In Upper (or "Little") Cheyne Row, close by the Carlyles, lived for seven years,--the most embarra.s.sed years in his chequered career,--Leigh Hunt. (This was from 1833 to 1840, before the Edwardes Square time.) Could one imagine a greater contrast than these two Cheyne Row households? The Hunts were Bohemians of irrepressible type.
Mrs. Carlyle, being, too, in 1834 only at the very beginning of her neat Chelsea housekeeping, and not yet "bug-bitten, bedusted, and bedevilled," was, naturally, very severe on the subject of the Hunts.
To judge from the letters of "that clever lady, a little too much given to insecticide" (as Lord Bowen called her), she had but the poorest opinion of her neighbour"s wife"s "management" and borrowing ways. And here is Carlyle"s account of the Hunt _menage_:
"Hunt"s house" (he says) "excels all you have ever read of--a poetical Tinkerdom, without parallel even in literature. In his family room, where are a sickly large wife and a whole school of well-conditioned wild children, you will find half-a-dozen old rickety chairs gathered from half-a-dozen different hucksters, and all seeming engaged, and just pausing, in a violent hornpipe. On these and around them, and over the dusty table and ragged carpet lie all kinds of litter--books, papers, egg-sh.e.l.ls, scissors, and, last night when I was there, the torn heart of a half-quartern loaf. His own room above stairs, into which alone I strive to enter, he keeps cleaner. It has only two chairs, a bookcase, and a writing-table; yet the n.o.ble Hunt receives you in his Tinkerdom in the spirit of a king, apologises for nothing, places you in the best seat, takes a window-sill himself if there is no other, and then, folding closer his loose-flowing "muslin-cloud" of a printed nightgown, in which he always writes, commences the liveliest dialogue on philosophy and the prospects of man (who is to be beyond measure happy yet); which again he will courteously terminate the moment you are bound to go; a most interesting, pitiable, lovable man, to be used kindly, but with discretion."
In the neighbouring Cheyne Walk have, of course, lived many notable people. Innumerable a.s.sociations cling to this picturesque row of time-darkened red-brick and white-cas.e.m.e.nted houses, with the graceful wrought-iron railings and tall gates that shut out their trim front-garden plots from the curious Embankment. At No. 4, died George Eliot the novelist, in 1880, a short time after her marriage to Mr.
Cross. She had only recently settled into this charming London dwelling, and her voluminous library had only just been arranged for her with infinite care, "as nearly as possible in the same order as at the Priory," when the sudden stroke of Death fell. Daniel Maclise, the early-Victorian painter, a meteor of art, and the wonder of his own age, had lived in this same house before. Cecil Lawson, that young painter of such great promise, who died so early, lived at No. 15; and No. 16, or "Queen"s House," is bound up with the memory of that brilliant and wayward genius, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who lived here after his wife"s tragic death, and gathered round him his famous miscellany of strange beasts and curious creatures.
"Queen"s House," unaltered in essentials, has still a picturesque and old-world air that agrees well with its long history. Its mellowed bricks of sober red have a pleasant solidity. It used to be called "Tudor House," owing to its early traditional a.s.sociations with Queens Katherine Parr and Elizabeth; for the ancient "Manor House" of Chelsea, built by Henry VIII., occupied, with its gardens, the site of this and the adjoining houses; from No. 18 Cheyne Walk eastward as far as Oakley street. Of the many celebrated people who have lived there, Sir Hans Sloane was the latest;--the old house was pulled down after his death. The bas.e.m.e.nts and gardens of the houses in Cheyne Walk still show traces of this palace of Henry VIII. The present "Queen"s House" is said to have been built by Wren, the Royal Architect, for the neglected Queen Catherine of Braganza; and some say that the initials, "C. R.", in twisted iron on the gate and railings, commemorate her tenancy. However that may be, we may take it that Thackeray, in _Esmond_, describes it as the home of the old "Dowager of Chelsey;" and here, again, we note the curious fact that the fictional interest is at least as strong as the real.
