DULWICH TO WIMBLEDON
Growing London.--Cigars by Dulwich Valley.--Edward Allen, Actor,
Bear-baiter, Dog-fancier and Founder of a College.--Godd's
Guift.--Dulwich buttercups.--Dr. Johnson.--A Prayer in a
Library.--Merton.--Wimbledon Camp.--A Miser's grave.--An opportunity
for a duel.--Groans for George Ranger.--Memories of the Windmill.
Nothing is more capricious than a vast town pushing out into the
country. No law binds it; no power can resist it; it will not be
tempted, or denied; only one future can certainly be prophesied for it,
that where it comes it will remain. Looking at London and its
surroundings on a new map and an old, it is an arresting thing to
trace--almost to watch--the growth of the inexorable black ink on what a
decade or two before was inviolate white. There is nothing orderly about
it, nothing mathematical. London does not grow as the circles spread
from a splash in a pond, nor regularly and certainly as geologists say
stones grow in the soil--a fascinating and rather dreadful secret of
growth. London grows suddenly by fits and starts. Once, perhaps, the
town crept out quietly, a field at a time, a new road in a twelvemonth.
Now it catches great parks and manors. But which way it will go out to
catch them you cannot guess. It may walk threateningly, and it may leave
alone, as it has left the deepest of hayfields alone in Kent much nearer
London than in Surrey. One rule, perhaps, it keeps relentlessly; it will
never leave country between London old and London new. The Londons join
at once.
Ruskin, in _Praeterita_, shows you London striding by Herne Hill to
Croydon. Herne Hill should be a hill with a heronry on it, but the name
is new; it was King's Hill when John Speed made his map in the days of
James I. But Herne Hill was in the country when Ruskin knew it. Norwood
was a hill; Dulwich was a valley. "Central in each amphitheatre, the
crowning glory of Herne Hill was accordingly, that, after walking along
its ridge southward from London through a mile of chestnut, lilac, and
apple trees, hanging over the wooden palings on each side--suddenly the
trees stopped on the left, and out one came on the top of the field
sloping down to the south into Dulwich valley--open field animate with
cow and buttercup, and below, the beautiful meadows and high avenues of
Dulwich; and beyond, all that crescent of the Norwood hills; a footpath,
entered by a turnstile, going down to the left, always so warm that
invalids could be sheltered there in March, when to walk elsewhere would
have been death to them; and so quiet, that whenever I had anything
difficult to compose or think of, I used to do it rather there than in
our own garden. The great field was separated from the path and road
only by light wooden open palings, four feet high, needful to keep the
cows in. Since I last composed, or meditated there, various improvements
have taken place; first the neighbourhood wanted a new church, and built
a meagre Gothic one with a useless spire, for the fashion of the thing,
at the side of the field; then they built a parsonage behind it, the two
stopping half the view in that direction. Then the Crystal Palace came,
for ever spoiling the view through all its compass, and bringing every
show-day from London a flood of pedestrians down the footpath who left
it filthy with cigar ashes for the rest of the week: then the railroads
came, and expatiating roughs by every excursion train, who knocked the
palings about, roared at the cows, and tore down what branches of
blossom they could reach over the palings on the enclosed side. Then the
residents on the enclosed side built a brick wall to defend themselves.
Then the path got to be insufferably hot as well as dirty; and was
gradually abandoned to the roughs, with a policeman on watch at the
bottom. Finally, this year, a six foot high close paling has been put
down the other side of it, and the processional excursionist has the
liberty of obtaining what notion of the country air and prospect he may,
between the wall and that, with one bad cigar before him, another behind
him, and another in his mouth."
Dulwich valley, and cows and buttercups--it has still an uneasy echo of
the town. Somewhere, surely, there always broods over Dulwich the spirit
of the founder of its college. He is the Londoner of Londoners, and the
oddest combination of characters that ever left a name as pious
benefactor of a school. Edward Allen, or Alleyn as his college spells
him, was to begin with an Elizabethan actor. He was one of a company of
strolling players before he was twenty; he was twenty-two when he had
somehow made himself a "gentleman," to be so described on a deed of
gift; and when he was twenty-six, he was such an actor that Ben Jonson
compared him to Roscius and Cicero, and Thomas Nash wrote that "Not
Roscius or Aesope, those tragedians admired before Christ was borne,
could ever performe more in action than famous Ned Allen." Perhaps he
made his money as an actor-manager; perhaps he married money, for his
wife was the daughter of a pawnbroker (who was also a theatre-proprietor
and one of the grooms of the Queen's chamber); perhaps he began lending
money early in life himself. He and his father-in-law, when James
succeeded Elizabeth, were made chief masters of "his Majesty's games of
Beares, Bulls and doggs"; they had a menagerie in the Paris Gardens at
Southwark where they kept wolves and lions; they worried bulls and had
dog-fights, and showed "pleasant sport with the horse and ape and
whipping of the blind beare." Money rolled in, with the apes and the
bears and the loans, and in October, 1605, Allen, by this time full
esquire, bought the manor and lands of Dulwich for L4,900. Eight years
later he left Southwark for Dulwich, and set about founding his college.
