to the last. She died of
gradual decay on March 9, 1825. Meanwhile she had had the pleasure of
witnessing the literary success of her brother’s daughter, Miss Lucy
Aikin,[64] who had written various historical memoirs and a ‘Life of
Joseph Addison,’ which Macaulay criticised, and who, because ‘Miss Lucy
Aikin’s reputation—which she has so justly earned—stands so high,’ thinks
it right to remind her of her lapses, and of ‘the necessity in a future
edition for every fact and date, about which there can be the smallest
doubt, to be verified.’ Valuable and wise advice, the rigour of which
he softened by adding that ‘the immunities of sex were not the only
immunities Miss Aikin might rightfully plead ... several of her works,
and especially the very pleasing memoirs of the reign of James I., having
fully entitled her to the privileges enjoyed by good writers.’ In June,
1822, this lady and her mother took the house in Church Row which the
Barbaulds had occupied, and continued to reside there till 1830, when
Mrs. Aikin died. Upon the loss of her mother, Miss Aikin removed to No.
18, on the opposite side of the way, where she remained till 1844, when
she came to London.
Nearly twenty years later, when verging towards the end of her life, she
returned to Hampstead, and died at the house of her relative by marriage,
P. H. Le Breton, Esq., John Street, January 24, 1864, while these notes
of Hampstead and its neighbourhood were being collected.
At No. 25, not far from the house Miss Aikin had last occupied in Church
Row, and which did in my recollection—perhaps does so still—possess
a lovely view from the back-windows, was the residence of two
well-descended ladies, the Misses Gillies; the one almost as well known
as a writer of charming stories for young people as her sister, Miss
Margaret Gillies, was as an artist. Her pictures were in the fifties,
and long after, familiar to the frequenters of the summer and winter
exhibitions of the Old Society of Painters in Water-Colours, of which
she had long been a member. In this house I am reminded that the last
twenty-eight years of her long life had been passed. I remember her
being there in 1859-60, and she may have lived there even at an earlier
date. She died July 20, 1887, verging on eighty-four years of age.
Previous to her tenancy Miss Meteyard had lived in this house on her
first going to Hampstead. It was then a sort of private boarding-house
especially affected by literary people, and indirectly brought her
acquainted with two or three lady writers of a past period, of whose
style, personal and literary, she had some very amusing recollections.
Subsequent to Miss Gillies’ death, I learn from Baines’ ‘Records of
Hampstead’ that this house was tenanted for some time by the novelist,
Wilkie Collins, son of the painter. The late well-known Mr. Ballantyne,
the magistrate, also resided in Church Row; and for a considerable
period it was the place of residence of Dr. Garth Wilkinson[65] and his
wife. He was the author of a curious and eloquently-written book, which
attracted some attention at the time of its appearance. Here also, at a
far-off period, and only as a lodger, I believe, Park, the historian of
Hampstead, is said to have lived.
In quite recent times Mr. Le Breton, who had married a grand-niece of
Mrs. Barbauld’s, and to whom the inhabitants of Hampstead are indebted
for the preservation of the Judges’ Walk, tenanted a house in Church Row,
where he died.
In 1895 Miss Harraden, the writer of that well-read story, ‘Ships that
Pass in the Night,’ had her summer residence in Church Row.
It will be pleasant for future chronologists of Hampstead to know
that, amongst the many men of genius who have made it their home, Mr.
Austin Dobson, best known by his charming _Vers de Société_, resided
here. Beyond occasional verse, he is too little heard of. It is to be
regretted, for his lyrics contain some real poetical gems.
In my time this central, yet retired, part of Hampstead, which is close
to the busiest streets, and yet entirely secluded from them, continued to
be a favourite locality with artists and other professional men. There
were symptoms of social decadence towards the end of the fifties in a
‘Home for Servants,’ to which No. 28 was then converted; while two or
three other public institutions thrust themselves noticeably forward,
‘as ’tis their nature to.’ Its old traditions of privacy and dignified
quiet—there was no public traffic through Church Row; Miss Sullivan’s
toll-gate stopped the way—was to be sacrificed, and the character it had
maintained for so many years for staid gentility and retirement swept
away.
[Illustration: _Austin Dobson._]
No. 9, next door to Mrs. Barbauld’s old home, had become, before I left
the neighbourhood, a Reformatory School for Girls, established in 1861 by
Miss Christian Nicoll, under whose admirable superintendence it has done,
and is doing, good and useful work. The school is the only Government
one of the kind in Middlesex. The young inmates have all been convicted
of crime, and are undergoing various terms of detention; but advantage
is taken of this period to bring them under the influence of religious
teaching free from sectarianism, to instruct them in reading, writing,
and arithmetic, and to train them for domestic service. Account has to
be rendered to the Home Secretary of the conduct and progress of the
girls for four years after they leave, and the result is that from 70 to
80 per cent. are found to do well.