Inside, the house is delightful; all the rooms and pa.s.sages are heavily wainscoted, and the bal.u.s.trade of the spiral staircase is of "finest hand-wrought iron." When Rossetti entered on its occupation, Chelsea was still, though literary, comparatively unfashionable; (for in those days the two persuasions did not as yet go hand-in-hand). The poet-painter began a joint tenancy here with Swinburne, George Meredith, and his brother, William Rossetti; of these Swinburne was the most constant, and he wrote many of his best-known poems here. But of Mr. Meredith"s would-be-tenancy the following story is told, on the novelist"s own authority:--
"Mr. Meredith had, rather irresponsibly, agreed to occupy a couple of rooms in Queen"s House.... One morning therefore, shortly after Rossetti moved in,--Mr. Meredith, who was living in Mayfair, drove over to Chelsea to inspect his new apartments. "It was," says the unhappy co-tenant, "past noon. Rossetti had not yet risen, though it was an exquisite day. On the breakfast table, on a huge dish, rested five thick slabs of bacon, upon which five rigid eggs had slowly bled to death! Presently Rossetti appeared in his dressing-gown with slippers down at heel, and devoured the dainty repast like an ogre." This decided Mr. Meredith. He did not even trouble to look at his rooms, but sent in a quarter"s rent that afternoon, and remained in Mayfair, where eggs and bacon were, presumably, more appetizingly served."
Rossetti"s studio was at the back of the old house; but what the painter enjoyed most was the garden, an acre in extent in his time, with an avenue of limes opening out on to a broad gra.s.s plot;--part, no doubt, of the ancient "Manor House" garden:
"In this garden were kept" (says Mr. Marillier) "most of the animals for which Rossetti had such a curious and indiscriminate affection. How many of them there may have been at any one time does not seem to be stated; but as one died or disappeared, another would be got to replace it, or Rossetti would see some particularly outlandish specimen at Jamrach"s and bear it home in triumph to add to the collection. Wire cages were erected for their accommodation, but these were not always proof against escape, especially in the case of the burrowing animals, which had an annoying way of appearing in the neighbours" gardens. Mr. W. M.
Rossetti has given from memory a tolerably long list of creatures which at one time or another figured in the menagerie at Cheyne Walk. They included a Pomeranian puppy, an Irish deerhound, a barn-owl named Jessie, another owl named Bobby, rabbits, dormice, hedgehogs, two successive wombats, a Canadian marmot or woodchuck, an ordinary marmot, kangaroos and wallabies, a deer, two or more armadillos, a white mouse with her brood, a racc.o.o.n, squirrels, a mole, peac.o.c.ks, wood-owls, Virginian owls, horned owls, a jackdaw, a raven, parakeets, a talking parrot, chameleons, grey lizards, j.a.panese salamanders, and a laughing jacka.s.s.
Besides these there was a certain famous bull, a zebu, which cost Rossetti 20 (he borrowed it from his brother), and which manifested such animosity in confinement that it had to be disposed of at once. The strident voices of the peac.o.c.ks were so little appreciated in the neighbourhood that Lord Cadogan caused a paragraph to be inserted in all his leases thereafter forbidding these birds to be kept."
The house, as I said, is very little changed,--though Mr. Haweis, its recent occupant, added a statue of Mercury, poised on the ball at its gable apex,--and its brickwork is said by Mr. Marillier to have "had an older, more natural look in Rossetti"s day." And "in front the unembanked river, and ... the boating bustle and longsh.o.r.e litter of the old days added picturesqueness to the view, which in all essentials was the same as the aged Turner had looked out upon from his little house not very far away." Ghosts,--of Katherine Parr and others,--have, not unnaturally, been accredited to "Queen"s House."
But they do not appear to have survived Rossetti"s tenancy; for Mr.
Haweis, who lived and entertained here for 14 years, was not disturbed by them, "even though he unearthed the entrance of a mysterious subterranean pa.s.sage, which was believed to have communicated with the Lord High Admiral"s House;"--a sort of semi-royal cryptoporticus of intrigue! Mr. Haweis also discovered the antique watergate of the former stately mansion--leading to the stone steps where in old days barges were moored,--the shelving river banks extending in those days far nearer than now. The great thickness of the walls of Queen"s House may, indeed, be partly accounted for by the necessity for protection against floods; Mr. Haweis, who sacrilegiously cut a window to light the spiral staircase, had to pierce three feet of solid brickwork.
