Part 5

“It is not much flock’d to by People of Quality,” he goes on to observe. Here, at least, he is not out of date. People of Quality do not flock to Islington. The medicinal waters are all gone; and that Islington is, even now, not in any great degree a resort of fashion is an incontrovertible fact.

Between this and Highgate, the road leading to what the poets call the “true and tender North” is by no means happy. Any other of the classic highways of England begins better, and however delightful the Holloway Road may have been in the coaching age, it is in these crowded days a very commonplace thoroughfare indeed. The long reaches of mean streets and sordid bye-roads combine with the unutterably bad road surface to render the exit from London anything but pleasurable.

Sir Walter Scott, on his way down to Abbotsford in 1826, calls the Great North Road “the dullest road in the world, though the most convenient,” and the description, minus the convenience, might well stand for its suburban portion to-day. In Sir Walter’s time, however, these first few miles were only just emerging from a condition in which dulness could have had no part. In fact, it may well be supposed that the travellers, who up to that time went by coach to York, well armed, found the journey a thought too lively. Indeed, the Holloway Road, into which they came, from the last outposts of civilisation, was, as it were the ante-chamber into that direful territory of highwaymen and footpads, the veritable Alsatias of Finchley Common and Whetstone. In fact, a few years earlier still, when there were no houses at Holloway at all, and no district known by that name, what is now called the Holloway Road was a lonely track, full of mud and water, through which the coach route ran, infested all the while by the most villainous characters, compared with whom the gay highwayman in ruffles and lace, and mounted on a mettlesome horse, was a knight indeed—a chevalier without fear or reproach. This stretch of road lay then between high banks, and considerably below the level of the surrounding fields. It was a “hollow” road, as such roads are called wherever they exist in the country—the actual, original Hollow Way from which, in the course of time, a whole residential district has obtained its name. Such roads, worn down through the earth by constant traffic, are always very ancient, and though the story of the Holloway Road at a period from a hundred and fifty to eighty years ago was a disgraceful one, the inhabitants of that part can console themselves by the soothing thought that, although it cannot claim the Roman ancestry of the route by Shoreditch, Waltham Cross and Cheshunt, which was the Ermine Way, the road in question probably dates back to the respectable antiquity of mediæval times.

VIII

THE road has been ascending ever since the General Post Office was left behind, and now we come to the beginning of Highgate Hill, where the old way over the hill-top, and the more recent one, dating from 1813, divide left and right. Here, at the junction of Salisbury Road with Highgate Hill, stands the Whittington Stone, marking the traditional spot where Dick rested on his flight, and heard the bells inviting him to

“Turn again, Whittington, Thrice Lord Mayor of London.”

It is a pretty story, and one which, let us hope, will never be forgotten or popularly discredited; how the boy, running away from ill-treatment at his master’s house in the city, halted here in his four-miles’ flight, and resting on the slope of Highgate Hill, saw the clustered spires of London and the silvery Thames—it _was_ silvery then—down below, and heard the prophetic message of Bow Bells inviting him to return. If we can believe that he had his favourite cat with him, let us believe with joy, because it goes far to complete the tender story which has always held captive the hearts of the children; and God forbid we should grow the less tender towards the beautiful legends of our forbears as we grow older.

Bow Bells fulfilled their prophecy in full measure and running over, for Dick Whittington was chosen to complete the year of Mayor—Adam Bamme—who died in 1397, and was Mayor on three separate occasions as well; in 1397, 1406, and 1420. He was knighted, of course, and, moreover, he became one of the richest men of his time. Perhaps the most dramatic thing recorded of his prosperous career as Mayor and a member of the Mercers’ Company, is that splendid entertainment which he gave to Henry the Fifth and his Queen at Guildhall in his last year of office, when he threw into the fire bonds equal to £60,000 of our money, due to him from the king—a generous, nay, a princely gift.

But he was not “Lord” Mayor. The tradition is wrong in that respect. There were “Mayors,” but no “Lord Mayor” until 1486.

Who was Richard Whittington? We know him well in his later career as a Mercer, and as a pious and patriotic citizen; but whence came he? Was he the poor and friendless lad of legend? Well, not quite that. Poor, perhaps, because he was the youngest of three brothers; but not friendless, for his family was of no mean descent. His father, Sir William Whittington, had an estate on which he lived, at Pauntley, in Gloucestershire, and other possessions of the family were at Sollers Hope, Herefordshire. Misfortunes fell upon Sir William, who seems to have died not long after Dick was born; but the family had friends in the FitzWarrens, of whom one, Sir John, was a prominent Mercer in London. Dick’s brothers had, as elder brothers have nowadays, the best chances, as it seemed, and remained in the country, enjoying the family property, or following rural employments. Dick we may readily picture as being sent to FitzWarren, to learn a trade. The great man probably took him for old acquaintance’ sake, and, having received the lad of thirteen, and turned him over to one of his many underlings, promptly forgot him. It is a way with the great, not yet obsolete. We may with a good conscience reject that part of the legend which tells how Dick was found, an obscure waif and stray, on FitzWarren’s doorstep, and taken, in compassion, to serve as a scullion. The pantomimes always insist on this, and on the ferocious cook’s ill-treatment of him; but pantomime librettists have many sins to answer for.

