Part 4

London then ended at Islington. Where does it now end? At Highgate; at Whetstone, where the boundary of the Metropolitan Postal District is crossed; or beyond South Mimms, where the frontiers of the Metropolitan Police march with those of the Hertfordshire Constabulary? Highgate Archway was wont to be regarded as the northern gate into London, and may now be taken as dividing the far suburbs and the near. Seventy years ago it was quite rural.

VII

It is curious to look upon an old print like that of the Archway road and its toll-gate, reproduced here, and then, with a knowledge of that busy spot, with its thronging omnibuses and tramcars, to compare the old view with the present-day aspect of the place. An Archway Tavern is seen standing at the junction of the roads, but it is quite unlike the flaunting gin-palace of to-day. What, also, has become of the horse and cattle pond in front? The toll-gate, we know, finally disappeared in 1876, but long before then the ascending roadway had been lined with buildings on either side. Only recently the old and ugly archway has been removed, to make way for the new and handsome iron and steel viaduct, which bears the misleading date of 1897, although the structure was not opened until the summer of 1900. It, may be as well to put upon record that it is situated a hundred yards to the north of where the old Archway stood. Of late years, since the government of London has been taken over by the London County Council, the Archway has been more than ever a landmark, showing to where the frontier of London extended, for the London County Council’s boundary ran half-way through the structure, whose northern moiety lay within the territory of the Middlesex Council.

The new viaduct, wholly in Middlesex, cost £25,000. Its date, “1897,” prominent in cast iron on the southern approach, together with the fact that the work was not completed until midway through 1900, perpetuates the sinister memory of the great engineering strike in progress during that interval. Five authorities—the London County Council, the Middlesex County Council, the Islington Vestry, Hornsey District Council, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (who are administrators of the Bishop of London’s estates here)—contributed in varying proportions to the cost. They may look with satisfaction at the result: a light and handsome bridge, that, vaulting across the roadway with a clear flight of three times the span of the old arch, renders it possible to widen the road to any conceivable width, against that time which Mother Shipton foresaw, when “England shall be undone and Highgate Hill stand in the middle of London.”

Let us look back, on passing beneath this triumph of engineering skill, and, seeing with what grace the huddled mass of London is framed by it, conceive the welcome it may seem to extend to the wayfarer (if such there be) coming to the capital to seek his fortunes. It may, however, be readily supposed that the days when ambitious youth resorting by road to London, there to win fortune with the customary half-crown, are done. The roads nowadays have lost all possibilities of that endearing romance of high ambition and courage, coupled with slender resources and an uninstructed belief that London’s streets are paved with gold. The precociously worldly-wise youngsters of to-day, who resort to the Metropolis by rail, have no such illusions.

On the fortune-seekers of old, who tramped the weary miles to this gateway of their ambition, the forbidding old Archway must needs have exercised a dispiriting influence. It looked, from its outer side, so like a fortress gate, and was alas! too often a prison-gate when once within. London, lying down below them, vast and unknown; how, they might have thought, would it be possible to conquer _that_; to win a place _there_? Little blame to such of them as may have trembled at the prospect and retraced their steps; and better perhaps had it been for many of those who went forward that their courage had thus failed them at the threshold; rather than that they had gone down into that human whirlpool, to return broken in after days, to leap to death from the footpath above the lofty arch, into that roadway they had trod so hopefully years before.

For old Highgate Archway was a veritable Bridge of Sighs; a favourite resort of London suicides to whom a leap from Waterloo Bridge into the river did not offer great attractions. It was not until the Archway was opened toll-free that the iron railings fencing the upper roadway were erected. They were 7 feet in height, cost £700, and were the cause of great disappointment to would-be suicides by leaping, who have an illogical objection to falling one yard more than necessary for the purpose of breaking their necks. This explains the comparative disfavour with which suicides regard the Golden Gallery of St. Paul’s Cathedral and other high places.

It remains uncertain whether those protective railings were erected for the sake of the suicides, or for that of the increased number of persons who used the Archway Road when tolls were abolished, some of whom might have been injured by those too anxious to shuffle off their mortal coil, to first ascertain whether or not the road was clear. Certain, however, it is that it mattered very much to the local authorities from which side the suicides came down: the territory of the Islington Vestry having been on one side and that of the Hornsey Local Board on the other. It is even related that one authority proposing to the other that railings should be erected, and meeting with a refusal to share the cost, fenced in its own side and thus left the self-murderers no choice. The expense and trouble of the necessary inquests falling on the other authority speedily brought about the railing-in of that side also.

