ST. JOHN'S WOOD AND WIMBLEDON
Mary Lamb passed the later years of her life in a sort of nursing home at
St. John's Wood, and in her happier intervals kept up a pleasant
acquaintance with some of the notable circle of friends who had gathered
about her and her brother aforetime; among others, with the Hoods, who
were then living in the same locality. Crabb Robinson mentions in his
Diary how he made a call on Mary Lamb, and finding her well over one of
her periodical attacks, "quite in possession of her faculties and
recollecting nearly everything," he accompanied her on a visit to the
Hoods, who were lodging at 17 Elm Tree Road.
Perhaps one of the most graphic pictures we have of Hood's home life, and
incidentally of Hood himself and his wife and of Charles and Mary Lamb, is
contained in the account that has been left by Miss Mary Balmanno of an
evening she spent with the Hoods when they were making their home in
Robert Street, Adelphi: "Bound in the closest ties of friendship with the
Hoods, with whom we also were in the habit of continually associating, we
had the pleasure of meeting Charles Lamb at their house one evening,
together with his sister, and several other friends.... In outward
appearance Hood conveyed the idea of a clergyman. His figure slight, and
invariably dressed in black; his face pallid; the complexion delicate,
and features regular: his countenance bespeaking sympathy by its sweet
expression of melancholy and suffering.
"Lamb was of a different mould and aspect. Of middle height, with brown
and rather ruddy complexion, grey eyes expressive of sense and shrewdness,
but neither large nor brilliant; his head and features well shaped, and
the general expression of his countenance quiet, kind, and observant,
undergoing rapid changes in conversation, as did his manner, variable as
an April day, particularly to his sister, whose saint-like good humour and
patience were as remarkable as his strange and whimsical modes of trying
them. But the brother and sister perfectly understood each other, and
'Charles,' as she always called him, would not have been the Charles of
her loving heart without the pranks and oddities which he was continually
playing off upon her, and which were only outnumbered by the instances of
affection and evidences of ever-watchful solicitude with which he
surrounded her.
"Miss Lamb, although many years older than her brother, by no means looked
so, but presented the pleasant appearance of a mild, rather stout and
comely lady of middle age. Dressed with Quaker-like simplicity in
dove-coloured silk, with a transparent kerchief of snow-white muslin
folded across her bosom, she at once prepossessed the beholder in her
favour by an aspect of serenity and peace. Her manners were very quiet and
gentle, and her voice low. She smiled frequently, and seldom laughed,
partaking of the courtesies and hospitalities of her merry host and
hostess with all the cheerfulness and grace of a most mild and kindly
nature. Her behaviour to her brother was like that of an admiring
disciple; her eyes seldom absent from his face. And when apparently
engrossed in conversation with others, she would, by supplying some word
for which he was at a loss, even when talking in a distant part of the
room, show how closely her mind waited upon his. Mr. Lamb was in high
spirits, sauntering about the room with his hands crossed behind his back,
conversing by fits and starts with those most familiarly known to him...."
She goes on to describe how Miss Kelly, the actress, amused them by
impersonating a character she was taking in a new play, and "Mrs. Hood's
eyes sparkled with joy, as she saw the effect it had produced upon her
husband, whose pale face, like an illuminated comic mask, shone with fun
and good humour. Never was a happier couple than the Hoods; 'mutual
reliance and fond faith' seemed to be their motto. Mrs. Hood was a most
amiable woman--of excellent manners, and full of sincerity and goodness.
She perfectly adored her husband, tending him like a child, whilst he,
with unbounded affection, seemed to delight to yield himself to her
guidance. Nevertheless, true to his humorous nature, he loved to tease her
with jokes and whimsical accusations, which were only responded to by,
'Hood, Hood, how can you run on so?'
"The evening was concluded by a supper, one of those elegant social
repasts which Flemish artists delight to paint.... Mr. Lamb oddly walked
round the table, looking closely at any dish that struck his fancy before
he would decide where to sit, telling Mrs. Hood that he should by that
means know how to select some dish that was difficult to carve and take
the trouble off her hands; accordingly, having jested in this manner, he
placed himself with great deliberation before a lobster salad, observing
_that_ was the thing.
