A Literary Pilgrimage Among the Haunts of Famous British Authors Part 1

A Literary Pilgrimage Among the Haunts of Famous British Authors.

by Theodore F. (Theodore Frelinghuysen) Wolfe.

PREFACE

The favor with which a few articles in the periodical press, similar to those herewith presented, have been received induces the hope that the present volume may prove acceptable. If some popular literary shrines which are inevitably included in the writer's personal itinerary are herein accorded but scant notice, it is for the reason that they have been already so oft described that portrayal of them is therefore purposely omitted from this account of a literary pilgrimage: even Stratford-on-Avon here for once escapes description. However, the initial paragraphs of these chapters lightly outline a series of literary rambles which the writer has found measurably complete and consecutive. The pilgrim is understood to make his start from London.

If these notes of his sojourns in the scenes hallowed by the presence of British authors or embalmed in their books shall prove pleasantly reminiscent to some who have fared to the same shrines, or helpfully suggestive to others who contemplate such pilgrimage, then

"not in vain He wore his sandal shoon and scallop-sh.e.l.l."

The writer is indebted to the publishers of the _Home Journal_ for permission to reproduce one or two articles which have appeared in that periodical.

T. F. W.

LITERARY HAMPSTEAD AND HIGHGATE

_Haunt of d.i.c.kens--Steele--Pope--Keats--Baillie--Johnson--Hunt-- Akenside--Sh.e.l.ley--Hogarth--Addison--Richardson--Gay--Besant--Du Maurier--Coleridge, etc.--Grave of George Eliot._

The explorations which first brought renown to the immortal Pickwick were made among the uplands which border the valley of the Thames at the north of London: the ill.u.s.trious creator of Pickwick loved to wander in the same region through the picturesque landscapes he made the scenes of many incidents of his fiction, and the literary prowler of to-day can hardly find a ramble more to his mind than that from the former home of d.i.c.kens or George Eliot by Regent's Park to Hampstead, and thence through the famous heath to Highgate. The way traverses storied ground and teems with historic a.s.sociations, but these are, for us, lessened and subordinated by the appeal of memories of the famous authors who have loved and haunted this delightful region, and have imparted to it the tenderest charm. The acclivity of Hampstead has measurably resisted the encroachment of London, and has deflected the railroads with their disturbing tendencies, so that this old town probably retains more of its ancient character than any other of the near suburbs, and some of its quaint streets would scarcely be more quiet if they lay a hundred miles away from the metropolis. Off the highway by which we ascend the hill, we find many evidences of antiquity, old streets lined by rows of plain and sedate dwellings wearing an air of dignified sobriety which is not of this century, and which is in grateful contrast with the pert artificiality of the modern fabrics of the vicinage. Many old houses are draped with ivy or shrouded by trees of abundant foliage; some are shut in by depressing brick walls, over which float the perfumes of unseen flowers. A few of the older streets lie in perpetual crepuscule, being vaulted by gigantic elms and limes as opaque as arches of masonry.

[Sidenote: Baillie--Johnson--Kit-Kat Club]

[Sidenote: Keats]

Along the slope of Haverstock hill, where our ascent begins, we find the sometime homes of Percival, Stanfield, Rowland Hill, and the historian Palgrave. Near by is the cottage where dwelt Mrs. Barbauld, and the Roslyn House, where Sheridan, Pitt, Burke, and Fox were guests of Loughborough. Here, too, formerly stood the mansion where Steele entertained the poet of the "Dunciad," with Garth and other famed wits.

On the hill-side a leafy lane leads out of High Street to the picturesque church of the parish, whose tower is a conspicuous landmark. Within this fane we find, against the wall on the right of the chancel, the beautiful marble bust recently erected by American admirers "To the Ever-living Memory" of the author of "Lamia" and "Hyperion."