No; Dick was an apprentice, a poor one, and doubtless taken without a premium; but not scullion. There can be little doubt that the country lad, thus thrown into the midst of many other apprentices in FitzWarren’s house, must have been an object of sport. They would taunt him with his country ways, and, superior in their clothes of London cut, ridicule, with the cruel satire of boys, his homely duds. Possibly his flight had some such origin as this.

But it is chiefly on the legend of the cat that more or less learned antiquaries have so savagely fallen, with intent to explain it away. The cat, they assure us, was a fable, and they go on to say that it was from coal vessels called “cats,” in which Whittington embarked his money, that the story grew. Another school of commentators, eager to reduce the pretty tale to commonplace, tell us that it originated in the old French word for a purchase, _achat_. To what shifts will they not proceed in this hunt for an ignoble realism! Whittington is not known to have engaged in the ownership of colliers, or in the carrying of coal. A Mercer has no commerce with such things. Then, that derivation from the French _does_ smell of the lamp, does it not?

Now for the truth of his embarking his favourite cat as a venture, to be sold at a profit in some foreign port. The story, regarded with a knowledge of those times, is by no means an improbable one. Indeed, to go further, it is quite likely. Cats were in that era comparatively rare. They had a high value at home; were even more valuable in Europe, and in the darkly-known countries on the confines of the known world—a small world, too, before the discovery of America—they were almost priceless.

Many childish searchings of heart have arisen over Dick’s parting with his cat for love of gain. Did Dick, like the Arab who sold his steed, repent with tears? Perhaps Dick was the happy possessor of two cats, and his favourite was a “tom.” If the other was a she-cat, and as prolific as are our own, no doubt Dick would have been glad to have got rid of her; except that the progeny themselves were marketable. To this, then, we are reduced: that Dick Whittington as a boy bred cats for exportation, and that his black-and-white Tom, as the progenitor of them all, was the founder of his fortunes. The legend tells us of only one cat, which, when the vessel was driven out of her course to the coast of Barbary, was sold for immense riches of gold and precious stones to the Sultan, whose palace was infested with mice. That may do for the pantomimes; but, unhappily, the ships that were so unfortunate in those times as to be driven on those shores were plundered and their crews slain. It was cheaper than buying.

But whatever the details, it is certain that Whittington owed his first successes to his cat. Several things, despite all destructive criticism, point to the essential truth of the popular story. Firstly, original portraits, painted from the life, testify to it by showing Whittington’s hand laid caressingly on a black and white cat. Then, Whittington was the rebuilder of the old New Gate, and his effigy, with a cat at his feet, stood in one of its niches until the building was pulled down hundreds of years afterwards. Finally, a very remarkable confirmation of the story came from Gloucester in 1862, when, on a house occupied by the Whittington family until 1460 being repaired, the fragment of a carved chimney-piece of that century was discovered, bearing the sculpture of a boy carrying a cat in his arms. It may reasonably be claimed that these evidences, together with the popular belief in the story, which can be traced back almost to Whittington’s own day, confound unbelievers.

The present Whittington Stone is the degenerate and highly unornamental descendant of quite a number of vanished memorials to the great Lord Mayor which have occupied this spot since his day. It is not by any means a romantic spot to the sight nowadays, but for those who can bring romance with them in their own minds, it matters little that the heights just here are crowned with suburban villa roads, that a public-house—the “Whittington Stone Tavern”—stands by, or that the whole neighbourhood reeks vulgarity. The present stone is dated 1821, and succeeded one which had disappeared shortly before, itself the successor in 1795 of a cross. The existing inscription was recut, and railings enclosing the stone put up in 1869; a public-house gas-lamp now crowning and desecrating the whole.

