revolution in the City. It destroyed the social side of the City by the
simple process of driving out all the people. When the citizens lived
over their offices and their shops they belonged to a highly sociable
and gregarious City, its society having no kind of connection with the
aristocratic side of the west, and its gregarious nature preserving due
respect and distinction to City rank and position. Every man had his
weekly club and his nightly tavern. Here, with his friends of the same
street or the same ward, he discussed the affairs of the day. He was a
politician of advanced and well-defined views; he confirmed, by many a
commonplace uttered with solemnity, his own and his friends’ prejudices;
the use of conversation, when men read nothing more than was provided by
an elementary press, was mainly the development and the maintenance of
healthy prejudice. This was all the amusement that the good man
desired—how great was the interval between two of John Gilpin’s pleasure
jaunts? “Twice ten tedious years!” Wonderful! To be sure, he had his
City company, and its dinners were events to be remembered. The City
madams had their card-parties; for the _élite_ there was the City
Assembly. For those who wanted pleasure there were the gardens—Vauxhall,
Ranelagh, Marylebone, Bagnigge Wells, any number of gardens.
The daily work, the business done on ’change, the counting-house, the
shop, all this formed part and parcel of the family life; it was not cut
off and separated as at present: from his counting-house the merchant
went to his “parlor”—it was under the same roof—when dinner was called.
And all the year round he slept under the same roof over his place of
business.
A hundred and fifty years ago the people began to leave the City; the
wealthiest merchants went first; then the less wealthy; finally the
shopkeepers and the clerks; the private houses were converted into
offices and warehouses and chambers; the old City life absolutely
vanished. Everything disappeared; the club, the tavern, the
card-parties, the assembly, the evenings at Vauxhall—all were swept
away. The life of the City man was cut in two, one half belonging to his
office in the City, the other to his suburban villa, with the night and
three or four of the waking hours. He took breakfast at eight; he went
off after breakfast, catching an early omnibus; he returned at six or
seven; he dined; he sat for an hour or two; he went to bed. No life
could be duller; of social intercourse the suburban resident had little
or none; visiting was limited; at rare intervals there were evenings
with a “little music”; dances were few and far between; the old circles
were broken up and no new ones formed; the occupation and social
position of neighbors were not known to each other. For amusements the
girls had their slender stock of accomplishments; the sons, whenever
they could, ran up to town and got into mischief; and the _père de
famille_, not knowing or suspecting the narrowness and the dullness of
his life, solemnly sat after dinner with a book in his hand or took a
hand at cribbage, and went to bed at ten. There were no theaters, no
evening entertainments, no lectures even, no concerts, no talk of
amusements. As the evangelical narrowness was widely spread over all the
London suburbs, if a young man spoke of amusements he was asked if he
could reconcile amusement with the working out of his own salvation. The
church, or the chapel, was in itself the principal recreation of the
ladies. They found in religious emotions the excitement and the interest
which their narrow round of life failed to supply.
As for the theater, it was natural that, with such views as to
amusement, it should be regarded with a shuddering horror. No young
woman who respected herself would be seen at a theater. However, it was
quite out of the question, simply because the theater was inaccessible.
[Illustration: “A Quiet Dullness.”]
Such has been the suburban life of London for a hundred years, so dull,
so monotonous, so destitute of amusement. So lived the residents of
Hackney, Clapton, and Stoke Newington before their quiet dullness was
invaded by the overflowing wave—irresistible, overwhelming—of the
working swarms.
This side of London life deserves to be studied more attentively; it
accounts for a great many recent events and for some of the governing
ideas of Londoners. This, however, is not the place; let it suffice to
pay it the tribute of recognition.