Aubrey has a quaint legend of the foundation. How should an actor found
a college? The devil was in it somewhere. Tradition told "that Mr.
_Alleyne_, being a Tragedian, and one of the Original Actors in many of
the celebrated _Shakespear's_ Plays, in one of which he play'd a Daemon,
with six others, and was in the midst of the Play surpriz'd by an
_Apparition_ of the _Devil_, which so worked on his Fancy, that he made
a Vow which he perform'd at this Place." That was the beginning of
Dulwich College, according to one story; according to another, it was
only because Allen had begun so earnestly, and tied himself up by so
many legal contracts that he did not repent of his vow and take back all
he had given. That was when, a widower of fifty-seven, he wanted to
marry a girl of twenty. She was John Donne's daughter Constance, and
perhaps Donne felt bound to ask for liberal settlements. However, the
settlements were arranged somehow, and the college was founded. The
"colledge of God's gift" was his name for it, and as its founder he
described himself as "chief master, ruler and overseer of all and
singular over games of beares, bulls, mastive doggs and mastive
bitches." His blood-relations were to be Master and Warden, if possible,
and so, for many years, they were.
One of the statutes explains the name "God's gift." There were to be
twelve poor scholars, chosen partly by merit and partly by chance. When
a place became vacant three or four children were to be elected by the
parish vestries, and of these two were to be chosen by the Master and
Warden, and then the two were to draw lots:--
"The manner of drawinge of the said lot shall be thus: Two equal
small rowleses of paper to be indifferently made and rolled up, in
one of which rolls the wordes 'Godd's Guift' are to be written, and
the other rowle is to be left blank and so put into a boxe; which
boxe shalbe thrice shaken up and downe, and the elder person of
those two that are elected to drawe the first lot, and the younger
person the second; and whiche of them draweth the lott wherein the
wordes 'God's Guift' are written shalbe forthwith admitted."
Another gift followed Allen's. When Sir Francis Bourgeois died early in
the last century he left his fine collection of pictures to the school.
The gallery is open to the public; but a description, in the space I
have here, could be no more than a list of names.
Dulwich still has some of its fields and buttercups; the playing fields
are a pleasant oasis which is the last vision of sunlight and grass for
the traveller on the Chatham and Dover railway before plunging into the
murk of the Penge tunnel. Of its neighbours to the west, Streatham
clusters about a tangle of railways; Streatham, which was deep country
for Dr. Johnson, knocked down, in 1863, the house and cut up the park
that Dr. Johnson knew when they belonged to the Thrales. He would not
recognise the church--the church to which he bade farewell with a
kiss--it has been rebuilt. The library, which, if it were standing
to-day with the books that Johnson read, would be the most sought for
room in Surrey, went, of course, with the house. Eighty years before it
fell Johnson had parted from it with a prayer. "Help me," he prayed,
"that I may, with humble and sincere thankfulness, remember the comforts
and conveniences which I have enjoyed at this place; and that I may
resign them with holy submission, equally trusting in Thy protection
when Thou givest, and when Thou takest away." That was the library which
was destroyed only forty-five years ago. But Streatham, when it knocked
down the Thrales' house, had very good authority for parting with all it
had of Dr. Johnson. Mrs. Thrale would not have minded. She sold all the
letters Dr. Johnson wrote her for a matter of five hundred pounds.
Between Streatham and Wimbledon London strides out in patches. It has
not yet taken in Mitcham, which has a fine green with memories of great
Surrey cricket, and which grows all manner of scented flowers, lavender
and mint and rosemary and everything old-fashioned for herbalists and
perfumers and ladies' sachets and linen-chests. But Merton, north-west
towards Wimbledon, has been caught fast. Merton church, in which Nelson
used to worship, and which has his hatchment on the wall, above fine
cross beams of oak, stands among brand-new roofs and roads. Opposite the
church is the forlornest thing; a house which once was Sheridan's, and
which is now the warehouse of a shop, and hangs in its hall and rooms
printed calico. The windows are broken and cobwebby, the garden is a
ruin, but the calico, which you may buy at a shop in the town, is fresh
and very brightly printed. Francis Nixon, the founder of Merton's
calico-printing, which is quite an industry, lies in the churchyard.
And so, by a ring from east to west, where London joins the Surrey
countryside, we come to Wimbledon; Wimbledon old and new, as old as a
camp which may have been Saxon, as young as yesterday's new villa. The
camp, it is true, exists no longer. It has had more learned essays
written over it than any in Surrey; it has been claimed as belonging to
Cassivelaunus, it has been argued to be a Roman camp, and it has been
urged that it marks the site of a battle between Saxon and Saxon for the
possession of Surrey. It was a war camp, pretty certainly, from its
shape, which was almost exactly circular. But you can see the shape no
longer. Wimbledon was unfortunate enough to see its famous camp fall
into the hands of a Mr. Sawbridge Erle Drax, and he, in 1875, dared to
level its dykes with the ground, to cut down its mound, and fill in its
ditch. Of acts of wanton and insolent destruction, this stands supreme
in the history of the county.