IX

IT is a far cry from the London County Council, the present highway authority at Highgate, to the first roadmaker here, in 1364. A hermit, William Phelippe by name, at that time lived in a little cell on the lower slope of Highgate Hill, looking down upon London. From that remote eyrie, had he been a man of imagination, he might have beheld prophetic visions of London’s future sprawling greatness, when the tide of life should rise to the crest of his hill and bring with it bricks and mortar, wood-pavements, cable-tramways, and other things of equal use and beauty. He foresaw none of these things, possibly because he did not sufficiently mortify the flesh. Certainly he was a hermit not without wealth, and perhaps therefore not one of your sad-eyed ascetics. He had a goodly balance in some old earthenware crock under the floor, or at the bank—the road bank of the Hollow Way, very old-established—and he had ample leisure, unencroached upon by toilette requirements, for which hermits had no use. Lazing in his cell commanding the road—it stood near where the Whittington Stone stands now—he had often noticed how wet, miry, and full of sloughs was the Hollow Way, and with what difficulty travellers ascended by it. Accordingly he devised a scheme by which he conferred benefits alike upon the travellers along the road and the farmers of Highgate. He directed and paid for the digging of gravel and the laying of it along the road, and in the work presently expended all his money. But in so doing he had made an excellent investment; much better than leaving it on deposit at the bank mentioned above, where, in the nature of things, it accrued no interest; for he procured a decree from Edward the Third, authorising “our well-beloved William Phelippe, the hermit,” to set up a toll-bar, and licensing him to levy tolls and keep the road in repair for “our people passing between Heghgate and Smethfelde.” Thus were the first toll-bar and the first turnpike-keeper established, and we may judge that the undertaking was profitable from the records that show how very largely the roadside hermits throughout the country went into the business of road and bridge making or mending shortly afterwards. There were hermits of sorts: some authorised, and some not; some who did good work in this wise and some who did nothing at all, and yet continued to live substantially on the mistaken gifts of wayfarers. The profession of the eremite was not without its jealousies. An industrious road-maker might have a cell placed in a position outside a town favourable for the collection of dues, when another would set up business, say a quarter of a mile further out, and so intercept the money; so that travellers having paid once, had nothing for the real Simon Pure. Having satisfied Codlin, they disregarded Short; whereupon it not infrequently happened that if Short were the more muscular of the two he would go and have it out with his rival, while the world went by, scandalised at the apostolic blows and knocks these holy men were dealing one another.

William Phelippe’s licence was renewed every year. His tariff of tolls is still extant, and we read that for every cart carrying merchandise, its wheels shod with iron, twopence per week was paid; if not shod with iron, one penny. Every horse carrying merchandise was charged one farthing per week. Pedestrians and horsemen without goods went free. These charges seem absurdly small until we multiply them by twenty, which gives results representing the present value of money, and then it will be found that those ancient tolls were on much the same scale as those which existed until July 1st, 1864, when all turnpikes on public highways within fifty miles of London were abolished by Act of Parliament.

A great gap stretches between the time of our road-making hermit and that of Telford—a gap of four hundred and fifty years. Yet, although Highway Acts were from time to time devised for the betterment of the roads, their condition remained bad, and there was always, since 1386, the crest of Highgate Hill to surmount.

Unless we take this hill-top route to the left we shall not have seen Highgate; nor, in truth, is there much to see, now that the old Gatehouse Tavern is gone, and with it the last outward and visible connection with the days of yore. The tavern marked the site of the old turnpike-gate that stood here, the lineal successor of the hermit’s original pitch lower down, when the old route to Barnet by Tallingdon Lane, Crouch End, Hornsey Great Park, Muswell Hill, Friern Barnet, and Whetstone was superseded by the new one through the Bishop of London’s estate, by Finchley and Whetstone, in 1386. It is in the existence at that time of the Bishop’s park that we may perhaps seek with success the origin of the name of “Highgate,” which does not necessarily allude to the very obviously “high” gate situated here—more than 350 feet above sea-level. No; it was the “haigh” gate, the portal which gave access through the enclosure (_haia_) with which my Lord Bishop’s domain was presumably surrounded. Through his land all traffic passed until it emerged on the other side of Whetstone, where, commanding the entrance to Barnet, stood another gate in receipt of tolls, swelling the income of that very business-like ecclesiastic and his successors for hundreds of years.

At the Highgate end dues were collected on horned cattle, among other things, and here originated the practice of being initiated into the freedom of Highgate, a mock ceremonial founded upon Roman Catholic rites at the time of the Reformation. For three hundred years this farcical observance was continued at the tavern by the gate, and only fell into disuse with the decay of coaching. Those who had not previously passed this way were “sworn in on the horns,” a practice traced to the unwillingness of the cattle drovers who frequented the tavern to allow strangers to mix with them. This exclusiveness no doubt originated in the fear of trade secrets being divulged, a feeling which may still be met with among commercial travellers of the older school, who resent the appearance of the mere tourist in their midst. The stranger who in olden times happened upon these drovers at Highgate was discouraged from taking bite or sup here, and only permitted to join them after having kissed the horns of one of their beasts. This speedily became elevated (or degraded, shall we say?) into a sort of blasphemous ritual parodying the admission of a novice into the Church, and this again, with the lapse of time and the dying of religious hatreds, developed into the merely good-natured farce played during the last hundred years of the existence of the custom.

