Lily of the Valley. _Convallaria majalis._
Dedicated to _St. Selena_.
[Illustration: ~Canonbury Tower.~]
People methinks are better, but the scenes
Wherein my youth delighted are no more.
I wander out in search of them, and find
A sad deformity in all I see.
Strong recollections of my former pleasures,
And knowledge that they never can return,
Are causes of my sombre mindedness:
I pray you then bear with my discontent.
*
A walk out of London is, to me, an event; I have an _every-day_ desire
to bring it about, but weeks elapse before the time arrives whereon I
can sally forth. In my boyhood, I had only to obtain parental
permission, and stroll in fields now no more,--to scenes now deformed,
or that I have been wholly robbed of, by “the spirit of improvement.”
Five and thirty years have altered every thing--myself with the rest. I
am obliged to “ask leave to go out,” of time and circumstance; or to
wait till the only enemy I cannot openly face has ceased from before
me--the north-east wind--or to brave that foe and get the worst of it. I
did so yesterday. “This is the time,” I said, to an artist, “when we
Londoners begin to get our walks; we will go to a place or two that I
knew many years ago, and see how they look now; and first to
Canonbury-house.”
Having crossed the back Islington-road, we found ourselves in the rear
of the _Pied Bull_. Ah! I know this spot well: this stagnant pool was a
“famous” carp pond among boys. How dreary the place seems! the yard and
pens were formerly filled with sheep and cattle for Smithfield market;
graziers and drovers were busied about them; a high barred gate was
constantly closed; now all is thrown open and neglected, and not a
living thing to be seen. We went round to the front, the house was shut
up, and nobody answered to the knocking. It had been the residence of
the gallant sir Walter Raleigh, who threw down his court mantle for
queen Elizabeth to walk on, that she might not damp her feet; he, whose
achievements in Virginia secured immense revenue to his country; whose
individual enterprise in South America carried terror to the recreant
heart of Spain; who lost years of his life within the walls of the
Tower, where he wrote the “History of the World,” and better than all,
its inimitable preface; and who finally lost his life on a scaffold for
his courage and services. By a door in the rear we got into “the best
parlour;” this was on the ground-floor; it had been Raleigh’s
dining-room. Here the arms of sir John Miller are painted on glass in
the end window; and we found Mr. John Cleghorn sketching them. This
gentleman, who lives in the neighbourhood, and whose talents as a
draftsman and engraver are well known, was obligingly communicative; and
we condoled on the decaying memorials of past greatness. On the ceiling
of this room are stuccoed the five senses; Feeling in an oval centre,
and the other four in the scroll-work around. The chimney-piece of
carved oak, painted white, represents Charity, supported by Faith on her
right, and Hope on her left. Taking leave of Mr. Cleghorn, we hastily
passed through the other apartments, and gave a last farewell look at
sir Walter’s house; yet we bade not adieu to it till my accompanying
friend expressed a wish, that as sir Walter, according to tradition, had
there smoked the first pipe of tobacco drawn in Islington, so _he_ might
have been able to smoke the last whiff within the walls that would in a
few weeks be levelled to the ground.
We got to Canonbury. Geoffrey Crayon’s “Poor Devil Author” sojourned
here:--
“Chance threw me,” he says, “in the way of Canonbury Castle. It is an
ancient brick tower, hard by ‘merry Islington;’ the remains of a
hunting-seat of queen Elizabeth, where she took the pleasure of the
country when the neighbourhood was all woodland. What gave it particular
interest in my eyes was the circumstance that it had been the residence
of a poet. It was here Goldsmith resided when he wrote his ‘Deserted
Village.’ I was shown the very apartment. It was a relic of the original
style of the castle, with pannelled wainscots and Gothic windows. I was
pleased with its air of antiquity, and with its having been the
residence of poor Goldy. ‘Goldsmith was a pretty poet,’ said I to
myself, ‘a very pretty poet, though rather of the old school. He did not
think and feel so strongly as is the fashion now-a-days; but had he
lived in these times of hot hearts and hot heads, he would no doubt have
written quite differently.’ In a few days I was quietly established in
my new quarters; my books all arranged; my writing-desk placed by a
window looking out into the fields, and I felt as snug as Robinson
Crusoe when he had finished his bower. For several days I enjoyed all
the novelty of change and the charms which grace new lodgings before one
has found out their defects. I rambled about the fields where I fancied
Goldsmith had rambled. I explored merry Islington; ate my solitary
dinner at the Black Bull, which, according to tradition, was a country
seat of sir Walter Raleigh, and would sit and sip my wine, and muse on
old times, in a quaint old room where many a council had been held. All
this did very well for a few days; I was stimulated by novelty; inspired
by the associations awakened in my mind by these curious haunts; and
began to think I felt the spirit of composition stirring with me. But
Sunday came, and with it the whole city world, swarming about Canonbury
Castle. I could not open my window but I was stunned with shouts and
noises from the cricket ground; the late quiet road beneath my window
was alive with the tread of feet and clack of tongues; and, to complete
my misery, I found that my quiet retreat was absolutely a ‘show house,’
the tower and its contents being shown to strangers at sixpence a head.