VIII

The roadway of Highgate Archway is on a level with the cross upon the dome of St. Paul’s. From what the perfervid preachers of our own time—the Solomon Eagles of our day—call that “sink of iniquity,” the voice of London, inarticulate, like the growl of a fierce beast, rises continually, save for some sleepy hours between midnight and the dawn. Frank Osbaldistone, in _Rob Roy_, journeying north, heard the hum of London die away on his ear when he reached Highgate, the distant peal of her steeples sounding their admonitory “turn again,” just as they did to Whittington. Looking back from the Hill upon the dusky magnificence of the Metropolis, he felt as if he were leaving behind comfort, opulence, the charms of society, and all pleasures of cultivated life. The modern wayfarer is not so easily rid of the Great City, whose low-pitched roar not only follows him to these northern heights, but pursues him, clamant, onwards through Finchley, and whose rising tide of houses now laps the crest of Highgate Hill and spills over the brim, in driblets of new suburban streets, like a brick and mortar Deluge.

Just half a mile past the Archway, which of old was the _ultima thule_, the Hercules Pillars of London in this direction, still stands the “Woodman” inn, pictured in the coaching print of the thirties, shown over page. It is the original building that still stands here, but carved and cut about and greatly altered, and stands converted into an ordinary public-house. The curious little summer-house, or look-out, remains, little changed, but no visitors ascend to it to admire the view with telescopes, as we see them doing in the picture; for the spreading hill and dale towards London are covered with houses—objects not so rare in the neighbourhood of London that one needs to seek them with a spy-glass.

Southwood Lane, opposite this old inn, leads across from this branch of the high road to Highgate village, which should be noticed before the modern spirit seizes upon and transforms it.

“When Highgate Archway and the Archway Road were completed, in 1813, and traffic, notwithstanding the heavy tolls, began to come and go this way, Highgate village was ruined. Few cared to painfully toil up Highgate Hill and go through the once busy village down the corresponding descent of North Hill. Ever since then, while the suburbs round about have grown, Highgate village has gradually decayed. Little alteration has been made here in the broad street—empty now, that was once so busy—and Highgate remains preserved like a fly in amber, testifying to the old-world appearance of a typical coaching village near London. True it is that its fine old houses are a thought shabby, while the “Red Lion,” though still standing, has long been closed, and its elaborate sign-post innocent these many years of its swinging sign. The “Gatehouse Tavern,” too, was rebuilt in 1896; but, for the rest, Highgate is the Highgate of old.

“Established over five hundred years” was the legend displayed by the old “Gatehouse Tavern” pictured here. Many old clubs held high revel in it—literary clubs and others making their several ostensible objects the excuse for holding high revel. _Punch_ itself was founded in a pot-house. Among the clubs that foregathered here were the “Ash Sticks,” the “Aged Pilgrims,” and the “Ben Jonson”; while in the old low-ceilinged rooms the Sunday ordinary that was long a favourite institution, combined with some deservedly renowned port, attracted George Cruickshank (before he found grace and became a total abstainer) and his brother Robert; Archibald Hemming, _Punch’s_ first cartoonist; and many an Early Victorian.

The steep descent of North Hill brings the explorer from old Highgate to East Finchley, where a modern suburb struggles bravely, but with indifferent success, to live down the depressing circumstance of being set in midst of some half-dozen huge cemeteries, and on a road along which every day and all day a continual stream of funeral processions passes dismally along. The chief gainer from this traffic appears to be the “Old White Lion,” where the mourners halt and refresh on their return. Mourning should seem, judging from the assemblage outside the “Old White Lion” (which should surely, in complimentary mourning, be the “Old _Black_ Lion”), to be a thirsty business.

Beyond the cemeteries lies Brown’s Wells, in midst of what was once Finchley Common. At Brown’s Wells, if anywhere, memories of that ill-omened waste should be most easily recalled; for here, beside the road, in the grounds of Hilton House, stands the massive trunk of “Turpin’s Oak,” still putting forth leaves with every recurrent spring. Did the conscience-stricken spirits of the dead revisit the scenes of their crimes, then the garden of Hilton House might well be peopled o’ nights with remorseful spooks; for many another beside Turpin lurked here and snatched purses, or held up coaches and horsemen crossing this one-time lonely waste.

Pennant, the antiquary, writing at the close of the eighteenth century, talks of the great Common not as an antiquity but as a place he was perfectly well acquainted with, travelling as he did the Holyhead Road between Chester and London. “Infamous for robberies,” he calls it, “and often planted with gibbets, the penalty of murderers.”

This aspect of Finchley Common was then no new thing, and if Pennant had been minded to write an antiquarian exercise on its evil associations, he would have found much material to his hand. But the most sinister period of the Common’s unsavoury history began at the close of the long struggle between King and Parliament in the mid-seventeenth century, and for long years afterwards robbery and murder were to be feared by travellers in these wilds.