"Mr. Hood, with inexpressible gravity in the upper part of his face and
his mouth twitching with smiles, sang his own comic song of 'If you go to
France be sure you learn the lingo'; his pensive manner and feeble voice
making it doubly ludicrous. Mr. Lamb, on being pressed to sing, excused
himself in his own peculiar manner, but offered to pronounce a Latin
eulogium instead. This was accepted, and he accordingly stammered forth a
long stream of Latin words; among which, as the name of Mrs. Hood
frequently occurred, we ladies thought it in praise of her. The delivery
of this speech occupied about five minutes. On inquiring of a gentleman
who sat next me whether Mr. Lamb was praising Mrs. Hood, he informed me
that was by no means the case, the eulogium being on the lobster salad!
Thus, in the gayest of moods, progressed and concluded a truly merry
little social supper, worthy in all respects of the author of _Whims and
Oddities_."
But all this, when the Hoods came to St. John's Wood, lay thirteen years
behind them, and Lamb had been eight years dead. Quitting the Adelphi in
1829, Hood went to Winchmore Hill, then to Wanstead; then, after some five
years of residence in Germany and Belgium, he returned to England, and
made his home for a short time at Camberwell, and thence in 1842 removed
to St. John's Wood--at first to rooms at 17 Elm Tree Road, and in 1844 to
a house of his own, "Devonshire Lodge," in the Finchley Road--a house
that the guide-books all tell us was demolished, but since I started to
write this chapter the London County Council has identified as "Devonshire
Lodge" the house that still stands in Finchley Road, immediately adjoining
the Marlborough Road station of the Metropolitan Railway; and here it was
that Hood died on the 3rd of May 1845.
[Illustration: TOM HOOD'S HOUSE. ST JOHN'S WOOD.]
The room in which he worked at 17 Elm Tree Road gave him a view of Lord's
Cricket Ground, and he complained that this was a drawback, because "when
he was at work he could often see others at play." He caricatured the
landlady of the house, who had "a large and personal love of flowers," and
made her the heroine of his _Mrs. Gardiner, A Horticultural Romance_. From
Elm Tree Road he went to attend the dinner at Greenwich that was given to
Dickens on his second return from America; and describing this dissipation
in a letter to a friend he says, "You will be pleased to hear that, in
spite of my warnings and forebodings, I got better and betterer, till by
dining, as the physicians did, on turtle soup, white-bait, and champagne,
I seemed quite well." He was to have been chairman at the dinner, but
excused himself on the score of ill-health, and Captain Marryat took his
place. The diners included, in addition to Dickens himself, Moncton
Milnes, Forster, Clarkson Stanfield, Ainsworth, Landseer (another St.
John's Wood resident), Cruikshank, Cattermole, "Ingoldsby" Barham, and
Barry Cornwall. Being called upon for a speech, Hood said he supposed they
drank his health because he was a notorious invalid, but assured the
company that the trembling of his hand was neither from palsy nor ague,
but that their wishes had already so improved his circulation and filled
him with genial warmth that his hand had a natural inclination to shake
itself with every one present. Whereupon everybody within reach, and some
who were not, insisted upon shaking hands with him. "_Very_ gratifying,
wasn't it?" he finishes his letter. "Though I cannot go quite so far as
Jane, who wants me to have that hand chopped off, bottled, and preserved
in spirits. She was sitting up for me, very anxiously, as usual when I go
out, because I am so domestic and steady, and was down at the door before
I could ring at the gate, to which Boz kindly sent me in his own carriage.
Poor girl! what _would_ she do if she had a wild husband instead of a tame
one."
Dickens, at that date, lived at 1 Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone Road;
they had probably driven up together from Greenwich, and the carriage had
come the mile or so further on with Hood after leaving Dickens at his own
door. Dickens was one of the many visitors who have helped to make Hood's
St. John's Wood residence memorable; there is a record of his being there,
with his wife and sister and Daniel Maclise, in December 1842. At Elm Tree
Road, for all his broken health, Hood worked hard at editing and writing
for the _New Monthly Magazine_, and, after resigning from that, for
_Hood's Monthly Magazine_. One letter of his, dated from 17 Elm Tree Road,
on the 18th July 1843, is headed "From my bed"; for he was frequently
bedridden for days and weeks at a stretch, but sat propped up with
pillows, writing and sketching with unabated industry. He was contributing
also in these days to _Punch_, and to Douglas Jerrold's _Illuminated
Magazine_. In November 1843 he wrote here, for _Punch_, his grim _Drop of
Gin_:
"Gin! Gin! a drop of Gin!