Here is a funny story, retailed by Mr. Marillier, of Rossetti and the advancing Age of Progress:
"The only bridge along the reach" (he says) "was old Chelsea Bridge, concerning which Mr. George Meredith tells me a pleasant story. One day there called upon Mr. Rossetti a pompous individual of the vestryman cla.s.s, with a paper to which he requested his signature. "We are getting up a pet.i.tion," he said, "to replace the old wooden bridge by a handsome new iron one, with gilt decorations, and I am sure that you as an artist, Mr. Rossetti, will lend us the weight of your name for so desirable an object." Rossetti"s language, on occasion, could be more forcible than polite, and his unvarnished reception of the vestryman"s proposal caused that rash but well-meaning person to retire with extreme precipitation."
Of all his many pets, Rossetti was perhaps especially devoted to his wombats. To one of these he addressed the lines:
"O how the family affections combat Within this breast, and each hour flings a bomb at My burning soul! Neither from owl nor from bat Can peace be gained until I clasp my wombat."
At the same time, it must be confessed, the poet regretted his pet"s inveterate tendencies toward "drain architecture." Rossetti"s domestic proclivities must, one thinks, have rendered him a terror to his neighbours! Indeed, the only London inhabitant,--if we except the celebrated "Lady of the Cats" in the desecrated Carlyle House,--who can be said to have at all emulated him in that line, was Frank Buckland the great naturalist, who, in his house, No. 34, Albany Street, Regent"s Park, kept "a museum and a menagerie in one." "His house was full of crawling, creeping, barking, flying, swimming, and squeaking things." When he was at church one Sunday, "d.i.c.k, the rat,"
he relates, "stole away two five-pound notes from my drawers." Among other creatures Mr. Buckland kept, like Rossetti, a laughing jacka.s.s, who "would never laugh," and "who was only provoked to a t.i.tter by the consumption of a toothsome mouse"; this pet escaped from its cage one day and was found asleep on the bed of a gentleman near the Hampstead Road. But Mr. Buckland could at any rate excuse his vagaries on scientific grounds, for he was trying to acclimatize foreign animals suitable for food in this country.
The fleeting tide of fashion is now at its height in Chelsea; the historic old houses of Cheyne Walk are let at enormous rents, and, year by year, tall, prosaic red-brick edifices spring up like mushrooms all round them. A few old "bits" of Chelsea still remain unaltered,--but very few. The old church, and the rectory, the home of the Kingsleys, with its charming old walled garden, are still delightful; the embankment houses, standing back behind their gardens and ironwork, are fine in their dignified, time-hallowed red-brick; Paradise Row, that picturesque oasis of old dwellings that breaks the ugliness of the modern Queen"s Road West, yet bears witness to the charm of old Chelsea. In humble Paradise Row, (now part of Queen"s Road West, and converted to laundries and other uses;)--in Paradise Row, with its quaint tiled roofs, dormer windows, and high white gate-posts, many well-known people have lived; it was even connected, more or less, with royalty, for in 1692 it was the dwelling place of the first Duke of St. Albans, Nell Gwynne"s son. Chelsea has always been a.s.sociated with the Stuarts. When it was but a picturesque riverside village,--fishermen"s huts diversified by a few old palaces,--divided yet by s.p.a.ce of green fields from the storm and stress of the greater London,--they brought it wealth and fashion, and caused its gardens to spread in fragrant greenery down to the water"s edge. The Chelsea of the Restoration had the patronage of the aristocracy, as well as that of the Royal favourites; here the King"s Mistresses flaunted their grandeur, their extravagance, their impecuniosity before the world. It was in comparatively humble Paradise Row that the notorious d.u.c.h.esse de Mazarin lived in her later and bankrupt stage; here she entertained royally, and was, besides, in arrears with the Parish Rates. At No. 2 in Paradise Row lived that Lord Robartes, Earl of Radnor, who, like the "Vicar of Bray,"
"trimmed" so judiciously through the Jacobite wars. This house (No.
