Part 1

Transcribed from the 1889 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David Price, email [email protected]

[Picture: Statue of Thomas Carlyle, by Boehm]

OLD CHELSEA _A SUMMER-DAY’S STROLL_

BY BENJAMIN ELLIS MARTIN

ILLUSTRATED BY JOSEPH PENNELL

[Picture: Gateway of Rossetti’s old house]

London T FISHER UNWIN 26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1889

NOTE.

THE stroll described in these pages may be imagined to be taken during the summer of 1888: all the dates, descriptions, and references herein having been brought down to the present moment.

The specimen of Old Chelsea ware on the cover is an accurate copy—reduced in size, naturally—of one of the plates of the set belonging once to Dr. Johnson, now in Holland House. For the privilege of this unique reproduction I am indebted to the courtesy of Lady Holland.

B. E. M.

LONDON, _August_, 1888

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE STATUE OF THOMAS CARLYLE, BY BOEHM _Frontispiece_ THE EMBANKMENT MANSIONS FROM BATTERSEA 16 A VIEW OF CHELSEA 21 STEAMBOAT PIER AT OLD BATTERSEA BRIDGE, AND THE 26 RIVER FRONT, TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO THE EMBANKMENT AND OLD BATTERSEA BRIDGE 29 MAP OF CHELSEA 35 THE HOUSES AT CHELSEA 56 LINDSEY HOUSE AND BATTERSEA BRIDGE 59 SANDFORD MANOR HOUSE, SAND’S END 64 CHELSEA HOSPITAL, RIVER FRONT 72 PARADISE ROW 88 TITE STREET 99 STATUE OF SIR HANS SLOANE IN THE BOTANIC GARDENS 103 NO. 4, CHEYNE WALK 107 GATEWAY OF ROSSETTI’S OLD HOUSE 110 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI’S GARDEN 114 DON SALTERO’S 123 CHEYNE WALK, WITH THE MAGPIE AND STUMP 127 A CHELSEA CORNER 133 STATUE OF THOMAS CARLYLE, BY BOEHM 136 CARLYLE’S HOUSE, GREAT CHEYNE ROW 139 THE CHELSEA RECTORY 144 A CORNER IN CHELSEA OLD CHURCH 154 OLD BATTERSEA CHURCH, WHERE BLAKE WAS MARRIED, 164 SHOWING THE WINDOW FROM WHICH TURNER SKETCHED THE WESTERN END OF CHEYNE WALK 167 TURNER’S LAST DWELLING-PLACE 171 BATTERSEA BRIDGE AND CHURCH FROM TURNER’S HOUSE 176

* * * * *

“OUT of monuments, names, wordes, proverbs, traditions, private recordes and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of bookes, and the like, we doe save and re-cover somewhat from the deluge of Time.”—_Bacon_, “_Advancement of Learning_”, _Book II_.

“I have always loved to wander over the scenes inhabited by men I have known, admired, loved, or revered, as well amongst the living as the dead. The spots inhabited and preferred by a great man during his passage on the earth have always appeared to me the surest and most speaking relic of himself: a kind of material manifestation of his genius—a mute revelation of a portion of his soul—a living and sensible commentary on his life, actions, and thoughts.”—_Lamartine_, “_Pilgrimage to the Holy Land_.”

“The man that is tired of London is tired of existence.”—_Samuel Johnson_.

_Old Chelsea_.

[Picture: The embankment mansions from Battersea]