When the coaches pulled up here, it was soon discovered, by judicious questioning, who were the strangers who had not been made “free.” They were made to alight, and, having removed their hats and kissed a pair of horns mounted on a pole, “the oath” was administered by the landlord in this wise:—“Upstanding and uncovered: silence. Take notice what I now say to you, for _that_ is the first word of the oath; mind _that_. You must acknowledge me to be your adopted father. I must acknowledge you to be my adopted son. If you do not call me father you forfeit a bottle of wine; if I do not call you son I forfeit the same. And now, my good son, if you are travelling through this village of Highgate, and you have no money in your pocket, go call for a bottle of wine at any house you may think proper to enter and book it to your father’s score,” and so forth.

An initiate had to swear never to drink small beer when he could get strong (unless he preferred small); never to eat brown bread when he could get white (unless he preferred brown); never to kiss the maid when he could kiss the mistress (unless he preferred the maid, and in case of doubt he might kiss both); after which he had to kiss the horns or the woman in the company who appeared the fairest, as seemed good to him, the ceremony concluding with the declaration of his privileges as a freeman of Highgate. Among the well-known privileges were—that if he felt tired when passing through Highgate and saw a pig lying in a ditch, he might kick the pig away and take its place, but if he saw three lying together he must only kick away the middle one and lie between the other two!

X

IT was on Highgate Hill that the great Francis, Lord Bacon, whom some believe to have written Shakespeare’s dramas, fell a martyr to his scientific enthusiasm. Driving up this chilly eminence one winter’s day when the snow lay on the ground, it occurred to him that, from its chemical constituents, snow must possess admirable preservative properties, and he accordingly resolved immediately to put this theory to the proof. Stopping his carriage at a neighbouring farmhouse, he purchased a fowl and stuffed it carefully with snow. Being in weak health at the time, he took a chill, and before he could be driven home, became so alarmingly ill that he was obliged to be carried to Lord Arundel’s house at Highgate. There a damp bed aggravated his seizure, so that in a few days he died, in 1626.

Farmhouses are far to seek from Highgate Hill nowadays, new roads and streets of shops being more general. With the end of the eighteenth century, Highgate became a populous little town, but its outskirts did not altogether lose their terrors for travellers. Suburban villas had begun to sparsely dot these northern heights of London with the coming of the new era, but the New Police had not yet been brought into being; and so belated dwellers in these wilds afforded fine sport for the footpads, who, hunting in couples, and armed with horrible pitch-plasters, attacked the mild citizen from behind, and, clapping a plaster over his mouth, reduced him to an enforced silence, while they emptied his pockets at leisure. It was late one night in 1807 that Grimaldi, the most famous of all clowns, was robbed on Highgate Hill by two footpads. They spared him the usual plaster, perhaps because there was no one else about, and so it did not matter in the least how loudly he might shout for help. Among minor articles of spoil, they secured a remarkable watch which had been given him two years before as a testimonial by his many admirers. The dial represented his face in character when singing his popular comic song, “Me and my Neddy.” The robbers, seeing this, immediately recognised him. Looking at one another, they could not make up their minds to rob him of his treasure, and so they gave it back, Grimaldi goggling and grinning at them the while, as on the stage. So, with a vivid recollection of Sadler’s Wells, and bursting with laughter, they left him.

It is peculiarly unfortunate for those who are uncertain about their aspirates that London and its neighbourhood should abound in place-names beginning with the letters “A” and “H.” Cockneys have ever—or ’ave hever, shall we say?—been afflicted with this difficulty; but they are overcoming the tendency of their forbears to speak of “’Ornsey, ’Ampstead, ’Igit, ’Arrow, ’Omerton, ’Ackney, ’Endon or ’Atfield.” The classic anecdote in this connection is that of the City Alderman who lived at Highgate, praising his locality to a distinguished guest at a Mayoral banquet.

[Picture: Old Highgate Archway, demolished 1897]

“Don’t you think ’Iget pretty?” he asked.

“Really,” the guest is supposed to have replied, “I haven’t known you long enough to say.”

“I’m not talking of meself,” returned the Alderman, “but of ’Iget on the ’Ill.”

Until 1813 coaches and foot-passengers alike toiled over the Hill, through Highgate village, and by a roundabout road into East End, Finchley, which, with its adjoining hamlets, was until quite recently so greatly cut off from London by these comparatively Alpine heights and the lack of suburban railways, that it was, for all practical purposes, as distant as many other places fifty or sixty miles away, but situated on more level roads or on direct railway routes. To remedy this the Archway Road was cut direct from the Upper Holloway Road to East End, saving half a mile in the distance to be travelled and a hundred feet in the height to be climbed.