It is now fast passing away. New forces are at work; the old suburban
life is changing; the rural suburb has become a large town, with its
central boulevards, shops, and places of resort; there are theaters
springing up in all the suburbs; there are concerts of good music; there
are art schools; there are halls and public dances; there are late
trains connecting the suburb with the West End and its amusements; there
are volunteer corps, bicycle clubs, golf clubs, tennis clubs, croquet
clubs, amateur dramatic clubs; above all, there is the new education for
the new woman; whatever else she may do or dare, one thing she will no
longer do: she will no longer endure to be shut up all day in a suburb
left to the women and children, and every evening, as well as all day,
to be kept in the house, with no gaiety, no interests, no pursuits, and
no companions. In all these ways the dull suburban life has been swept
away, and a new social life, not in the least like that of a hundred
years ago, is being established and developed.
Let us pass on to the memories and associations of these hamlets. They
are of two kinds—those which appeal to all who belong to this country by
descent and inherit our literature and call our great men theirs as
well, and those which appeal to ourselves more than they can be expected
to do on the other side of the Atlantic. I propose to speak more
especially of the former class. It will be seen that the memories of the
past belong peculiarly to the history of Nonconformity, but I shall be
able to connect East London with many persons distinguished in
literature, art, science, and politics. East London has also its
eccentrics. And it has its villains.
[Illustration: The Street and Old Church Tower, Hackney.]
Let us, however, consider one or two of these places separately, and
note certain things worth visiting in those streets where no traveler’s
foot ever falls.
Hackney, to begin with, is a very ancient place; the manor belonged to
the Knights Templars for about two hundred years; a house, now taken
down, used to be shown as the Templars’ Palace. It was an ancient house,
but not of the thirteenth century: it probably belonged to the reign of
Henry VIII. On the suppression of the Templars the manor was given to
the Hospitallers, whose traditional house was also shown till about
sixty years ago, when it was destroyed. This house was also the
traditional residence of Jane Shore, one of those women who, like Agnes
Sorel and Nell Gwynne strike the imagination of the people and win their
affections. Even the grave and serious Sir Thomas More is carried away
by the beauty and the charm of Jane Shore, while the memory of so much
beauty and so many misfortunes demands a tear from good old Stow. The
name of a street—Palace Road—preserves the memory of the house.
Standing alone in its vast churchyard crammed with monuments, mostly
illegible, of dead citizens all forgotten long ago, stands a monument
for which we ought to be deeply thankful. They pulled down the old
church, but they preserved the tower. It is a tower of singular beauty,
the one ancient thing that is left in Hackney. Beneath the feet of the
visitor on the east side lie the bones of the buried Templars, proud
knights and magnificent once, beyond the power of the bishop, rich and
luxurious; with them the dust of their successors, the Knights
Hospitallers, and now all forgotten together. In another part of the
churchyard they erected a singularly ugly new church—a capacious barn.
Outside the churchyard the tower looks down upon a crowded and busy
thoroughfare, the full stream of life of this now great town of Hackney.
Omnibuses and tram-cars run up and down the street all day long; there
is an open market all the year round, with stalls and wheelbarrows
ranged along the pavement; a railway arch spans the street, the frequent
train thunders as it passes the Templars’ tower; the people throng the
place from six in the morning till midnight. In many towns I have
watched this stream of life flowing beside the gray survivals of the
past; nobody heeds the ancient gate, the tower, the crumbling wall;
nobody knows what they mean; the historical associations enter not at
all into the mind of the average man; even amid the ruins of Babylon the
Great his thoughts would be wholly with the present; he has no knowledge
or understanding of the past; his own life is all in all to him; being
the heir of all the ages, he takes his inheritance without even knowing
what it means, as if it grew spontaneously, as if his security of life,
his power of working undisturbed, the peace of the City, his freedom of
speech and thought and action were given to mankind like the sunshine to
warm him and the rain to refresh him. Yet the presence of this venerable
tower should have some influence upon him, if only to remind him that
there has been a past.
One who walks about an English town of any antiquity—most of them are of
very considerable antiquity—can hardly fail of coming from time to time
upon a street, a place, a square, a court, which takes him back two
hundred years at least, or even more, to the time of the first George,
or even to that of Charles II. Sometimes it is a single house; sometimes
it is a whole street. In this respect, one or two of the East London
suburbs are richer than those of the west or the south because they are
older. Hackney and Stoke Newington, Stepney and Tottenham, were villages
inhabited by wealthy people or noble people when the suburbs of the
south were mere rural villages, with farms and meadows among their
hanging woods.