I HAD strolled, on a summer day, from Apsley House towards the then residence of Charles Reade at Knightsbridge, when I came upon one of those surprises of which London is still so full to me, even after more than a dozen years of fond familiarity with its streets and with all that they mean to the true lover of the Town. For, as I watched the ceaseless traffic of the turbulent turnings from the great thoroughfare down towards Chelsea, there came to my mind a phrase in the pages of its local historian: who, writing but a little earlier than the year 1830, points with pride to a project just then formed for the laying out of the latest of these very streets—at that day it was a new rural road cut through fields and swamps—and by it, he says, “Chelsea will obtain direct connection with London; and henceforth must be considered an integral part of the Great Metropolis of the British Empire”! It is hard to realise that only fifty years ago Chelsea was a rustic and retired village, far from London: even as was Islington, fifty years ago, when Charles Lamb, pensioned and set free from his desk in the India House, retired to that secluded spot with his sister to live “in a cottage, with a spacious garden,” as he wrote; with “the New River, rather elderly by this time, running in front (if a moderate walking pace can be so termed)”: even as was Kensington—“the old court suburb pleasantly situated on the great Western road”—just fifty years ago, when wits and statesmen drove between fields and market gardens to the rival courts of Gore House and of Holland House; and N. P. Willis delighted the feminine readers of the _New York Mirror_ with his gossip about his visits to Lady Blessington and about the celebrities who bowed before her. To-day all these villages, along with many even more remote, are one with London. Yet, more than any of them, has Chelsea kept its old village character—albeit preserving but few of its old village features. Of the many magnificent mansions which gave it the name of “The Village of Palaces” five alone still stand—Blacklands, Gough, Lindsey, Stanley and Walpole Houses—and these are greatly altered. I shall show you all of them in our stroll to-day. In between them, and away beyond them, streets have been cut, new quarters built: made up in part of “genteel” villas and rows of respectable residences; but in great part, also, of cheap dwellings, of small and shabby shops. These extremes render much of modern Chelsea utterly uninteresting, except mayhap to the collector of rents or to the inspector of nuisances. Yet much of that which is truly ancient and honourable has been fondly kept untouched, and not ignobly cleaned, as in next-door Kensington. Alongside this artistic squalor we have the curious contrast of artistic splendour in a blazing, brand-new quarter, of which the sacred centre is Tite Street. Here, amid much that is good and genuine in our modern manner, there is an aggressive affectation of antiquity shown by the little houses and studios obtruding on the street, by the grandiose piles of mansions towering on the embankment: all in raging red brick, and in the so-called Queen Anne style. The original article, deadly dull and decorous as it may be, has yet a decent dignity of its own as a real relic, not found in this painful pretence of ancient quaintness. This is a quarter, however, much in vogue; mighty swells dwell here, and here pose some famous _farceurs_ in art and literature; here, too, work many earnest men and women in all pursuits of life. These latter plentifully people every part of Chelsea, for the sake of the seclusion and the stillness they seek and here find: just as there settled here for the same reasons, two centuries ago and earlier, men of learning and of wealth, scholars and nobles, who kept themselves exclusive by virtue of their birth or their brains. And so this privileged suburb,

“Where fruitful Thames salutes the learned shore,”

came to be in time a place of polite resort: while yet, in the words of Macaulay, it was but “a quiet country village of about one thousand inhabitants, the baptisms therein averaging a little more than forty in the year.” On the slope which rises from the river—as we see it in our print of those days—stand, in trim gardens, the grand mansions which first made the little village famous. Back from these isolated houses and between them stretch fair fields, and fertile meadows, and wooded slopes; and along the river bank runs a row of fishermen’s thatched cottages. Here and there on the shore, are nestled noted taverns and pleasure-gardens, much frequented by town visitors, reputable or not, coming up the river on excursions—as does Pepys, “to make merry at the Swan.” Gay sings of the place and the period:

“Then Chelsey’s meads o’erhear perfidious vows, And the press’d grass defrauds the grazing cows.”

The low river shore, planted with lime and plane trees, is protected by a slight embankment: first built by the Romans on the banks above their walled town of London: improved later by the Norman conquerors; and kept in repair afterward either by landlord or by tenant, as might be decided in the incessant disputes between them, still shown on the parish records of that day. This little embankment is broken here and there by carved gateways, giving entrance to the grand houses; and by water staircases—called, in our print, Ranelagh, Bishop’s, Old Magpye, Beaufort Stairs—from which a few country lanes—such as Pound and Church Lanes and Cheyne Row—lead from the river front to the King’s Road. This road had been first a foot-path following the windings of the river a little inland—worn perhaps by the feet of the wandering tribes of Trinobantes—and had gradually enlarged itself as the country around became cultivated. It led from the village of Whitehall through the woods and fields, across the tidal swamps and the marsh lands west of Westminster—partly filled in by the great Cubitt with the earth dug out in the excavations of St. Katherine’s docks, early in this century: where now stretches graceful St. James’s Park, where now Belgravia is built so bravely—and so the road ran to the slopes of Chelsea, to the first good land close alongside the river which rose fairly above it.

