Part 55
“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.
* * * * *
FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Solomon’s Seal. _Convallaria multiflora._ Dedicated to _St. Gregory_ of Nazianzen.
[143] Dr. Forster.
~May 10.~
_St. Antoninus_, or _Little Antony_, Abp. A. D. 1459. _Sts. Gordian_, A. D. 362, and _Epimachus_, A. D. 250. _St. Isidore_, Patron of Madrid, A. D. 1170. _St. Comgall_, Irish abbot, A. D. 601. _St. Cataldus_, Bp. of Tarentum.
* * * * *
FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Slender-leaved Piony. _Pæonia Tenuifolia._ Dedicated to _St. Comgall_.
THE DOTTEREL.
(_For the Every-Day Book._)
In May and June this bird is to be found on Gogmagog-hills and the moors adjacent. It is caught with nets, by people using a whistle made to imitate its note; the bird is so simple and fond of imitation, it suffers itself to be approached, and the net dropped over it. There is a tradition current here, that king James I. was very fond of seeing dotterels taken; and when he came to Newmarket, used to accompany the birdcatchers to the Gogmagog-hills and moors, for that purpose. It is said, a needy clergyman residing in the parish of Sawston, who was very expert in dotterel-catching, attended the king; his majesty was pleased with his skill, and promised him a living: the clergyman waited some years, till, concluding that the king “had remembered to forget his promise,” he went to London and appeared at court, where too he was unnoticed and forgotten; at length, approaching the king, and making the same signs as he was wont to do when catching dotterels with the king near Cambridge, his majesty exclaimed, “Why, here is my reverend dotterel-catcher,” and instantly gave him the long-delayed living:--
The boggy moor a fruitful field appears, Since the _inclosure_ of those latter years; Though oft a victim to the fowler’s snare, The dotterel keeps her wonted vigils there! Ah! simple bird to imitate false man, Who does by stratagem thy life trepan! So by the world is man oft led astray, Nor strives to shun the siren’s ’witching lay; But knows, alas! like thee, when ’tis too late, The want of caution, and repents his fate. In sad reality--too often seen, Does folly end in sorrow’s tragic scene.
_Cambridge_, _May_ 18, 1825.
T. N.
~May 11.~
_St. Mammertus_, Abp. of Vienne, A. D. 477. _St. Maieul_, or _Majolus_, Abbot A. D. 994.
BEES AND BIRDS.