[Illustration: An East London Suburb, Overlooking Hackney Marshes.]
There are two such places which I have found in Hackney. The first is a
wide and open place, not a thoroughfare for vehicles; it may be
approached by a foot-path through Hackney churchyard. It consists of a
row of early eighteenth century houses on the south side, and another
row of houses, probably of late eighteenth century, on the north. There
is nothing remarkable about the place except its peacefulness and its
suggestion of authority and dignity. You may frequently find such places
adjoining old churches. It is as if the calm of the church and the
tranquillity of the churchyard overflowed into one at least of the
streets beside it. The clergy who used to live in this claustral repose
have left this memory of their residence; in such a place we look up and
down expecting to see a portly divine in black silk cassock, full silk
gown, white Geneva bands, and wig theological, step out into the street
and magisterially bend his steps toward the church where he will
catechize the children.
The second place is also on the east of Hackney church; it is a long and
narrow winding street, called magnificently the High Street, Homerton.
It contains three great houses and many small ones, mostly old; in spite
of its name, which conveys the suggestion of a town, it is a secluded
street, remote from the ways of man; it might be a street of some
decayed old town, such as King’s Lynn or Sandwich; there are no children
playing in the road or on the door-steps. Half way down the street
stands a church, the aspect of which proclaims it frankly and openly as
belonging to the reign of the great George, first of the name. It was a
place of worship simply, without special dedication or presentation to
any religious body; it has been sometimes a chapel of ease to the parish
church; sometimes it has been an independent chapel, having a service of
its own. There it has stood since the year 1723, testifying to
possibilities in the way of ugliness which would seem like some dream of
architecture, fantastic and visionary, impossible of achievement. Yet it
somehow fits in with the rest of the street; the ugliness of the chapel
is not out of harmony with the street, for the early eighteenth century
claims the houses as well as the church. All should be preserved
together among the national monuments as a historical survival. This, it
should be said, was how they built in the twenties of the eighteenth
century.
If we leave Hackney and walk north we find ourselves in the village of
Clapton, more suburban than Hackney, but not yet rural. Clapton lies
along the western valley of the river Lea, which here winds its way at
the bottom of a broad, shallow depression. There is one spot—before the
place was built over there were many spots—where one may stand and, in
the summer, when the sunshine lights up the stream, gaze upon the green
meadows, the mills, the rustic bridges, the high causeways over the
marshes, and the low Essex hills beyond. The Essex hills are always far
away; there is always one before the traveler; if he stands on an
eminence he sees them, like gentle waves of the heaving ocean, across
other valleys, and I would not affirm that this is more lovely than any
other; indeed, one knows many valleys which are deeper and more
picturesque, planted with nobler woods, shadowed by loftier hills. Yet
look again. You remember the lines—
Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green:
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
While Jordan rolled between.
Mark how exactly the view fits the lines, and how the lines fit the
view. This is as it should be, for good old Isaac Watts stood often here
and gazed upon that scene; the swelling flood was the winding river Lea;
the sweet fields lay before him in living green. That is why I have
brought you to this place. Dr. Watts might have stood here at another
season, when a low, white mist hung over the sweet fields and obscured
the swelling flood, and when the Christian knew not what lay between him
and the everlasting hills beyond, where he fain would be at rest.
[Illustration: Clapton.]
He lived not at Clapton, but at Stoke Newington, on the west of Clapton.
If we could have seen this suburb seventy years ago! But the place is
overgrown and overcrowded; workmen’s houses cover its gardens like a
tangle of ugly weeds. Still there is one place left which it will please
you to visit; on the map of 1830 it is the only street in the village.