[Picture: A view of Chelsea]

Such was the secret of the speedy settlement of this secluded suburb. It was high and healthy, and had easy access to town by the safe, swift, silent highway of the river; when few cared to go by the land road, bad enough at its best, unsafe even in daylight by reason of the foot-pads; but at last made wide and smooth for his coach by Charles II., recently restored. He used it as the royal route to Hampton Palace, and called it the King’s Private Road. Even that exclusive name did not serve to make it safe; and long after Chelsea Hospital was built, a guard of its pensioners nightly patrolled, as an escort for honest travellers, from where Buckingham Palace now stands, across Bloody Bridge,—at the edge of present Pimlico,—and so away through the Five Fields, “where robbers lie in wait,” as the _Tatler_ puts it. For Mr. Dick Steele often went by this road to Chelsea, where he had a little house somewhere near the river bank: whereto he was fond of taking “a friend to supper,” leaving word at home that he should not be able to return until the next morning, the roads being so unsafe by night! Sometimes his friend Addison was with him; sometimes the latter walked this way alone to his own home, at the farther end of Chelsea; and once on a moonlight night, he strolled out here with Colonel Esmond, as you may remember. A few years later, this same walk was frequently taken by Mr. Jonathan Swift, from Mrs. Vanhomrigh’s house in Suffolk Street, Pall Mall—where he used to leave his “best gown and periwig,” as he tells Stella—“and so to Chelsea, a little beyond the Church.” And still later, in December, 1754, Smollett was robbed of his watch and purse—there was but little in the latter, for he was then in poor case—as he went by coach from London to his residence out in Chelsea.

[Picture: Steamboat Pier at Old Battersea Bridge, and the river front, twenty-five years ago] {26}

“King’s Road,” as we see it to-day, in dingy letters on the old brick or plaster-fronted houses, makes us almost look for the Merry Monarch—as history has mis-named one of her saddest figures—driving past, on his way to Hampton Court, in company with a bevy of those beauties who still lure our senses from out their canvasses on the walls of the old palace. We see, at intervals along the road, behind its rusty iron railings and flagged front-yard and old-time porch, a long low brick house,

. . . “whose ancient casements stare Like sad, dim eyes, at the retreating years,”

as if weary of waiting for their owner to come home from the Dutch wars. Through narrow archways we catch glimpses of trees and of gardens. Turning down a rural lane we stroll into “The Vale,” and find a clump of cottages, covered with vines, grown about with greenery; flowers blow, cocks crow, an air of country unconcern covers the enclosure. The French gardeners who came here in crowds in 1685, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and set Chelsea all a-bloom with their nurseries, have left to their heirs but a diminished domain; yet although Butterfly Alley, sought by sauntering swells, has gone, King’s Road is still countrified by its florists: their famous wistarias grow on the Hospital walls and climb the houses of Cheyne Walk: you still find their fig-trees in private gardens, their vines on old-fashioned trellises: they make Chelsea streets all green and golden with their massed creepers through summer and through autumn. In unexpected corners you will stumble on a collection of cosy cottages, like Camera Square; there are a few rural nooks still left; here and there a woodland walk; and in dairies hid behind stone streets the cow is milked for you while you wait to drink the warm milk.

And on the river bank, although the old Roman and the old Norman wall and walk are replaced by the broad new Embankment and its smug gardens; although the insolent affectations of the Queen Anne mania stare stonily down on Cheyne Walk; all these have not been able to vulgarise this most delightful of promenades. Starting from Chelsea Barracks we can still walk under the old plane trees:—on our right the ancient Dutch-fronted houses, so prim, so secluded, so reserved; on our left the placid flow of the storied Thames, broadened here into Chelsea Reach:—to dingy, dear old Battersea Bridge, and so on to Sand’s End. At each end of our walk are the two small rivulets which bounded the old parish east and west; one is now arched over and flows unseen beneath the tread of busy feet; the other serves as a railway cutting and carries rattling trains: so the old-time memories of the place now either flow underground, or are modernised and become part of its daily life.

[Picture: The Embankment and Old Battersea Bridge]

In the extreme north-eastern corner as we enter Chelsea we find Hans Place, a secluded green oval, built about with old-time two-storied brick houses. In No. 25 was born in 1802 the poetess, Letitia E. Landon, known as “L. E. L.”; and at No. 22 she went to school. {31} At the farthest south-western point of the parish, just over on the border of Fulham, stands the old house once tenanted by Nell Gwynne. At the northern end of Church Street, opposite the Jewish burial ground, is a public-house, “The Queen’s Elm,” perpetuating the memory of the tree, there standing until very lately, under which Elizabeth sought shelter from a shower, when strolling in the fields with Burleigh on one of her frequent visits to Chelsea. On the southern, the river, border of the parish, lived George Eliot; and here, at No. 4, Cheyne Walk, she died. Between these spots, marked by the memories of these four women, so far apart in time, rank, and character, how much of history and romance do we traverse!