From Church Row you walk straight into the gateway of the
prettily-situated parish church of St. John, and in those times the
well-kept graveyard.
Until 1745 the ancient chapel, originally dedicated to the Virgin,
and appropriated in 1461[66] to the Abbot and Convent of Westminster,
continued to be the only church at Hampstead. It had been patched up
and added to and rendered picturesque by reason of age, irregularity of
outline, and ruin, and was in so dangerous a condition, to quote the
preamble of the petition to rebuild and enlarge, ‘that the inhabitants
could not attend Divine worship without apparent hazard to their
lives.’ Moreover, it is further stated ‘that Hampstead being a place of
great resort, especially in summer-time, the said church, were it in a
repairable condition, would not be sufficient to accommodate one-half of
the parishioners and others who are desirous of coming to Divine service
there.’
The old church was taken down in the spring of 1745, and the present
structure consecrated by Dr. Gilbert, Bishop of Llandaff, October,
1747.[67]
During the two years it took in building, the Episcopal Chapel in Well
Walk was rented at £50 per annum (which benefited the Wells Charity to
that amount), and it was used as the parish church, although it had not
been consecrated.
Meanwhile the monuments and mural tablets within the demolished Chapel
of St. Mary were necessarily displaced, and have not, Mr. Howitt tells
us, ‘found their way back to the depositors they marked, and the memory
of which they were intended to perpetuate.’
The design of the church was furnished by a resident architect, Mr.
Flitcroft,[68] ‘Burlington Harry,’ as he was familiarly called from
circumstances elsewhere referred to; and the building entrusted to a
resident builder, Mr. Saunderson, who was not, it appears, able to
follow the original design of the church (the spire of which was very
handsome) for want of funds. A note in the trust book, 1744, relating to
the building of the church, throws a strong light on Mr. Saunderson’s
dilemma, and the small importance of architectural beauty, or even
propriety, in the minds of the trustees of that period.
‘The tower, being placed at the eastern end of the church, would be a
considerable saving of expense.’ As a result of this saving, the church
appears the wrong side before, with the tower and belfry at the east end,
and the chancel at the west. You pass the altar on entering, and the font
is at the further end. There is an altar-piece, but no east window, and
the whole is further darkened by galleries north and south. Park says it
is a neat but ill-designed church, and we can only repeat what Park says.
An engraving of the old church (said to be from an oil painting by
Grisoni) in Park’s ‘History of Hampstead’ represents a picturesquely
irregular rustic building, with low walls, rather high-pitched roofs,
sharply-pointed gables, and a small open timber bell-tower. It has
dormers in the roof, a square mullioned window in one gable, a different
sized one in another, and other lights thrown in anywhere. A transverse
addition forms the whole into an irregular cruciform structure.
Trees crowd around it at the west end, as they do at the present day, and
in the graveyard are several recognisable monuments, notably that above
the burial-place of the Delamere family; of Daniel Bedingfield, Clerk
of the Parliament, 1637; of —— Popple, Esq., Secretary of the Board of
Trade, 1722. A flat stone (recut since its discovery), beside the second
pathway to the left on entering, bears the date of the Great Fire, 1666.
There is also that of John Harrison, the inventor of the chronometer, who
died March 24, 1776, after sixty years’ application to the improvement of
watches and clocks, and of whom Mrs. Montague, writing to her brother,
Mr. Robinson, from London, May 28, 1762, observes: ‘Mr. Harrison’s
watch’ (the fourth, Dr. Doran says), ‘and most perfect timekeeper for
ascertaining the longitude at sea’ (and for which he ultimately received
£2,400), ‘has succeeded beyond expectation. Navigation will be improved
by it, which all who have the spirit of travelling shall rejoice at.’[69]
The clean-swept paths, the flowery garden-graves, the close-mown turf,
the shrubs and bowering trees, and the varied, often elegant tombs
amongst them, give Hampstead churchyard an air of beautiful repose and
quiet.[70] Two magnificent yew-trees with straight, tall, channelled
trunks, centuries old, spread their wide horizontal branches over spaces
‘sacred to many sorrows.’ Beneath the first of them, to the east, is
the grave of Sir James Macintosh, ‘a man,’ says Mr. Howitt, ‘of grave,
practical, useful, and moderately reforming character and talents, rather
than of that broad and original stamp which marks the foremost leaders of
mankind.’