What magnified monsters circle therein!
Ragged, and stained with filth and mud,
Some plague-spotted, and some with blood!
Shapes of misery, shame, and sin!
Figures that make us loathe and tremble,
Creatures scarce human, that more resemble
Broods of diabolical kin,
Ghost and vampyre, demon and Jin!..."
But a far greater poem than this, _The Song of the Shirt_, was also
written at Elm Tree Road. "Now mind, Hood, mark my words," said Mrs. Hood,
when he was putting up the manuscript for the post, "this will tell
wonderfully. It is one of the best things you ever did." And the results
justified her. The verses appeared in the Christmas Number of _Punch_ for
1843, and not only trebled the circulation of that paper, but within a
very short time had at least doubled Hood's reputation, though _Eugene
Aram_, _The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies_, and _Lycus the Centaur_, had
long preceded it. Probably no poem ever stirred the national conscience
more deeply or created a profounder sensation. Shortly after its
appearance Cowden Clarke met Hood, and has left a vivid description of his
personal appearance in those last months of his life. His worn, pallid
look, he says, "strangely belied the effect of jocularity and high spirits
conveyed by his writings. He punned incessantly, but languidly, almost as
if unable to think in any other way than in play upon words. His smile was
attractively sweet; it bespoke the affectionate-natured man which his
serious verses--those especially addressed to his wife or his
children--show him to be, and it also revealed the depth of pathos in his
soul that inspired his _Bridge of Sighs_, _Song of the Shirt_, and _Eugene
Aram_."
[Illustration: THOMAS HOOD]
There are many interesting points of resemblance between Hood and Lamb.
Both were inveterate punsters; each had known poverty, and had come
through hard experiences that had left their marks upon them, yet had
never soured them or warped their sympathies. You may use the same
epithets for both: they were homely, kindly, gentle, given to freakish
moods and whimsical jesting; the one was as unselfishly devoted to his
sister as the other was to his wife and children; and in descriptions of
Hood, as of Lamb, stress is laid on the peculiar wistfulness and sweetness
of his smile. But after the East India Company had handsomely pensioned
him off, Lamb had no further financial anxieties; whilst Hood had to
suppress his finer gifts, and to the end of his days turn his hand to all
manner of inferior but more popular work, that would enable him to keep
the family pot boiling. And he was all the while fighting against disease
as well as poverty. He could not afford to go into exile, like Stevenson,
and lengthen his days and foster his wasting strength in a healthfuller
climate. He was never rich enough to have any choice but to die in the
place where he had to earn his living, and no man ever worked more
manfully, or died at his post bravelier or with a more cheery philosophy.
Read the humorous preface he wrote for the volume of _Hood's Own_, whilst
he lay ill abed there in his St. John's Wood house: it is the sort of
humour that makes your heart ache, for you cannot forget that he was
racked with pain and slowly dying whilst he wrote it. He jests about the
aristocratic, ghastly slenderness of his fingers; his body, he says, may
cry craven, but luckily his mind has no mind to give in. "'Things may take
a turn,' as the pig said on the spit.... As to health? it's the weather of
the body--it rains, it hails, it blows, it snows at present, but it may
clear up by-and-by"; and in conclusion he mentions that the doctor tells
him, "anatomically my heart is lower hung than usual, but what of that?
_The more need to keep it up!_" Raised up in bed, with an improvised desk
across his knees, he was hard at work, writing prose and verse and
knocking off grotesque little drawings, and remained, as he said, "a
lively Hood to get a livelihood," almost to his last hour. When, towards
the end, his wife was trying to relieve his sufferings by putting a
poultice on his emaciated body, he laughed up at her quizzically, and
asked if she didn't think "it seemed a deal of mustard for such a little
meat." He had moved into Devonshire Lodge, and was within sixteen months
of his death when he wrote _The Haunted House_, and _The Bridge of Sighs_.
