TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
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A ROAD-BOOK TO OLD CHELSEA
[Illustration:
_SIFTON PRAED & Cᵒ Lᵗᵈ._
THE ROADS THAT LEAD TO CHELSEA.
_Frontispiece._]
A ROAD-BOOK TO
OLD CHELSEA
BY
G. B. STUART
“By what means the time is so well-abbreviated I know not,
except weeks be shorter in Chelsey, than in other places!”
KATHERYN THE QUEENE.
Extract from a letter of Queen Katharine Parr to the
Lord High Admiral Seymour, written from Chelsea, 1547
WITH SKETCH MAP AND FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
HUGH REES, LTD.
5 REGENT STREET, PALL MALL, S.W.
1914
PREFACE
OF the making of books about Chelsea, may there never be an end, so
rich and unexhausted is our history, so inspiring to those who labour
in its service! Every year, as fresh records become accessible,
Chelsea is presented to us from some different standpoint, historical,
architectural, or frankly human, and there is ever a welcome and a
place for each volume as it appears.
They are books full of research and of suggestion, illustrated by
portraits and maps from rare sources, and clinching hitherto unsolved
problems. They quickly become our library friends and companions,
because, though some of their matter may be familiar, each has, for
its own individual charm, that personal outlook of its author which
expresses, with wider and more resourceful knowledge than ours, the
love we all bear to our home by the river.
It is because in love of our subject we and the greater writers are
equal, that I dare to put forth a new Guide to Chelsea; a little
foot-page, a link-boy, a caddy if you will, just to show the way to
strangers, to disembarrass them of unnecessary impedimenta, to point
out special places of interest which may be visited in a summer
afternoon, within that charmed circle of our parish, where every inch
is enchanted ground.
G. B. S.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE ROAD TO THE CHURCH 9
II. THE OLD CHURCH: NORTH SIDE AND CHANCEL 15
III. THE OLD CHURCH: SOUTH SIDE AND THE MORE CHAPEL 23
IV. THE OLD CHURCH: THE NAVE AND ITS MONUMENTS 31
V. CHURCH STREET TO QUEEN’S ELM 39
VI. CHEYNE WALK FROM EAST TO WEST 47
VII. SIDE STREETS AND BACK GARDENS 57
VIII. THE ROAD TO THE ROYAL HOSPITAL 65
L’ENVOI 73
A ROAD-BOOK TO OLD CHELSEA
CHAPTER I
Omnibuses for Chelsea—The Mystery House—Dr. Phéné’s garden—Cheyne
House and Tudor Lane—Leigh Hunt’s home—Cheyne Row and Carlyle—The
Tollsey Cottage and James II.—The Lawrences and Lombards’ Row—The
Fieldings and Justice Walk.
PRESUMING, O stranger, that you will reach Chelsea by motor-bus—either
from Kensington by No. 49, from Piccadilly by No. 19, or from the
Strand by No. 11—I will ask you to alight at Chelsea Town Hall and
turn with me down Oakley Street. As we face the river, there is always
fresh air to meet us, and in summer time, above the road smell of
asphalt and petrol, there floats a soft, keen savour of growing things
and green bushes, hidden away behind walls; if an old door opens, we
catch a glimpse of gardens and sometimes of a “mulberry-bush,” grown to
forest size, which, planted by the men who fled from the terror of St.
Bartholomew, still fruits and flourishes to repay Chelsea hospitality.
On the right-hand side, where we turn into Upper Cheyne Row, stands
the much-talked-about “Mystery House” of the late eccentric Dr. Phéné.
It has never been much of a mystery to its neighbours. Dr. Phéné
built it as a storehouse for his collections—some valuable, others
worthless—and plastered it with the discarded ornaments of the old
Horticultural Gardens. The old gentleman was vastly proud of his
design, and loved to plant himself at the street corner and encourage
the remarks of passers-by: that the work was chaotic, and dropping to
pieces before it was finished, troubled him not at all, and Chelsea
forgave him the architectural monstrosity for the sake of the garden,
which his leisurely building methods preserved. The wall which encloses
it is one of Dr. Phéné’s happiest “finds,” and is said to be a part
of old St. Paul’s—it certainly bears the carven arms of several
London boroughs, and is not incongruous to its surroundings; behind it
blackbirds, thrushes, and wood-pigeons fancy themselves in the country,
and birds and men alike rejoice that the complications of the Phéné
property still preserve their shade and shelter untouched.