William Cady was early among the highwaymen who made this a place of dread. His was a short and bloody career of four years on the King’s highway, ending in 1687, when he was hanged at Tyburn for the last of his exploits, the murder of a groom on this then lonely expanse. He had overtaken a lady riding for the benefit of the air, and, ignoring the groom, tore the diamond ring from her finger, snatched a gold watch from her pocket, and, threatening her with a pistol, secured a purse containing eighty guineas. The groom, unarmed, could do nothing but abuse the highwayman, who shot him dead with two bullets through the brain and was just about making off when two gentlemen rode up with pistols in their hands. Cady at once opened fire on them, and a lively pistolling began, ending with the highwayman’s horse being shot and himself seized and bound, and in due course taken to Newgate, whence he only emerged for that last ride to Tyburn, which was the usual ending of his kind. He did not make an edifying exit but cursed, drank, and scoffed to the last, dying with profanity on his lips, at the early age of twenty-five.

From the unrelieved vulgarity and brutality of Cady’s exploit it is a relief to turn to that of a man of humour. Would that we knew his name, so that it might be ranged with those of Du Vall and Captain Hind, themselves spiced with an airy wit that occasionally eased the loss of a watch or a purse to those suddenly bereft of them. This unknown worthy, whose exploit is recorded in a contemporary newspaper, was a humorist, if ever there was one. It was one evening in 1732, when he was patrolling the Common, that a chariot and four horses approached from the direction of London. Hopeful of a rich quarry, he spurred up and thrust a pistol through the carriage window, demanding money and jewellery. Now, unhappily for the highwayman’s hope of plunder, this was the carriage of a Yorkshire squire returning home without him, and the person sitting within was but a countryman to whom the coachman had given a lift.

“I am very poor,” exclaimed the rustic, terrified at sight of the pistol, “but here are two shillings; all I have got in the world.”

Cady, doubtless, in his disappointment, would have shot the yokel; but this was a “highway lawyer” of a different stamp. “Poor devil!” said that true Knight of the Road, withdrawing his pistol and waving the proffered money aside; “here, take a shilling and drink my health!” And so, tossing him a coin, he disappeared.

For accounts of other happenings upon this sombre Common, let the curious refer to the pages of the GREAT NORTH ROAD, where they will be found, duly set forth.

Not until the first few years of the nineteenth century had passed was the place safe. It was an Alsatia wherein the most craven of footpads might rob with impunity. Strange to say, there were those who did not think it right to shoot highwaymen, and many of those who did so, lost their nerve at the supreme moment and fired wildly into space. The robbers’ risks were therefore not overwhelming. Dr. Johnson was undecided about this matter of right, as we learn from one of those semi-philosophical discussions into which Boswell led him; discussions the indefatigable “Bozzy” has recorded at length. Three of them—Johnson, Boswell, and Taylor—were disputing the question. “For myself,” said Taylor, “I would rather be robbed than shoot highwaymen.” Johnson—perhaps because he generally took the opposite view, from “cussedness” or a love of disputation—argued that he would rather shoot the man on the instant of his attempt than afterwards give such evidence against him as would result in his execution. “I may be mistaken,” said the great man, “as to him when I swear; I cannot be mistaken if I shoot him in the act. Besides, we feel less reluctance to take away a man’s life when we are heated by the injury, than to do it at a distance of time by an oath after we have cooled.”

This seemed to Boswell rather as acting from the motive of private vengeance than of public advantage; but Johnson maintained that in acting thus he would be satisfying both. He added, however, that it was a difficult point: “one does not know what to say: one may hang one’s self a year afterwards from uneasiness for having shot a highwayman. Few minds are to be trusted with so great a thing.” And we may add, seeing how many highwaymen were shot at, and how few hit, few hands either.

Half a mile beyond Turpin’s Oak is North Finchley, a recent suburb of smart shops, risen on the site of those gibbets mentioned by Pennant. Those who affect to be more genteel and individualistic, name it Torrington Park, and thus hope to be exquisitely distinguished from the ruck of Finchleys that take their names from the four points of the compass. The Park Road Hotel, rising at the angle where the road from Child’s Hill joins the highway we are travelling, actually stands on the site of a gibbet. As “Tally-ho Corner,” this is a spot familiarly known to cyclists. Maps, however, know it as “Tallow Corner.”

Whetstone succeeds to North Finchley. It once groaned under the oppression of a toll-gate—a gate that spanned the road by the “Griffin” inn, where the old “whetstone” still remains. This gate, abolished November 1st, 1863, was associated with a story of George Morland, the artist, who, having received an invitation to Barnet, was journeying to that town in company with two friends, when he was stopped here by a cart containing two men, who were disputing with the toll-keeper. One was a chimney-sweep, and the other one Hooper, a tinsmith and prize-fighter, scarcely higher in the social scale; but they knew Morland, who had often caroused with them at the low wayside taverns he affected. Now, however, he was not in a mood for his old companions; recent success had turned him respectable for a time. Accordingly, he endeavoured to pass, when the tinsmith called out, “What, Mr. Morland, won’t you speak to a body?”