If we take the first path to the left hand on entering the graveyard,
we pass on the side nearest the wall the tombstone of Henry Cort,
ironmaster, who greatly improved the manufacture of British iron, and
according to Mr. William Fairbairn, in his ‘History of Iron and its
Manufacture,’ conferred on his country during the last three or four
generations equivalent to six hundred millions sterling, and has given
employment to six hundred thousand of the working population, but who
himself was suffered to die of disappointment and broken fortune in the
sixtieth year of his age. Passing on to the second cross on the right of
this path, we find the headstone which marks the simple grave of Lucy
Aikin, who lies at the feet of her friend and neighbour, Joanna Baillie,
whose railed-in altar-tomb has still a little footpath worn by pilgrims’
feet on the grass beside it.
‘Oh, who shall lightly say that fame
Is nothing but an empty name?
When but for those, our _gifted_ dead,
All ages past a blank would be,
Sunk in oblivion’s murky bed.’
It is only fitting that she, who sang thus in her ‘Metrical Legends of
Exalted Character,’ should in her village grave illustrate the sentiment
of these lines.
If we follow the east path to the end, and keep in the one under the
south-east wall, the second tomb is that of John Constable, R.A. He rests
beside his beloved partner, Maria Elizabeth Bicknell, and one or more of
their children. He died in London, March 31, 1837.
A little further on, under the same sheltering wall, lies a flat stone
inscribed, ‘Sacred to the Memory of Maria Honey, whose mortal remains
repose in the vault beneath. She died in the year of our Lord 1843, in
the 27th year of her age.’
Some of our readers remember the brilliant, graceful actress, and thus
can feel the pathetic force of the brief lines inscribed beneath:
‘Shall I remain forgotten in the dust,
When Fate, relenting, lets the flowers revive?’[71]
[Illustration: _Parish Church, Hampstead._]
Within the church lies Incledon, the exquisite sweetness of whose voice,
and wonderful power of expression, drew from the stately Sarah Siddons
the graceful compliment that in singing two lines he could produce as
much emotion as she could by the elaborate representation of the highest
passion. (This delighted him and did not hurt herself.)
A white marble tablet at the west end of the church marks the
resting-place of Dr. Askew, and at the east end of the south gallery we
find the handsome mural monument to the memory of Lady Erskine, whose
burial-place is in a vault at the west end of the church. Other memorials
of persons of ‘mark and likelihood’ appear in the church and churchyard,
but we have only pointed the way to a few of them.
Since the foregoing pages were written, a very interesting addition,
which we owe to America, has been made to the local memorials in St.
John’s Church, in the delicately sculptured but idealized bust of Keats,
which we almost touch on entering. It presents itself in profile,
bracketed in the vicinity of the Communion-table—a graceful offering
to the genius of the poet, and recognition of the undying charm of his
poetry, which is as deeply felt in the land of Longfellow as at home.
We are certainly not an enthusiastic people, and seldom memorize our
literary men or women—never in any public way till a century or so of
years have given proof of the abidingness of their deserts. The time has
therefore not yet arrived for a public acknowledgment of our national
appreciation of the writer of ‘Endymion’ and ‘Hyperion’; but it will
come, and I should not wonder if this charming reminder on the part of
our Transatlantic kinsfolk should lead the sooner to the honour of a
niche for him in Poets’ Corner.
In wandering through this, the only graveyard in Hampstead, one notices
the absence of those doggerel lines and absurd inscriptions once so
frequently seen in country churchyards, and which were wont to introduce
a sense of the ridiculous into these solemn places. There is still
remaining an inscription on a tombstone in the churchyard that for
complacent egotism is ludicrously noticeable:
Here lie the Ashes of
MR. JOHN HINDLEY,
Of Stanhope Street, Mayfair, London;
Originally of King Street, Liverpool; who, under peculiar disadvantages,
Which to common minds would have been
A bar to any exertion,
Raised himself from all obscured situations
Of Birth and Fortune by his own Industry and frugality
To the enjoyment of a moderate competency.
He attained a peculiar excellence in penmanship and drawing
Without the Instruction of a Master,
And to eminence in Arithmetic, the useful and higher
Branches of the Mathematics,
By going to School only a year and eight months.
He died a Bachelor
On the 24th day of October, 1807,
In the 55th year of his age,
And without forgetting Relations, Friends, or acquaintances,
He bequeathed one-fifth of his Property
To Public Charities.
Reader, the world is open to thee.
Go thou and do likewise![72]
The author of ‘A Walking Tour in Normandy’ states that in the church
of Avranches there is a marble slab erected by the Marquis de Belbœuf
in 1844 to the memory of his predecessor of that name, the late Bishop
of Avranches, who, it is stated, died, and was buried at Hampstead, in
England. Is anything known of the Bishop or his grave?
On March 30, 1797, the remains of Lord Southampton were conveyed in great
funeral pomp from his late residence in Stanhope Street for interment in
the family vault at Hampstead.