It is called Church Street; you enter it from the high road running
north; it promises at the outset to be common, mean, and without dignity
or character. Patience! we pass through the mean part and we emerge upon
a Street Beautiful. It consists of houses built of that warm red brick
which, as Ruskin has pointed out, grows richer in color with age; they
are houses of the early eighteenth century with porches and covered with
a wealth of creepers; the street has associations of which I will speak
presently. Meantime, it is delight enough merely to stand and look upon
it. The street ends with two churches. Happier than Hackney, Stoke
Newington has been able to build a new church, and has not been obliged
to pull down the old one. You see the new church; it is in the favorite
style of our time, perhaps as favorable a specimen as can be found; in a
word, a large, handsome, well-proportioned church. It was good that such
a church should be built, if only to show that when Stoke Newington
passed from a small rural village to a great town it did not outgrow its
attachment to the Anglican faith. The old church could no longer
accommodate the people; a new one therefore was built, a church urban,
belonging to a great population beside the other. The old church is not
dwarfed by the new; happily, the broad road lies between; it is a
charming and delightful village church, standing among the trees and
monuments of its churchyard. It has been patched, repaired, enlarged; it
is, I dare say, a thing of patchwork—an incongruous church; yet one
would not part with a single patch or the very least of its
incongruities. There is Perpendicular work in it, and Decorated work;
there is also nondescript work. They did well to keep it standing; it is
a venerable monument; its spire is much humbler than that of its
splendid successor, still it points to heaven; it has what the other
will never have, the bones of the villagers for two thousand years; and
still, to admonish the men of to-day as of yesterday and the day before,
over the porch hangs the dial, with the motto, “Ab Alto”—“From on High,”
that is, “cometh Safety, cometh Wisdom, cometh Hope” in the language of
the ancient piety.
I have spoken of the intimate connection of these villages with
Nonconformity. The Nonconformist cause was very strong among the better
class of London merchants during the hundred and fifty years from 1650
to 1800. Hackney and other places in this part of the London suburbs are
occupied to a large extent by their country houses. When the Act of
Uniformity was passed and the Nonconforming ministers were ejected, many
of them were received by the merchants of London in their country
houses, and when the Conventicle Act of 1663 forbade the Nonconformists
to frequent any place of worship other than the parish church, it was in
their private houses at Hackney and other suburbs that the merchants
were able, unmolested, to worship after their own consciences.
Before this, however, there had been Puritan leaders in the place. Two
of them were regicides. On the east of the tower in Hackney churchyard
stood until recently a chapel or mortuary chamber built by one of the
Rowe family and called the Rowe Chapel. There was a Sir Thomas Rowe (or
Roe), who was Lord Mayor of London in 1568; he married the sister of Sir
Thomas Gresham, who founded the Royal Exchange; his son was also lord
mayor in his time, his grandson, Sir Henry Rowe, built this chapel.
Among the descendants was one Owen Rowe, citizen and haberdasher, a
fierce partizan—in those days every one was a partizan and every one was
fierce. He was colonel of the Green Regiment for the Parliament, so that
he could fight as well as argue. Owen Rowe, unfortunately for himself,
was one of those who took a leading part in the trial and execution of
the King, being a signatory to the warrant for that execution. After the
Restoration he surrendered, and by an act of clemency, of which Charles
was sometimes capable, he was not executed, but sentenced to
imprisonment in the Tower of London for the rest of his days. He died in
the December following, and was buried in this chapel.