Here, too, is the plain memorial tablet of the poetess Joanna Baillie, who lived in an unpretentious mansion lately standing in the neighborhood, where she was visited by Wordsworth, Rogers, and others of potential genius. In the thickly tenanted church-yard she sleeps with her sister near the graves of Incledon, Erskine, and the historian Mackintosh. Below the church, on the westering slope, lies embowered Frognall, once the home of Gay, where Dr. Johnson lived and wrote "The Vanity of Human Wishes" in the house where the gifted Nichol now resides with the author of "Ships that Pa.s.s in the Night" for a neighbor and with the home of Besant in view from his study. Near the summit of Hampstead stands a sober old edifice which was of yore the Upper Flask tavern, where the famous Kit-Kat Club held its summer _seances_, when such luminous spirits as Walpole, Prior, Dorset, Pope, Congreve, Swift, Steele, and Addison a.s.sembled here in the low-panelled rooms which we may still see, or beneath the old trees of the garden, and interchanged sallies of wit and fancy over their cakes and ale. To this inn Lovelace brought the "Clarissa Harlowe" of Richardson's famed romance, and here Steevens, the scholiast of Shakespeare, lived and died. Flask Walk, which leads out of the high street among old houses and greeneries, brings us to the shadowy Well Walk, with its overarching trees and with many living memories masoned into its dead walls. Here we see the little remnant of the once famous well which for a time made Hampstead a resort for the fashionable and the suffering. Among the fancied invalids who once dwelt in Well Walk was the spouse of Dr. Johnson. Akenside, Arbuthnot, and Mrs. Barbauld (editor of "Richardson's Correspondence") have sometime lived in this same little street; here the mother of Tennyson died, and here the sweet boy-poet Keats lodged and wrote "Endymion." At a house still to be seen in the vicinage he was for two years the guest of his friend Brown; here he wrote "Hyperion," "St.

Agnes," and the "Ode to a Nightingale," and here he wasted in mortal illness, being at last removed to Rome only to die. Under the limes of Well Walk is a spot especially hallowed by the memory of Keats: it was the object and limit of his walks in his later months, and here was placed a seat (which until lately was preserved and bore his name), where he sat for hours at a time beneath the whispering boughs, gazing, often through tears, upon the enchanting vista of wave-like woods and fields, the valley with its gleaming lakelets, and the farther slopes crowned by the spires of Highgate, which rise out of banks of foliage.

The view is no less beautiful than when Keats's vision lingered lovingly upon it, although we must go into the open fields to behold it now.

[Sidenote: The Heath]

[Sidenote: Leigh Hunt--Jack Straw's Castle]

If we bestir ourselves to reach the summit of the heath before the accustomed pall shall have settled down upon the great city, the exertion will be abundantly rewarded by the prospect that greets us as we overlook the abodes of eight millions of souls. Such a view is possible nowhere else on earth: outspread before us lies the vast metropolis with its seven thousand miles of streets, while without and beyond this aggregation of houses we behold an expanse of landscape diversified with vale and hill, copse and field, village and park, extending for leagues in every direction and embracing portions of seven of England's populous shires. We see the great dome of St. Paul's and the tall towers of Westminster rising out of the ma.s.s of myriad roofs; the Crystal Palace glinting amid its green terraces; across the city we behold the verdured slopes of Surrey and, farther away, the higher hills of Suss.e.x; our eyes follow the course of the Thames from imperial Windsor, whose battlements are misty in the distance of the western horizon, to its mouth at Gravesend; yonder at the right is Harrow, set on its cla.s.sic hill-top, with its ancient church by which the boy Byron idled and dreamed; northward we see pretty Barnet, where "Oliver Twist"