There was a perpetual tramping up stairs of citizens and their families
to look about the country from the top of the tower, and to take a peep
at the city through the telescope, to try if they could discern their
own chimneys. And then, in the midst of a vein of thought, or a moment
of inspiration, I was interrupted, and all my ideas put to flight, by my
intolerable landlady’s tapping at the door, and asking me if I would
‘just please to let a lady and gentleman come in, to take a look at Mr.
Goldsmith’s room.’ If you know any thing what an author’s study is, and
what an author is himself, you must know that there was no standing
this. I put a positive interdict on my room’s being exhibited; but then
it was shown when I was absent, and my papers put in confusion; and on
returning home one day I absolutely found a cursed tradesman and his
daughters gaping over my manuscripts, and my landlady in a panic at my
appearance. I tried to make out a little longer, by taking the key in my
pocket; but it would not do. I overheard mine hostess one day telling
some of her customers on the stairs that the room was occupied by an
author, who was always in a tantrum if interrupted; and I immediately
perceived, by a slight noise at the door, that they were peeping at me
through the key-hole. By the head of Apollo, but this was quite too
much! With all my eagerness for fame, and my ambition of the stare of
the million, I had no idea of being exhibited by retail, at sixpence a
head, and that through a key-hole. So I bade adieu to Canonbury Castle,
merry Islington, and the haunts of poor Goldsmith, without having
advanced a single line in my labours.”
Now for this and some other descriptions, I have a quarrel with the
aforesaid Geoffrey Crayon, gent. What right has a transatlantic settler
to feelings in England? He located in America, but it seems he did not
locate his feelings there; if not, why not? What right has _he_ of New
York to sit “solitary” in Raleigh’s house at Islington, and “muse” on
_our_ “old times;” himself clearly a _pied_ animal, mistaking the _pied_
bull for a “black” bull. There is “black” blood between us. By what
authority has _he_ a claim to a domicile at Canonbury? Under what
international law laid down by Vattel or Martens, or other jurist,
ancient or modern, can _his_ pretension to feel and muse at sir Walter’s
or queen Elizabeth’s tower, be admitted? He comes here and describes as
if he were a _real_ Englishman; and claims copyright in our courts for
his feelings and descriptions, while he himself is a copyist; a
downwright copyist of _my_ feelings, who _am_ an Englishman, and a
forestaller of _my_ descriptions--bating the “black” bull. He has left
me nothing to do.
My friend, the artist, obligingly passed the door of Canonbury tower to
take a sketch of its north-east side; not that the tower has not been
taken before, but it has not been given exactly in that position. We
love every look of an old friend, and this look we get after crossing
the bridge of the New River, coming from the “Thatched house” to
“Canonbury tavern.” A year or so ago, the short walk from the lower
Islington-road to this bridge was the prettiest “bit” on the river
nearest to London. Here the curve of the stream formed the “horse-shoe.”
In by-gone days only three or four hundred, from the back of
Church-street southerly, and from the back of the upper street westerly,
to Canonbury, were open green pastures with uninterrupted views
easterly, bounded only by the horizon. Then the gardens to the houses in
Canonbury-place, terminated by the edge of the river, were covetable
retirements; and ladies, lovely as the marble bust of Mrs. Thomas Gent,
by Behnes, in the Royal Academy Exhibition, walked in these gardens,
“not unseen,” yet not obtruded on. Now, how changed!