The other regicide of Hackney was John Okey, one of the Root and Branch
men. He was a very turbulent Parliamentarian; he was of humble origin,
beginning, it is said, as a drayman; he had no education, but he
developed military genius of a kind and became a colonel of cavalry
under Cromwell. After the Restoration he fled to Germany, where he might
have continued in security to the end of his days, but being tempted to
venture into Holland was there arrested by the English minister, Sir
George Downing, and brought over to England with two other regicides,
Miles Corbet and John Barkstead. Pepys records the event. It is
astonishing that Sir George Downing should have done this, since he owed
everything he had in the world to the favor of Cromwell. However, it was
done, and on March 16, 1662, Pepys says that the pink _Blackmore_ landed
the three prisoners at the Tower. He adds that the Dutch were a long
while before they consented to let them go, and that “all the world
takes notice of Sir George Downing as a most ungrateful villain for his
pains.” A month later, on April 19th, Pepys goes to Aldgate and stands
“at the corner shop, the draper’s,” to see the three drawn on their way
to execution at Tyburn. “They all looked very cheerful and all died
defending what they did to the King to be just.” While at Hackney, Okey
lived in a house called Barber’s Barn, formerly the residence of Lady
Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, and mother of Lord Darnley,
husband of Alary Queen of Scots, a curious little fact which connects
Hackney with Queen Victoria, Darnley’s descendant. The regicide’s estate
was confiscated, but his widow got permission to retain Barber’s Barn,
where she lived till her death. Okey himself was buried somewhere in
Hackney churchyard.
[Illustration: The Old Church, Stoke Newington.]
Let us turn to more pleasing associations. In the village of Hackney
during the Commonwealth there lived a certain Captain Woodcock. Among
his friends was the Protector’s Latin secretary, John Milton, a person
of very great consideration. John Milton in 1656 was a widower, but he
was not a man who could live without the society of a wife. Captain
Woodcock’s daughter, Catharine, pleased the Latin secretary; they were
married on November 12, 1656, and she died on October 17th in the
following year.
But there are other Cromwellian associations with Hackney and Stoke
Newington. The American visitor to London would do well to give a day to
a quiet ramble in this quarter, once so sturdy in its Puritanism and
independence.
Leading out of Church Street, Stoke Newington, there is a place called
Fleetwood Street. This street covers the site of an Elizabethan house
which was once the residence of Colonel Fleetwood, Cromwell’s
son-in-law. His second wife, Bridget Cromwell, however, did not live in
this house, because Fleetwood got it, after her death, with his third
wife, Lady Hartopp. He was left unmolested by the government at the
Restoration, and died in this house in 1692. He lies buried in the
Nonconformist cemetery of Bunhill Fields.
Another member of the Cromwell family, Major Cromwell, was a resident of
this quarter. He was the son of Henry, and the grandson of the
Protector. He married, in 1686, Hannah, eldest daughter of Benjamin
Hewling, whose sons suffered for joining Monmouth. One of her children,
at least, was born at Hackney. This was Richard, who became an attorney
and solicitor in chancery. It is pleasant to record that when this
Richard married the wedding was solemnized in the chapel of Whitehall,
in memory of his great grandfather’s occupation of the palace.
I have already mentioned Isaac Watts as a resident in this part of
London. He was born at Southampton in 1674. At the age of sixteen he was
placed under the care of the Rev. Thomas Rowe of London, and chose the
calling of a Nonconformist minister. For five years he was tutor in the
family of Sir John Hartopp, Colonel Fleetwood’s stepson, at Stoke
Newington; he there became acquainted with Sir Thomas Abney, whilom Lord
Mayor of London. He preached for ten years in London, under the Rev. Dr.
Chauncey. Then an attack of fever prostrated him, and he was obliged to
give up preaching altogether for the rest of his life. He was invited by
Sir Thomas Abney to his house at Theobald’s, where he stayed till Sir
Thomas’s death. He then removed with Lady Abney to her house at Stoke
Newington, where he remained an honored guest, or rather one of the
family, until his death in 1748. He was a painter as well as a poet, and
until the house was pulled down certain paintings on the walls were
shown as his.
[Illustration: A Street in Stoke Newington.]
A more sturdy and combative Nonconformist was Daniel Defoe, also a
resident of Stoke Newington. The site of his house survives in a small
street named after him. He was born at Cripplegate, just outside the
walls of London. He was sent to school at Newington Green, so that he
was more or less connected with this quarter all his life. The school
was kept by one Murton, and among his school-fellows was Samuel Wesley,
father of John and Charles. Defoe came to live in Stoke Newington early
in the eighteenth century. It was here that he wrote “Robinson Crusoe”
and his novels. His house has long been pulled down, but a large part of
his garden-wall still stands.