Cheyne House, which also belonged to Dr. Phéné, was less highly
esteemed by him than his Renaissance effort, and has been allowed
to drop into grievous ruin: it is the house “of ancient gravity and
beauty” of which Mr. E. V. Lucas writes so affectionately in his
_Wanderer in London_. It sits back, with its eyes closed, wrapped in
its ancient vine, and no one will ever know its three-hundred-year-old
secrets. For in the old maps it shows bravely in the centre of its
park, and a little narrow walk, called Tudor Lane, led from it to the
river, where possibly it had its own landing-stage; a beautiful state
reception room at the back had seven windows giving on the terrace. It
is sad and strange that so little is known of its inhabitants in the
past.
No. 4 Upper Cheyne Row is a modern interpolation, filling up the Tudor
Lane aperture; but No. 6 is another really old house, dating by its
leases from 1665, and having a splendid mulberry tree, which in a
document of 1702 is mentioned as “unalienable from the property.”
No. 10 (at that time No. 4) was Leigh Hunt’s home for seven years from
1833 to 1840, where, as Carlyle wrote, “the noble Hunt will receive
you into his Tinkerdom, in the spirit of a King.” He was often in
absolute want during this period, yet his belief in the human and the
divine was never shaken by poverty, illness, or distress of mind, and
the beautiful quality of his work was maintained in spite of perpetual
difficulties.
[Illustration: _Photo by Miss Muriel Johnston._
THOMAS CARLYLE.
p. 10] ]
The date 1708 on the side wall above Cheyne Cottage fixes the building
of Cheyne Row and the west end of Upper Cheyne Row; a beautiful old
house which was cleared away in 1894 to make room for the Roman
Catholic Church of the Holy Redeemer was called Orange House, in
political compliment, and its next-door neighbour, York House, was
named after James II. These two were probably older than the others,
and Lord Cheyne, who formed the Row, built his newer houses into line
with those already existing. Some of the iron work of the balconies,
etc., and the porticoes, are worth noting.
Carlyle’s House (now No. 24) can be visited every week-day, between
the hours of 10 a.m. and sunset—admission 1_s._, Saturdays 6_d._—and
it speaks for itself. I will only add a reference to Mrs. N., the old
servant who spent years in Carlyle’s service, and finished her honoured
days in ours—her descriptions of “the Master” writing his _Frederick
the Great_ were about the most intimate revelations that have yet been
made of the Carlyle _ménage_!
The Master would be so immersed in his subject—maps and books
being spread all over the floor of his room “in his wrestle with
Frederick”—that his lunch would remain unheeded until, stretching up
a vague hand, he plunged it into the dish of hashed mutton or rice
pudding, as the case might be—regardless of plate, spoon, or decorum.
“It was no cook’s credit to cook for him,” was Mrs. N.’s verdict,
“a cook that respected herself simply couldn’t do it,” and though
she adored Mrs. Carlyle, she left her service to restore her own
self-respect.
Cheyne Cottage was once the Toll Gate for entering Chelsea Parish at
the south-west angle—there was another Toll Gate, I think, at the
Fulham end of Church Street, but it was probably to this one on the
river bank that James Duke of York, afterwards James II., came one
winter night a few minutes later than the recognised closing time,
eight o’clock. James was unpopular, and the old woman who kept the gate
a staunch Protestant, so that to the outriders’ challenge, “Open to the
Duke of York!” she shrilled back defiance from her bedroom window,
“Be ye Duke or devil, ye don’t enter by this gate after eight of the
clock!” and so left James and his coach to lumber on to Whitehall
through the bankside mud, as best he might.
When I first knew Chelsea, the old board with the toll prices and
distances under the Royal arms of Charles II. was preserved at the
cottage, but this has, I believe, been surrendered to the London Museum.
Lawrence Street, between Cheyne Row and the Old Church, boasts the
sponsorship of the Lawrence family, goldsmiths and bankers, whose
mansion adjoined the church, and whose business premises leave their
name to the group of very old houses immediately west of Church Street.
These houses, though actually standing in Cheyne Walk, are called
Lombards’ Row in commemoration of the Lawrences’ banking business.
Fielding, the novelist, and his brother the Justice lived in the big
eighteenth-century house facing Justice Walk, and Tobias Smollett lived
close by, in a house now pulled down. In the big garden at the back,
impecunious “Sunday men,” whose debts kept them at home on other days,
were entertained every week at a “rare good Sunday dinner, all being
welcome whatever the state of their coats.”
And the Chelsea China Factory existed also at the upper end of Lawrence
Street for nearly forty years. Dr. Johnson used to experiment there,
having an ambition to excel in a porcelain paste of his own invention,
but his composition would not stand the baking process—perhaps he had
too weighty a hand in the mixing!—and he gave up the work in disgust.
Chelsea china commands enormous prices, as its supply was so limited.
So by Justice Walk and a turn to the left down Church Street, we reach
the Old Church, the heart of Old Chelsea; a still living, warmly
beating heart, after eight centuries.
NOTES