There were some notable people living in Cheyne Walk in those days. At
number three lived Mr. Goss, organist at St. Luke's, afterwards at St.
Paul's Cathedral, who was subsequently knighted. At number five lived
Justice Neild, an eccentric old bachelor, who left half a million of
money to the Queen, and next door lived Doctor Butler, curator of the
British Museum, and at Gothic House lived Mr. Moore, a man seven feet
high, and stout in proportion, dressed in a long drab coat, breeches and
Hessian boots with large tassels. He had been a contractor for the
stores and accoutrements for Wellington's army in the Peninsular
campaign. A constant visitor was the Countess of Harrington, in a
splendid carriage with two tall footmen behind in a quaint brown livery
trimmed with gold lace, breeches and silk stockings. Then there were the
Owens and the Bayfords, very charitable people. Then there was "Don
Saltero's" tavern, kept by a tall Scotchman and his factotum, a little
short fat man, a sort of "Joe Willett of the Maypole," who was barman,
cellarman, and waiter in one. There used to be a goodly company of an
evening in the coffee room of retired officers and well-to-do people in
the neighbourhood, to play whist and chess, and sometimes all-fours.
There was an ordinary on Sunday at two o'clock, when they gave you a rare
good dinner for two-and-sixpence, including beer.
I well recollect the Kingsleys coming to Chelsea, I think it was about
the year 1832. I know it was near about the "cholera year." The first
time I saw Charles and Henry they were boys about twelve and fourteen. I
met them in the rectory garden at the giving of prizes to the St. Luke's
National School boys, when they were regaled with buns and milk. The
rector and the boys were great favourites with the parishioners as they
were courteous and very free with everybody. I can recognize many of the
characters in "The Hillyars and the Burtons" as old Chelsea inhabitants,
and the description of the mounds and tablets in old Chelsea Church and
the Churchyard, and the outlook over the river is as correct as it well
can be.
Opposite the Church in the corner by the Church draw-dock stood the cage,
and by the side of it the stocks, then came Lombard Street, and the
archway with shops and wharfs all along the riverside up to Battersea
Bridge. At that time there were fishing boats, and fishermen got a
living by catching roach, dace, dabs and flounders, and setting pots for
eels all along Chelsea Reach, and between Battersea Bridge and Putney,
and they would hawk them through the streets of a morning. The eels were
carried in little tubs, as many as eight or ten, one on top of the other,
on the man's head, and sold by the lot in each tub at about sixpence or
eightpence each.
The favourite promenade, especially on a Sunday, was the River Terrace at
the back of Chelsea Hospital. It was thrown open to the public, and you
gained access to it from the gate of the private gardens opposite King
Charles' statue. It consisted of a gravelled terrace and a dwarf wall on
the river side, with two rows of immense elms commencing at the outlet of
Ranelagh Ditch to the river, and ending at the Round House. On the
corner by Ranelagh Ditch stood the College Water Works, with the old
machinery going to decay, that had been used to pump water for the use of
the hospital. This was a grand place, and considered extremely
fashionable, where most of the courting and flirting by the young people
was carried on. The Ranelagh Ditch was the boundary of the hospital
grounds at that tune, and was an open stream about nine feet wide; while
its banks were supported by planks and struts across it. It was open
right up to the end of Eaton Place. It was crossed by two bridges, one
called Ranelagh, in the Pimlico Road, by the side of the "Nell Gwynn"
tavern, the other called Bloody Bridge, in the King's Road, between
Sloane Square and Westbourne Street. On the banks of this foul and
offensive stream there was no better than a common sewer. Between the
two bridges at the back of George Street and overlooking it, were crowded
together a lot of old two and three-roomed cottages that periodically at
high tide were flooded by the offensive matter. The district was known
as Frog's Island, and suffered terribly in the outbreak of cholera in
1832. It was inhabited by a class that was always in a chronic state of
poverty, and as there had been a very severe winter, that had a great
deal to do with it. I think this stream is now covered over. It had its
rise from the overflow in the Serpentine, in Hyde Park, and crossed under
the road at Knightsbridge, about where Albert Gate now stands, into the
Park. {32}