"I fear that so far as I myself am concerned," he writes to Thackeray in
August 1844, "King Death will claim me ere many months elapse. However,
there's a good time coming, if not in this world, most assuredly in the
next." When he was invited next month to attend a soirée at the Manchester
Athenæum, he had to decline, and added, "For me all long journeys are over
save one"; but a couple of months later he had written the _Lay of the
Labourer_, for his magazine, and writing to Lord Lytton remarked that
though the doctor had ordered him not to work he was compelled to do so,
and "so it will be to the end. I must die in harness, like a hero--or a
horse."
[Illustration: CHARLES DIBDIN. 34 ARLINGTON ROAD.]
His dying hours were made easy by the pension of a hundred pounds that Sir
Robert Peel kindly and tactfully settled on Mrs. Hood, and one of the last
things he wrote on his lingering deathbed was a valediction that
breathed all of resignation and hope:
"Farewell, Life! My senses swim
And the world is growing dim;
Thronging shadows cloud the light,
Like the advent of the night,--
Colder, colder, colder still
Upwards steals a vapour chill--
Strong the earthy odour grows--
I smell the Mould above the Rose!
Welcome, Life! The Spirit strives!
Strength returns, and hope revives;
Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn
Fly like shadows at the morn,--
O'er the earth there comes a bloom--
Sunny light for sullen gloom,
Warm perfume for vapour cold--
I smell the Rose above the Mould!"
Herbert Spencer lived in St. John's Wood for many years, at 7 Marlborough
Gardens, 13 Loudon Road, and 64 Avenue Road successively. Within an easy
walk of Avenue Road, at 34 Arlington Road, Camden Town, Charles Dibdin,
whose memory survives in _Tom Bowling_, passed the last years of his life.
And, back in St. John's Wood, at the Priory, 21 North Bank, in one of the
numerous houses that were swept away when the Great Central Railway came
to Marylebone, George Eliot lived from 1864 until 1880, when she removed
to Chelsea. Before that, from 1860 till 1863, lived in a house in
Blandford Square, which has also been demolished; but for nearly two years
before going there she resided at Holly Lodge, which still survives, in
the Wimbledon Park Road.
There is an entry in her Diary dated 6th February 1859: "Yesterday we went
to take possession of Holly Lodge, which is to be our dwelling, we expect,
for years to come. It was a deliciously fresh, bright day. I will accept
the omen. A letter came from Blackwood telling me the result of the
subscription to _Adam Bede_, which was published on the 1st: 730 copies,
Mudie having taken 500 on the publisher's terms--10 per cent. off the sale
price. At first he had stood out for a larger reduction, and would only
take 50, but at last he came round. In this letter Blackwood tells me the
first _ab extra_ opinion of the book, which happened to be precisely what
I most desired. A cabinetmaker (brother to Blackwood's managing clerk) had
read the sheets, and declared the writer must have been brought up to the
business, or at least had listened to the workmen in their workshop." She
wrote that month to Miss Sara Hennell, "We are tolerably settled now,
except that we have only a temporary servant; and I shall not be quite at
ease until I have a trustworthy woman who will manage without incessant
dogging. Our home is very comfortable, with far more vulgar indulgences in
it than I ever expected to have again; but you must not imagine it a snug
place, just peeping above the holly bushes. Imagine it rather as a tall
cake, with a low garnish of holly and laurel. As it is, we are very well
off, with glorious breezy walks, and wide horizons, well-ventilated rooms,
and abundant water. If I allowed myself to have any longings beyond what
is given, they would be for a nook quite in the country, far away from
palaces--Crystal or otherwise--with an orchard behind me full of old
trees, and rough grass and hedgerow paths among the endless fields
where you meet nobody. We talk of such things sometimes, along with old
age and dim faculties, and a small independence to save us from writing
drivel for dishonest money."
[Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT. WIMBLEDON PARK.]
The "we" in these entries means, of course, herself and George Henry
Lewes; they formed an irregular union in 1854, and lived as husband and
wife until his death in 1878. In George Eliot's Journal and letters are a
good many other references to her life at Holly Lodge, of which the most
interesting are perhaps the following:
_April 29th, 1859_ (from the Journal): "Finished a story, _The Lifted
Veil_, which I began one morning at Richmond as a resource when my head
was too stupid for more important work. Resumed my new novel" (this was
_The Mill on the Floss_), "of which I am going to rewrite the two first
chapters. I shall call it provisionally _The Tullivers_, or perhaps _St.