2.), was, by the way, said by Pepys to be "the prettiest contrived house he ever saw in his life."
King"s Road, Chelsea,--now shabby and mediocre enough, but once the "Merry Monarch"s" own private drive, and said to have been made by him as an easy access to his favourites" suburban resorts,--leads, finally, to Fulham, and to the old house called Sandford Manor, traditionally ascribed to Nell Gwynne"s tenancy. This ancient mansion, now divided into two residences, is still unharmed, though, owing to its too close proximity to the Gas Works, it is now unhappily threatened with demolition. London, as we know, has ever been more utilitarian than antiquarian; and perhaps the old house owes its escape so far to the fact that "it has been used successively as farmhouse, pottery, cloth manufactory, and patent cask factory."--(Mr.
Reginald Blunt, _An Historical Hand-Book to Chelsea_.) Nevertheless, its pilastered doorway exists yet, and, internally, it still boasts its square wainscoted hall and old staircase, much as they were when King Charles, as the story goes, rode his pony up the stair for a freak. The old walnut trees, said to have been planted by Nell Gwynne herself, are gone; but an antiquated mulberry-tree still defies the railway in front of it, and the awful Gas Works behind it--a very Scylla and Charybdis of encroaching modernity! A delightful old house, and yet, surely, all its historical glamour and romance would hardly enable even an enthusiast to take up his abode there.
The old Church of Chelsea, otherwise St. Luke"s,--whose tower of darkened red-brick lends such picturesque effect to the Battersea reach beyond the Albert-Bridge,--is, both for its antiquity and its monuments, one of the most interesting churches in London. Its interior, never having been "restored," has a very old-world look; and it still retains, as when it was built, all the simplicity of the remote village church. Henry Kingsley, whose boyhood was spent in the delightful old Chelsea rectory, fittingly commemorates his father"s church in his best-known story, "The Hillyars and the Burtons." "Four hundred years of memory," he makes Joe Burton say, "are crowded into that old church, and the great flood of change beats round the walls, and shakes the door in vain, but never enters. The dead stand thick together there, as if to make a brave resistance to the moving world outside, which jars upon their slumber. It is a church of the dead."
Dean Stanley greatly loved this church: he used to call it "one of the chapters of his abbey." Here Sir Thomas More worshipped in the days of his power, and here, in the chapel that he built, is his monument.
More lived himself near by, in a now vanished mansion called "Beaufort House," where, in his "fair garden," he received his friend Erasmus, and also, his king--Henry walking with his arm lovingly placed about his favourite"s neck--that neck he was so soon to dissever. In Chelsea Church are the famous "chained books," Sir Hans Sloane"s gift; the Bible, the Homilies, and Foxe"s Book of Martyrs; enormous volumes heavily bound in leather with strong clasps, chained, underneath a bookcase, to a quaint lectern, where they may be read.
This strange custom recalls the monkish days, when printed books were so rare and costly. The names of the guardian spirits of Chelsea, such as Lady Jane Cheyne and Sir Hans Sloane,--respectively lady and lord of the manor, after whom so many streets, squares, and courts have been christened,--recur here too on elaborate monuments and sarcophagi. Both were great benefactors to their parish church. Sir Hans Sloane"s daughter was afterwards Lady Cadogan, and hence it was that the property came into the possession of the Cadogan family.
Sir Hans Sloane is further commemorated in Chelsea by his gift to the Apothecaries" Company of the "Physick Garden," sometimes also called the "Botanic Garden." This pleasant green spot, barred by high railings, and intersected by many paths, used to contain, and contains this day, so far as may be, "all the herbs of _Materia Medica_ which can grow in the open air, for the instruction of medical students."
The old gardens have bravely withstood the vandals and iconoclasts of modern Chelsea, as well as the attacks of builders, seeking what they may devour; but the growth of bricks and mortar round about them has but ill suited the delicate plants, which, it is to be feared, grow now but feebly for the most part. It is long since the days of the Stuarts,--days when the gardens of Chelsea could still grow roses.