My ringing at the tower-gate was answered by Mr. Symes, who for
thirty-nine years past has been resident in the mansion, and is bailiff
of the manor of Islington, under lord Northampton. Once more, to “many a
time and oft” aforetime, I ranged the old rooms, and took perhaps a last
look from its roof. The eye shrunk from the wide havoc below. Where new
buildings had not covered the sward, it was embowelling for bricks, and
kilns emitted flickering fire and sulphurous stench. Surely the dominion
of the brick-and-mortar king will have no end; and cages for commercial
spirits will be instead of every green herb. In this high tower some of
our literary men frequently shut themselves up, “far from the busy
haunts of men.” Mr. Symes says that his mother-in-law, Mrs. Evans, who
had lived there three and thirty years, and was wife to the former
bailiff, often told him that her aunt, Mrs. Tapps, a seventy years’
inhabitant of the tower, was accustomed to talk much about Goldsmith and
his apartment. It was the old oak room on the first floor. Mrs. Tapps
affirmed that he there wrote his “Deserted Village,” and slept in a
large press bedstead, placed in the eastern corner. From this room two
small ones for sleeping in have since been separated, by the removal of
the pannelled oak wainscotting from the north-east wall, and the cutting
of two doors through it, with a partition between them; and since
Goldsmith was here, the window on the south side has been broken
through. Hither have I come almost every year, and frequently in many
years, and seen the changing occupancy of these apartments. Goldsmith’s
room I almost suspect to have been tenanted by Geoffrey Crayon; about
seven years ago I saw books on one of the tables, with writing
materials, and denotements of more than a “Poor Devil Author.” This
apartment, and other apartments in the tower, are often to be let
comfortably furnished, “with other conveniences.” It is worth while to
take a room or two, were it only to hear Mr. Symes’s pleasant
conversation about residences and residentiaries, manorial rights and
boundaries, and “things as they used to be” in his father’s time, who
was bailiff before him, and “in Mrs. Evans’s time,” or “Mrs. Tapps’s
time.” The grand tenantry of the tower has been in and through him and
them during a hundred and forty-two years.
Canonbury tower is sixty feet high, and seventy feet square. It is part
of an old mansion which appears to have been erected, or, if erected
before, much altered about the reign of Elizabeth. The more ancient
edifice was erected by the priors of the canons of St. Bartholomew,
Smithfield, and hence was called Canonbury, to whom it appertained until
it was surrendered with the priory to Henry VIII.; and when the
religious houses were dissolved, Henry gave the manor to Thomas lord
Cromwell; it afterwards passed through other hands till it was possessed
by sir John Spencer, an alderman and lord mayor of London, known by the
name of “rich Spencer.” While he resided at Canonbury, a Dunkirk pirate
came over in a shallop to Barking creek, and hid himself with some armed
men in Islington fields, near to the path sir John usually took from his
house in Crosby-place to this mansion, with the hope of making him
prisoner; but as he remained in town that night, they were glad to make
off, for fear of detection, and returned to France disappointed of their
prey, and of the large ransom they calculated on for the release of his
person. His sole daughter and heiress, Elizabeth, was carried off in a
baker’s basket from Canonbury-house by William, the second lord Compton,
lord president of Wales. He inherited Canonbury, with the rest of sir
John Spencer’s wealth at his death, and was afterwards created earl of
Northampton; in this family the manor still remains. The present earl’s
rent-roll will be enormously increased, by the extinction of comfort to
the inhabitants of Islington and its vicinity, through the covering up
of the open fields and verdant spots on his estates.
As a custom it is noticeable, that many metropolitans visit this antique
edifice in summer, for the sake of the panoramic view from the roof. To
those who inquire concerning the origin or peculiarities of its erection
or history, Mr. Symes obligingly tenders the loan of “Nelson’s History
of Islington,” wherein is ample information on these points. In my
visit, yesterday, I gathered one or two particulars from this gentleman
not befitting me to conceal, inasmuch as I hold and maintain that the
world would not be the worse for being acquainted with what every one
knows; and that it is every one’s duty to contribute as much as he can
to the amusement and instruction of others. Be it known then, that Mr.
Symes says he possesses the ancient key of the gate belonging to the
prior’s park. “It formerly hung there,” said he, pointing with his
finger as we stood in the kitchen, “withinside that clock-case, but by
some accident it has fallen to the bottom, and I cannot get at it.” The
clock-case is let into the solid wall flush with the surface, and the
door to the weights opening only a small way down from the dial plate,
they descend full two-thirds the length of their lines within a “fixed
abode.” Adown this space Mr. Symes has looked, and let down inches of
candle without being able to see, and raked with long sticks without
being able to feel, the key; and yet he thinks it there, in spite of the
negative proof, and of a suggestion I uncharitably urged, that some
antiquary, with confused notions as to the “rights of things,” might
have removed the key from the nail in the twinkling of Mr. Symes’s eye,
and finally deposited it among his own “collections.” A very large old
arm chair, with handsome carved claws, and modern verdant baize on the
seat and back, which also stands in the kitchen, attracted my attention.