In taking you for a stroll to-day through Old Chelsea we will not stop to puzzle over the etymology of the name; whether it came from the Saxon, _Chelchythe_, or from _Chesel_, meaning gravel, and _ea_, meaning a bank: nor trace it back to its earliest appearance in Saxon chronicles, in 745, as the Hundred of Ossulston, Middlesex. You may see, if you choose, in the British Museum, the Charter of Edward the Confessor giving the “Manor of Chelsey to the Abbot and brothers of the Ministers of the West,” by whom it was rented for four pounds yearly. But it will not add to the interest of our stroll to learn that when it was a residence of Offa, King of the Mercians, there was a “Geflit-fullic” held here; nor that they had “a contentious synod.” Nor shall we altogether partake of the joy of one Maitland, sounding for many a day up and down the river, and at last finding, on the eighteenth of September, 1732, the very ford between Chelsea and Battersea, traversed by Cæsar’s army in pursuit of the flying Britons. For several centuries after the Conquest, the names Chelcheth or Chelchith were used indifferently; in the sixteenth century it began to be written Chelsey; and it is only since about 1795 that the modern spelling has prevailed.

Among the archives of Chelsea may be seen the will, dated in 1369, of the Earl of Warwick; and we know that long before that year he had come here with the prestige of his prowess at Poictiers, his courage at Cressy, and had built himself a house—the first great nobleman’s house erected here. But we do not know where it stood, nor anything more of it, than that it was afterwards leased by Richard III. to the widowed Duchess of Norfolk for the yearly rental of one red rose.

Sir Thomas More’s is the first house, as well as the fullest of human interest, of which we have any authentic record in Chelsea; and it was he who laid the foundations of the prosperity of the place. He built it for himself in 1520: glad to go from narrow Bucklersbury in the City to sweet sights and sounds and air for his young children. For more than two centuries his house stood here, tenanted by many families, famous and infamous, until 1740, when it was pulled down. It is a labour of love, and no difficult one, to reconstruct it as Bowack saw it: “This house is between 200 and 300 feet in length, has a stately ancient front towards the Thames, also two spacious courtyards, and behind it are _very fine gardens_. It is so pleasantly situated that the late Queen Mary had a great desire to purchase it before King William built Kensington Palace, but was prevented by some secret obstacles.” An old view signed “L. Knyff del: 1699,” shows us a projecting porch in the centre, a dozen or more generous windows on each floor, four of them oriel; and above, many gables, turrets, and a small tower. The back view crowds together, in picturesque confusion, a mass of casements, close packed gables, and jutting pent-houses. Such was “this pore howse in Chelchith” from which More dated one of his letters; and Erasmus wrote of it that it was “neither mean nor invidiously grand, and so subject to envy, yet commodious enough.” It stood on the slope a little back from the river, half-way up to the King’s Road, about where Beaufort Street now runs. A spacious garden lay in front, too, wherein the great Chancellor was wont to walk, as well as on the gate-house, which, in the words of Aubrey, “was flatt on the top, leaded, from whence is a most pleasant prospect of the Thames and the fields beyond.” Sometimes he walked with his guest Holbein; sometimes with his friend Ellis Heywood, poet and playwright, who wrote warmly about “this enchanting spot”; sometimes with his King, Henry VIII., who, still posing as a good Catholic and Defender of the Faith, used to come up the river, drop into dinner, and saunter afterward in the garden, his arm about More’s neck. The son-in-law, Roper, records this with delight, “never having seen the King so familiar with any one else, except Wolsey.” More knew just what all this was worth, and that his head would count, with the king, for nothing against “say a French city or a citadel.” Wolsey’s fate—the fate of so many others—howbeit warned none of the rest; else could they not have forgotten that to every neck on which had hung that royal ruffian’s arm the axe soon came; and that to be his friend was only a little less dangerous than to be his wife.

[Picture: Map of Chelsea]

In this garden were the stocks for heretics, and the “Jesus tree,” or tree of troth, whereat they were flogged; for More was fond of suppressing heresy, and failing that, he used to suppress the heretics, by flinging them into prison. The resolute old Catholic denied that he had ever laid hands on a dissident, but it is certain that some one did so by his orders. Near his house he had put up the “newe buildinge, for the entertainment of distressed old men and women;” and therein was a small chapel, where he spent much time, praying, and scourging himself with a knotted cord; wearing next his skin the hair shirt which is still preserved in the convent of Spilsberg. He was fond of assisting in the service at the old church, carrying the cross in the procession, and doing divers duties “like a parish clerk.” One day the Duke of Norfolk, coming out to dine with him, “fortuned to finde him in the quier with a surplisse on his backe, singinge:” at the sight of which servile service, the good worldly duke was moved to wrathful remonstrance.