Nevertheless, the "Physick Garden" is still delightful for purposes quite other than those for which it was first made; and, fortunately, the terms of the bequest render its alienation difficult and unlikely.
Perhaps, in the happy future, who knows? the garden may be opened altogether to the Chelsea public. Of its original cedar trees, planted by Sir Hans Sloane in 1683, but one now remains, and this is very decrepit; in its decrepitude it is, however, still quite as picturesque as it could ever have been in its prime. The river, in pre-Embankment days, flowed close by the Physick Garden, the modern roadway and parade being land embanked and reclaimed from the river.
The Watergate to Sir Hans"s garden has, in consequence, disappeared; but his statue, erected in 1733, still stands, bewigged and robed, chipped and stained, on its pedestal by the historic cedar tree.
Close by was the site of Chelsea Ferry, and it was near here that the Old Swan Tavern, with its attractive wooden balconies projecting over the river, and an entrance from Queen"s Road, used to stand. This was the famous tavern, house of call for barges, and resort of so many distinguished pleasure parties, that used to serve as goal for the annual race,--prototype of the modern Oxford and Cambridge race,--that was rowed by the young Thames watermen for the prizes of the "Doggett"
badge and the coat full of pockets and guineas. The tavern was destroyed in 1873 to make room for the new Embankment, which has so completely changed the aspect of all this part of the river. To quote a writer in the _Art Journal_ for 1881:--
"No doubt the Embankment at Chelsea was needed; no doubt the broad margin of mud which used to fringe old Cheyne Walk was very unhealthy in summer-time; yet no one who cares for what is quaint and picturesque, and who clings to relics of the old days of which we shall soon have no traces left, can recall the river strand at Chelsea, with its wharfs and its water-stairs, its barges and its altogether indescribable but most picturesque aspect, and not feel as he looks at the trim even wall of the Embankment, and the broad monotonous pavement above it, even if he does not say in words, "Oh, the difference to me!""
On the site of the ancient tavern is now built "Old Swan House," a modern-antique mansion designed in a charming style by Mr. Norman Shaw. A few paces westward from Old Swan House, the modern red-brick t.i.te Street, full of artists" studios and of the elect, runs up towards Queen"s Road. t.i.te Street is, so far as its externals go, somewhat dark and shut in by its tall houses; but it more than atones for any outside dulness by the excessive light and learning of its interiors. "The White House," near the lower end of the street on the right, was built for Mr. Whistler. Further up the street--also on the right--is "Gough House," a fine old mansion of Charles II."s time, now most happily adapted to the needs of the Victoria Hospital for Sick Children.
Close to the site of the old "Rotunda" of Ranelagh, is the famous "Royal Military Hospital," usually called "Chelsea Hospital," and made familiar to all the world outside London by Herkomer"s great pictures, "The Last Muster" and "Chelsea Pensioners." It was John Evelyn who first gained Charles II."s consent to the erection of a Royal Hospital for veteran soldiers on this site,--though local tradition, apparently without any reason at all, persists in attributing its foundation to Nell Gwynne, who, with all her frailties, was ever the people"s darling, and especially a Chelsea darling. The Hospital building--an open quadrangle with wings,--was designed by Wren. In colour as well as form, it is solid and reposeful--a n.o.ble example of Wren"s style and taste. The gardens, open to the public during the day, have something of the calm regularity of old Dutch palaces. But then Chelsea, in building as in horticulture, had always a tendency to the neat Dutch formalism of William and Mary.
A little north of Chelsea Hospital, between the modern Union Street and Westbourne Street, stood, in the days of the Georges, the "Old Original Chelsea Bun-House," that was for so long the resort of eighteenth-century fashion. Hither used to drive George I. and his consort, Caroline of Ans.p.a.ch; George III. and Queen Charlotte also came here in person to fetch their buns home, which, of course, set the fashion. The old house had a picturesque colonnade; but in 1839 new proprietors rebuilt it; which rash proceeding, however, killed the custom.
Since Stuart and early Hanoverian days, times have changed for Chelsea and Kensington; they are now,--as more distant Hammersmith and Fulham are rapidly becoming, and as Putney and Dulwich soon threaten to be,--integral parts of the "monster London," that, like a great irresistible flood, in spreading absorbs all the peaceful little pools that lie in its path. The squalor and the gloom, as well as the splendour and the riches of the great city, are now their heritage.