“It was here,” said Mr. Symes, “before Mrs. Tapps’s time; the old
tapestry bottom was quite worn out, and the tapestry back so ragged,
that I cut them away, and had them replaced as you see; but I have kept
the back, because it represents Queen Elizabeth hunting in the woods
that were hereabout in her time--I’ll fetch it.” On my hanging this
tapestry against the clock-case, it was easy to make out a lady
gallantly seated on horseback, with a sort of turbaned headdress, and
about to throw a spear from her right hand; a huntsman on foot, with a
pole in one hand, and leading a brace of dogs with the other, runs at
the side of the horse’s head; and another man on foot, with a gun on his
shoulder, follows the horse; the costume, however, is not so early as
the time of Elizabeth; certainly not before the reign of Charles I.
This edifice is well worth seeing, and Mr. Symes’s plain civility is
good entertainment. Readers have only to ring at the bell above the
brass plate with the word “Tower” on it, and ask, “Is Mr. Tower at
home?” as I do, and they will be immediately introduced; at the
conclusion of the visit the tender of sixpence each, by way of
“quit-rent,” will be accepted. Those who have been before and not
lately, will view “improvement” rapidly devastating the forms of nature
around this once delightful spot; others who have not visited it at all
may be amazed at the extensive prospects; and none who see the “goings
on” and “ponder well,” will be able to foretell whether Mr. Symes or the
tower will enjoy benefit of survivorship.
_To Canonbury Tower._
As some old, stout, and lonely holyhock,
Within a desolate neglected garden,
Doth long survive beneath the gradual choke
Of weeds, that come and work the general spoil;
So, Canonbury, thou dost stand awhile:
Yet fall at last thou must; for thy rich warden
Is fast “improving;” all thy pleasant fields
Have fled, and brick-kilns, bricks, and houses rise
At his command; the air no longer yields
A fragrance--scarcely health; the very skies
Grow dim and townlike; a cold, creeping gloom
Steals into thee, and saddens every room:
And so realities come unto me,
Clouding the chambers of my mind, and making me--like thee.
_May_ 18, 1825.
*
[137] Butler.
[138] Holme.
~Rogation Sunday.~
This is the fifth Sunday after Easter. “Rogation” is _supplication_,
from the Latin _rogare_, to beseech.
Rogation Sunday obtained its name from the succeeding Monday, Tuesday,
and Wednesday, which are called Rogation-days, and were ordained by
Mammertus, archbishop of Vienne, in Dauphiné; about the year 469 he
caused the litanies, or supplications, to be said upon them, for
deliverance from earthquakes, fires, wild beasts, and other public
calamities, which are alleged to have happened in his city; hence the
whole week is called _Rogation_-week, to denote the continual
praying.[139]
Shepherd, in his “Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer,” mistaking
_Vienne_ for Vienna the capital of Germany, says: “The example of
Mammertus was followed by many churches in the West, and the institution
of the Rogation-days, soon passed from the diocese of _Vienna_ into
France, and from France into England.”
_Rogation_-week is also called _grass_-week, from the appetite being
restricted to salads and greens; _cross_-week, from the cross being more
than ordinarily used; _procession_-week, from the public processions
during the period; and _gang_-week, from the _ganging_, or going about
in these processions.[140]
The rogations and processions, or singing of litanies along the streets
during this week, were practised in England till the Reformation. In
1554, the priests of queen Mary’s chapel made public processions. “All
the three days there went her chapel about the fields: the first day to
St. Giles’s, and there sung mass: the next day, being Tuesday, to St.
Martin’s in the Fields; and there a sermon was preached, and mass sung;
and the company drank there: the third day to Westminster; where a
sermon was made, and then mass and good cheer made; and after, about the
park, and so to St. James’s court. The same Rogation-week went out of
the Tower, on procession, priests and clerks, and the lieutenant with
all his waiters; and the axe of the Tower borne in procession: the waits
attended. There joined in this procession the inhabitants of St.