Ogg's on the Floss_."
_May 6th_ (from a letter to Major Blackwood): "Yes I _am_ assured now that
_Adam Bede_ was worth writing--worth living through long years to write.
But now it seems impossible to me that I shall ever write anything so good
and true again. I have arrived at faith in the past but not faith in the
future."
_May 19th_ (from Journal): "A letter from Blackwood, in which he proposes
to give me another £400 at the end of the year, making in all £1200, as an
acknowledgment of _Adam Bede's_ success."
_June 8th_ (from a letter to Mrs. Congreve): "I want to get rid of this
house--cut cable and drift about. I dislike Wandsworth, and should think
with unmitigated regret of our coming here if it were not for you."
_July 21st_ (from the Journal, on returning after a holiday in
Switzerland): "Found a charming letter from Dickens, and pleasant letters
from Blackwood--nothing to annoy us."
_November 10th_ (from the Journal): "Dickens dined with us to-day for the
first time."
_December 15th_ (from the Journal): "Blackwood proposes to give me for
_The Mill on the Floss_, £2000 for 4000 copies of an edition at 31s. 6d.,
and afterwards the same rate for any more copies printed at the same
price; £150 for 1000 at 12s.; and £60 for 1000 at 6s. I have accepted."
_January 3rd, 1860_ (from a letter to John Blackwood): "We are demurring
about the title. Mr. Lewes is beginning to prefer _The House of Tulliver,
or Life on the Floss_, to our old notion of _Sister Maggie_. _The
Tullivers, or Life on the Floss_ has the advantage of slipping easily off
the lazy English tongue, but it is after too common a fashion (_The
Newcomes_, _The Bertrams_, &c., &c.). Then there is _The Tulliver Family,
or Life on the Floss_. Pray meditate and give us your opinion."
_January 16th, 1860_ (from the Journal): "Finished my second volume this
morning, and am going to send off the MS. of the first volume to-morrow.
We have decided that the title shall be _The Mill on the Floss_."
_February 23rd_ (from a letter to John Blackwood): "Sir Edward Lytton
called on us yesterday. The conversation lapsed chiefly into monologue,
from the difficulty I found in making him hear, but under all
disadvantages I had an agreeable impression of his kindness and
sincerity. He thinks the two defects of _Adam Bede_ are the dialect and
Adam's marriage with Dinah, but of course I would have my teeth drawn
rather than give up either."
[Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT'S HOUSE. CHELSEA.]
_July 1st_ (from a letter to Madame Bodichon, on returning to Holly Lodge
after a two months' holiday in Italy): "We are preparing to renounce the
delights of roving, and to settle down quietly, as old folks should do....
We have let our present house."
One interesting memorial of the life at Holly Lodge is the MS. of _The
Mill on the Floss_, on which is inscribed in George Eliot's handwriting:
"To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third
book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge,
South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21st March 1860."
The publication of _The Mill on the Floss_, and, in the three succeeding
years, of _Silas Marner_ and _Romola_, carried George Eliot to the height
of her fame, and by the time she was living in North Bank, St. John's
Wood, she had her little circle of adoring worshippers, who, like George
Henry Lewes, took her very seriously indeed. That sort of hero-worship was
customary in those days, unless the worshipped one had too strong a sense
of humour to put up with it. There is a passage in the Autobiography of
Mr. Alfred Austin giving a brief account of a visit he paid to George
Eliot. "We took the first opportunity," he says, "of going to call on her
at her request in St. John's Wood. But there I found pervading her house
an attitude of adoration, not to say an atmosphere almost of awe,
thoroughly alien to my idea that persons of genius, save in their works,
should resemble other people as much as possible, and not allow any
special fuss to be made about them. I do not say the fault lay with her."
But you find the same circumstance spoken to elsewhere, and the general
notion you gather is that George Eliot rather enjoyed this being
pedestalled, and accepted the incense of her reverent little circle with a
good deal of complacency.
In 1878 Lewes died, and in March 1880 George Eliot was married to John
Cross. They left St. John's Wood on the 3rd of the following December and
went to 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where George Eliot died on the 22nd of the
same month.