Wimbledon has held a great house, and has seen royal progresses which
cost the lord of the manor a fortune. Thomas Cromwell was one of the
lords of the manor, and after him came Catherine Parr: but the great
days were those of the Cecils. Lord Burghley, Elizabeth's treasurer,
lived at intervals at the Rectory House, and some of Elizabeth's summer
excursions came to Wimbledon; she stayed with her treasurer and with his
son. But the Cecil who belongs most to Wimbledon is not the treasurer
whose nod summed up the wisdom of a Parliament, nor any Lord of
Burghley; but a younger son who was a soldier and a sailor. He was
Admiral and Marshal-General of the forces sent by James I. and Charles
I. against the Spaniards; he was made Lord Wimbledon, and his memory on
the records of the army of his day is that his name of Cecil was punned
into General Sit-still when he was a soldier of almost foolhardy
personal daring, and that he re-introduced into the army the "old
English march." There was "one certaine measure," a royal warrant
informs us, which had been lost "through the negligence and carelessness
of drummers," although it had been "by the approbation of strangers
themselves, confessed and acknowledged the best of marches." This march,
at the instance of Lord Wimbledon, was beaten in the king's presence at
Greenwich in 1610 and ordered to be exactly and precisely observed by
all drummers in the kingdom of England and principality of Wales,
without any addition or alteration whatsoever. We do not hear it in
these days of battles without drums and colours; but we do not fight
much better, perhaps, without the drums.
The old Wimbledon church was demolished; the new church was built in
1786. It has many monuments, but the grave which fascinates is the tomb
neither of a great statesman nor a good man. It is apart in a far
corner; over it is laid a huge slab of black stone, perhaps half a foot
thick, and the stone tells you that under it lies the body of "John
Hopkins, Esquire, familiarly known as Vulture Hopkins." Misers have had
hard things said of them often enough; of Hopkins Pope wrote that "he
lived worthless, but died worth three hundred thousand pounds," and,
reflecting on the "Use of Riches," Pope made a couplet on his funeral:--
"When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend
The wretch who living saved a candle's end."
But those legends belong to paper and books. They are less easily
destroyed than an epithet engraved on a stone; but who of deliberation
would carve an insult, as this is carved, for a dead man?
[Illustration: _The Golf House and Windmill, Wimbledon Common._]
Wimbledon will never belong to the town so long as it keeps its common.
It is the wildest thing near London. It is almost as wild and lonely a
place to-day as when in Georgian and early Victorian days statesmen and
noblemen chose it as a fashionable and convenient ground for duelling.
The common has seen more than one historic duel. The Duke of York and
Colonel Lennox met there in 1789; the Duke received the Colonel's fire,
and the ball grazed his hair, but he did not fire in return. Pitt
fought a duel with a member of Parliament on Putney Heath north of the
common in 1798; each fired twice at twelve paces and hit nothing. Sir
Francis Burdett and Mr. John Paull fought in 1807, wounded each other
and went back together to London in the same carriage. Canning and
Castlereagh fought in 1809, and Grattan, two years after Queen Victoria
came to the throne, received Lord Londonderry's fire and himself fired
in the air. Another Grattan could meet another Irish peer to-day, and if
they chose their places well, nobody would hear a pistol at all. The
bracken and the heather slope into dells and valleys which would shelter
three duels in a morning; you could deliver a salvo and hardly scare a
nursery maid.
But Wimbledon's longest acquaintance with firearms was in the days
before the National Rifle Association moved to Bisley. Queen Victoria
fired the first shot on July 2nd, 1860, when she pulled a scarlet cord
and scored a bull's-eye with a Whitworth rifle; a red and white flag was
shown in an instant, you read, and "three points were scored to the
Queen of England." The last shot was fired in 1889. I went to that
meeting as a schoolboy, and am even now filled with an awe that belongs
to spacious days, remembering that we were told that on the last evening
the whole camp was to give three great groans for "George Ranger," the
Duke of Cambridge, whose duty it had been to declare the common unfitted
for the distant probings of misdirected Martini-Henry bullets. Those
concerted, resentful, thousand-throated groans seemed a tremendous
nightly business; there were camp-fires, one imagined, from which the
circular groan would ascend, a rumble which should expel a ministry,
unseat a prince. Not very much came of the groaning, I suppose;
certainly the Volunteers liked the Bisley ranges, next year, much
better. But the old windmill, which looked on in its time at thirty full
meetings, still surely misses the week when the dells and the long
stretches of heather rattled from the first gun to sunset with the
crackle of Martinis and match rifles. The windmill watches red-coated
golfers to-day, playing to some of the prettiest greens in the south of
England; but the days for the windmill were when the tents were white
about the heather, and when they sold Stewart's Verniers where to-day a
more leisured generation misses short putts.