It was of no use trying to escape, for the man began to roar out after him, so that he was obliged to turn back and shake hands with his old crony; whereupon Hooper turned to the chimney-sweep and said, “Why, Dick, don’t you know this here gentleman? ’Tis my friend, Mr. Morland.” The man of soot, smiling a recognition, forced his unwelcome black hand upon his brother of the brush; then they whipped the horse up and went off, much to Morland’s relief. He used afterwards to declare that the sweep was a stranger to him; but the dissolute artist’s habits made the story generally believed, and “Sweeps, your honour,” was a joke that followed him all his days.

IX

Barnet lies two miles ahead, crowning a ridge. Between this point and that town the road goes sharply down Prickler’s Hill, and, passing under a railway bridge, climbs upwards again, along an embanked road that, steep though it be, takes the place of a very much steeper roadway. It was constructed between 1823 and 1827, as a part of the general remodelling of the Holyhead Road. The deserted old way, now leading no-whither, may be seen meandering off to the left, immediately past the railway bridge, down in the hollow. Passing the “Old Red Lion” and a row of old houses that, fallen from their importance in facing the high road, look dejectedly across one-half of the Fair Ground, it comes to an end at the last house, whose projecting bay proclaims it to have once been a toll-house.

Barnet is famous for two things: for its Battle and for its Fair. The Battle is a thing of the dim and distant past: the Fair belongs to the present—the poignant present, as you think who venture within ear-shot of its Michaelmas hurly-burly, what time the horse-copers are rending the air with raucous cries, steam-organs bellowing, and, in fact, “all the fun of the Fair” in progress. It is, according to your taste and to the condition of your nerves, a pleasure or a martyrdom to be present at the great Fair of Barnet: that three days’ Pandemonium to which come all the lowest of the low, whom, paradoxically enough, that “noble animal, the friend of man,” attracts to himself. For Barnet is, above all other things, a Horse Fair. For love of the Horse, and with the hope of selling horses—and incidentally swindling the purchasers of them—such widely different characters as the horsey East-ender, the sly and crafty Welshman, the blarneying Irishman, and Sandy from Scotland, come greater or smaller distances with droves of cart-horses, cobs, hunters, and, in fact, every known variety of the Noble Animal; and to this nucleus of a Fair innumerable other trades attach themselves, like parasites. Barnet Fair dates back to the time of Henry II. It is, therefore, of a very respectable antiquity. This antiquity is, indeed, the only respectable thing left to it. The rest is riot; and if the Barnet people had their will, there is little doubt that it would, in common with many other fairs, be abolished. When originally established, by Royal Charter, it lasted three weeks. From three weeks it was successively whittled down, in course of time, to sixteen days, and then to three days. From it, in other times, the Lord of the Manor, the Earl of Stratford, derived a splendid revenue; for his tolls, rigorously exacted by his stewards, were eightpence for every bull or stallion entering the Fair; fourpence for every horse, ass, or mule; and for every cow or calf, twopence.

The Fair Ground extends to either side of the long embankment, on whose steep slope the high road is carried up into Barnet Town; but the chief part of it centres around High Barnet station, on the right hand. The Fair begins on the first Monday in September, but at least a week before that date Barnet town and the roads leading into it, usually so quiet, are thronged with droves of horses and herds of cattle, and with the caravans of the showmen who hope to “make a good thing” out of the thousands of visitors to the Fair. Whatever private residents in Barnet may think of it, and however much they would like to see it abolished, its lasting success is assured as a popular holiday for certain classes of Londoners. The typical ’Arry of Hendon or of Epping would no more think of not visiting Barnet Fair than he would think of abstaining from deep drinking when he reached the place. For, now that all other fairs within reach of London have been suppressed, this is pre-eminently the Cockney’s outing. To deprive him of it would savour not a little of cruelty: it would certainly cut off from the travelling showmen and the proprietors of the giddy steam roundabouts a goodly portion of their incomes, while the pickpockets would miss one of the greatest chances in the year.

Let those who know of fairs only from idyllic descriptions of such things in the England of long ago, visit this of Barnet. Nothing in it is poetic, unless indeed the language common to those who attend upon the Noble Animal may be so considered; and certainly that is full of imagery, of sorts. It is wonderful what a power of debauching mankind the Horse possesses. Your ordinary cattle-drover is no saint, but he is a Bayard and a carpet-knight beside these fellows with straws in their mouths, and novel and vivid language on their tongues.