Katharine’s, Radcliff, Limehouse, Poplar, Stratford, Bow, Shoreditch,
and all those that belonged to the Tower, with their halberts. They went
about the fields of St. Katharine’s, and the liberties.”[141] On the
following Thursday, “Being _Holy_ Thursday, at the court of St. James’s,
the queen went in procession within St. James’s, with heralds and
serjeants of arms, and four bishops mitred; and bishop Bonner, beside
his mitre, wore a pair of slippers of silver and gilt, and a pair of
rich gloves with ouches of silver upon them, very rich.”[142]
The effect of processions in the churches, must have been very striking.
A person sometimes inquires the _use_ of a large portion of
unappropriated room in some of our old ecclesiastical edifices; he is
especially astonished at the enormous unoccupied space in a cathedral,
and asks, “what is it for?”--the answer is, at this time, nothing. But
if the Stuarts had succeeded in reestablishing the catholic religion,
then this large and now wholly useless portion of the structure, would
have been devoted to the old practices. In that event, we should have
had cross-carrying, canopy-carrying, censing, chanting, flower-strewing,
and all the other accessories and essentials of the grand pageantry,
which distinguishes catholic from protestant worship. The utmost stretch
of episcopal ceremonial in England, can scarcely extend to the use of an
eighth part of any of our old cathedrals, each of which, in every
essential particular as a building, is papal.
[139] Butler.
[140] Brand.
[141] Strype.
[142] Ibid.
~May 9.~
_St. Gregory Nazianzen_, A. D. 389, or 391. _St. Hermas_, 1st Cent.
_St. Nicholas_ Bp. A. D. 1391.
_May Morning._
The sun is up, and ’tis a morn of May
Round old Ravenna’s clear-shown towers and bay,
A morn, the loveliest which the year has seen
Last of the spring, yet fresh with all its green;
For a warm eve, and gentle rains at night,
Have left a sparkling welcome for the light,
And there’s a crystal clearness all about;
The leaves are sharp, the distant hills look out
A balmy briskness comes upon the breeze;
The smoke goes dancing from the cottage trees;
And when you listen, you may hear a coil
Of bubbling springs about the grassy soil;
And all the scene, in short--sky, earth, and sea
Breathes like a bright-eyed face, that laughs out openly.
_Leigh Hunt._
A benevolent lover of nature,[143]--and who that loves nature is not
benevolent--observes, in a notice of this day, that “the _Swift_, which
arrives in England about this time, in the morning and in the evening
comes out in quest of food, and utters, while rapidly flying, its
peculiar scream, whence it is called Squeaker. In a warm summer morning
these birds may be seen flying round in small companies, and all
squeaking together: in the evening they come forth again; but there are
times in the middle of the day when few or none of these birds are seen.
We have already observed,” continues Dr. Forster, “that the scenery of a
May morning is particularly beautiful; a serene sky, a refreshing
fragrance arising from the face of the earth, and the melody of the
birds, all combine to render it inexpressibly delightful, to exhilarate
the spirits, and call forth a song of grateful adoration.
How fresh the breeze that wafts the rich perfume,
And swells the melody of waking birds!
The hum of bees beneath the verdant grove,
And woodman’s song, and low of distant herds!
And yet there are some to whom these scenes give no delight, and who
hurry away from all the varieties of rural beauty, to lose their hours
and divert their thoughts by a tavern dinner, or the prattle or the
politics of the day. Such was, by his own confession, Mr. Boswell, the
biographer of Johnson; and, according to this ‘honest chronicler’s’
report, the doctor himself was alike insensible to the charms of nature.
“We walked in the evening,” says Boswell, “in Greenwich-park. Johnson
asked me, I suppose by way of trying my disposition, ‘Is not this very
fine?’ Having no exquisite relish of the beauties of nature, and being
more delighted with the ‘busy hum of men,’ I answered, ‘Yes, sir; but
not equal to Fleet-street.’ Johnson said, ‘You are right, sir.’ I am
aware that many of my readers may censure my want of taste. Let me,
however, shelter myself under the authority of a very fashionable
baronet in the brilliant world, who, on his attention being called to
the fragrance of a May evening in the country, ‘This may be very well;
but, for my part, I prefer the smell of a flambeau at the playhouse!’”
Green fields, and shady groves, and crystal springs
And larks, and nightingales, are odious things.
But smoke and dust, and noise and crowds, delight;
And to be pressed to death, transports her quite:
Where silvery rivulets play through flowery meads,
And woodbines give their sweets, and limes their shades
Black kennels’ absent odours she regrets,
And stops her nose at beds of violets;
Nor likes to leave her bed at early dawn,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
* * * * *