Never more will the waves lap peacefully at Chelsea along the river"s shelving sh.o.r.es; never again will the streets and squares of old Kensington regain their former seclusion and calm. Instead, a modern, and, let us hope, a yearly more beautiful city will spread, gradually and certainly, over all the available area. Chelsea and Kensington in the past have had many glories; who can say what splendid fortune may yet be theirs? And we who lament the inevitable changes of time, must remember that they are still living cities, hallowed by their past, interesting by their present, but whose greater and more enduring magnificence is yet to come.
CHAPTER XI
BLOOMSBURY
"Some love the Chelsea river gales, And the slow barges" ruddy sails, And these I"ll woo when glamour fails In Bloomsbury.
"Enough for me in yonder square To see the perky sparrows pair, Or long laburnum gild the air In Bloomsbury.
"Enough for me in midnight skies To see the moons of London rise, And weave their silver fantasies In Bloomsbury.
"Oh, mine in snows and summer heats, These good old Tory brick-built streets!
My eye is pleased with all it meets In Bloomsbury."
[Ill.u.s.tration: _The German Band._]
The peculiar and somewhat old-world charm of Bloomsbury is, like that of Chelsea, only made known to her devotees. To the visitor to London, no less than to the fashionable dweller in the West-End, it is a grimy, sordid, squalid region, where slums abound, where "no nice people live," and where mere "going out to dinner" necessitates either the paying of a half-crown cab fare, or the sacrifice of an hour in the bone-shaking omnibus. Hence arises the custom of saying that "Bloomsbury is so far away." Of course, the distance or proximity of any part of London depends on what one chooses for the centre; but, taking either Oxford Circus or Charing-Cross--surely natural enough centres--as the diverging point, Bloomsbury is more central than any residential part of the metropolis. But even at the play poor Bloomsbury is maligned; and this, too, notwithstanding the fact that it is the chosen abode of so many of the theatrical profession. "They call the place where I live, Bloomsbury," says Mr. Todman, the old second-hand bookseller of _Liberty Hall_, "though why Bloomsbury, I don"t know; for there ain"t so much bloomin" as there is buryin","
(this, by the way, is a two-edged libel, for Bloomsbury being on high ground is notoriously healthy). And then the same gentleman goes on to remark, "they call my "ouse a ramblin" one, though why it ain"t rambled away to some nicer place, I can"t think." We get, from the same play, a further impression that the Bloomsburians live mainly on a dish called "Smoked "Add.i.c.k." Perhaps the dramatist was led to this conclusion from the very pervading smell of fried fish that fills certain "unlovely streets" of cookshops or boarding-houses; where, however, in my experience the "add.i.c.k aroma has always yielded the palm to that of "sheeps"-trotters" or "stewed eels." Be this as it may, the old solidly built squares and houses of Bloomsbury have a dignity of their own. Some of the streets have, it is true, "come down in the world;" nevertheless, in their decay they retain a mournful look of having known better days,--a look that even their tenement rooms,--their broken windows, half-stuffed with paper,--their shock-headed dirty inmates,--cannot altogether abolish or destroy.
d.i.c.kens, who always saw the human side of everything, has often noticed the peculiar pathos of some of these old, world-forgotten houses. In his inimitable _Sketches by Boz_ he gives a graphic account of the gradual decay of a house "over the water." Here, the process is somewhat similar. First, it changes from a private dwelling-house to a "select boarding-house"; then, it becomes a friendly, social affair, a "Home from Home"; then, its area steps become dirtier, its cook sits on them, sh.e.l.ling peas, and exchanging jokes with the milkman; it blossoms out in gaudy paint, like a decorator"s shop; cracked flowerpots, of odd shapes and sizes, adorn its windows; and it descends, by slow degrees, yet further in the scale of "gentility,"
till finally it becomes a mere tenement house, its juvenile population going in and out with jugs of beer, its area railings hung round with pewter milk-pots, and its door ornamented with a row of half-broken bell-chains for the different occupants. And, if you should chance, too hurriedly, to ring one of these in search of a special inhabitant, ten to one a cross, dirty-faced female will appear, grumbling: "Can"t yer see as _this_ "ere is Mrs. Smith"s bell?--Two pair back--ye"ve rung the wrong "un!"
The Bloomsbury houses are pathetic, however, not so much from age, as because their glory has departed,--because they have had their day, and ceased to be; for, in the matter of actual age, few of them date back farther than the end of the eighteenth century. Queen Square, indeed, which is far prior to any of its neighbouring squares, was laid out in the reign of Queen Anne, in whose honour it was named, and whose statue still adorns it. It is a curiously shaped square, for, though enclosed, no houses were built at the northern end; this arrangement was made for the sake of the fine view of the hills of Highgate and Hampstead, that the square then commanded. Strange transformation! The Bloomsbury that we know was then all fields; the houses of Queen Square being, so to speak, the last sentinels of the London of that day! Rocques" map of 1746 gives no houses beyond the northern end of Southampton Row. Between Great Russell Street and the present Euston Road, was then open country,--called, first, the "Long Fields,"--then "Southampton Fields," or "Lamb"s Conduit Fields."
Earlier, they were famous for their peaches and their snipes; but in about 1800 they were mainly waste ground, where brawling and disorderly sports took place, and where superst.i.tion a.s.serted that, two brothers having fought there about a lady, the footsteps they made in their death-struggle would never again grow gra.s.s or herb! "The Brothers" Steps," the place was called, or, "The Field of the Forty Footsteps." The present Gordon Square is said to be built upon the exact spot. The place had, however, always been rife with superst.i.tion; for here, on Midsummer-Day, in the 17th century, young women would come looking for a plantain leaf, to put under their pillows, so that they should dream of their future husbands. From these fields could be seen, in 1746 and far later, but two or three n.o.bles" mansions, enclosed in their gardens,--such as "Bedford House,"
pulled down to build Bedford Square,--"Baltimore House," long since built into Russell Square,--and "Montague House," now rebuilt as the British Museum;--with the old "Whitefield"s Tabernacle" appearing through the trees towards the gardens of the ancient manor of "Toten Court," which gave its romantic name to the essentially unromantic Tottenham Court Road. (The ugly "Adam and Eve" public-house, at the junction of Euston Road and Tottenham Court Road, now occupies the place both of the old tavern of that name, and the older manor-house.)
The name "Bloomsbury" is, however, of more remote date; it is, like most London appellations, a "corruption," and comes from "Blemundsbury," the manor of the De Blemontes, or Blemunds, in the reign of Henry III. Later, the manor of Bloomsbury came, together with that of the neighbouring St. Giles, into the possession of the Earls of Southampton, till in 1668 it pa.s.sed with Lady Rachel,--daughter of Thomas Wriothesley, last Earl, by her marriage with Lord William Russell,--into the family of the Dukes of Bedford, the present owners.
Lord William Russell,--who was beheaded, without a fair trial, in Lincoln"s Inn Fields in 1683, for supposed connection with the famous Rye House Plot,--lived in Bedford House (formerly Southampton House), on the northern side of Bloomsbury, originally Southampton, Square.
(The house occupied the whole north side of the square until pulled down in 1802, after the ill.u.s.trious Russells had lived there for more than 200 years.) This was the house admired by Evelyn, in an entry in his diary of February 9, 1665: "Dined at my Lord Treasurer"s, the Earle of Southampton, in Blomesbury, where he was building a n.o.ble square or piazza, a little towne; some n.o.ble rooms, a pretty cedar chapel, a naked garden to the north, but good aire". It was at first intended that Lord William Russell should suffer in Bloomsbury Square, opposite his own residence; but this was apparently opposed by the King as too indecent.... Poor, heroic Lady Rachel Russell! She lived here in retirement till her death, at the age of 86, in the reign of George I. She had, indeed, like Polycrates, given her treasured "ring", and could fear no more from fate. The great landlords of London may get their "unearned increment" easily enough now, yet they had to pay the penalty of greatness in the past!