met the "Dodger;" nearer is romantic Highgate, and all around us lie the green slopes and leafy recesses of the heath. Through these strode the murderer Sykes of d.i.c.kens's tale, and from the higher parts of this common we may trace the way of his aimless flight from the pursuing eyes of Nancy,--through Islington and Highgate to Hendon and Hatfield, and thence to the place of his miserable death at Rotherhithe. There are hours of delightful strolling amid the mazes of the picturesque heath, with its alternations of heathered hills and flower-decked dales, its pretty pools, its braes of brambled gorse and pine, its tangle of countless paths. One will not wonder that it has been the resort of _litterateurs_ from the time of Dryden till now: Pope, Goldsmith, and Johnson loved to ramble here; Hunt, d.i.c.kens, Collins, and Thackeray were familiar with these shady paths; Nichol, Besant, James, and Du Maurier are now to be seen among the walkers on the heath. A worn path bearing to the right conducts to the turf-carpeted vale where, in a little cottage whose site is now occupied by the inn, Leigh Hunt lived for some years. Such guests as Lamb, Hazlitt, Coleridge, Hood, and Cornwall came to this humble home, and here Sh.e.l.ley met Keats, the "Adonais" of his elegy. Not far away lie the ponds of Pickwick's unwearied researches; and in another corner of the common we find an ancient tavern bowered with shrubbery, in whose garden Addison and Steele oft sipped their ale of a summer evening, and where is still cherished a portion of a tree planted by Hogarth. On an elevation of the heath stands "Jack Straw's Castle," believed to mark the place of encampment of that rebel chieftain with his mob of peasantry. It is a curious old structure, with wainscoted walls, and was especially favored by d.i.c.kens, who often dined here with Maclise and Forster and read to them his MSS.

or counselled with them concerning his plots. Out on the heath near by was found the corpse of Sadlier the speculator, who, after bankrupting thousands of confiding dupes, committed suicide here; his career suggested to d.i.c.kens the Merdle and his complaint of "Little Dorrit."

Among the embowered dwellings beyond West Heath we find that in which Chatham was self-immured, the cottage in which Mrs. Coventry Patmore--the Angel in the House--died, the place where Crabbe sojourned with h.o.a.re. This vicinage has been the delight of artists from the time of Gainsborough, and is still a favorite sketching ground: here lived Collins and Blake, and Constable dwelt not far away. The author of "Trilby," who has recently taken front rank in the literary profession, long had home and studio in a picturesque ivy-grown brick mansion of many angles and turrets, in a quiet street upon the other side of the hill; here among his treasures of art he commenced a third book soon to be published.

[Sidenote: The Spaniard's]

The highway which leads north from Jack Straw's affords an exhilarating walk, with a superb prospect upon either hand, and brings us to the historic Spaniard's Inn, a pleasant wayside resort decked with vines and flowers, where pedestrians stop for refreshments. d.i.c.kens oft came to this place, and here we see the shady garden, with its tables and seats, where Mrs. Bardell held with her cronies the mild revel which was interrupted by the arrest of the widow for the costs in Bardell _vs._ Pickwick. The quiet of this ancient inn was disturbed one night by a fierce band of Gordon rioters, who rushed up the paths of the heath on their way to Mansfield's house, and stopped here to drink or destroy the contents of the inn-cellars,--an occurrence which is graphically described by d.i.c.kens in the looting of the Maypole Inn of Willet, in "Barnaby Rudge." Next to the Spaniard's once lived Erskine, and among the grand beeches of Caen Wood we see the house of Mansfield, where the daughter of Mary Montagu was mistress, and where ill.u.s.trious guests like Pope, Southey, and Coleridge were entertained.

[Sidenote: Home of Coleridge]

A farther walk through the n.o.ble wood brings us to the delightful suburb of Highgate, where we now vainly seek the Arundel House where the great Bacon died and find only the site of the simple cottage where Marvell, the "British Aristides," lived and wrote. The last home of the author of "Ancient Mariner" is in a row of pleasant houses on a shady street called The Grove, a little way from the high street, which was in Coleridge's time the great Northern coach-road from London. The house is a neat brick structure of two stories, in which we may see the room where the poet lodged and where he breathed out his melancholy life. A pretty little patch of turf is in front of the dwelling, a larger garden, beloved by the poet, is at the back, and the trees which border the foot-walk were planted in his lifetime. To this cosy refuge he came to reside with his friends the Gilmans; here he was visited by Hunt, who once lodged in the next street, Lamb, Hazlitt, Wordsworth, Sh.e.l.ley, De Quincey, and others of like fame; and here, for nineteen years, "afflicted with manifold infirmities," he continued the struggle against a baneful habit, which ended only with his life. His grave was made not far away, in a portion of the church-yard which has since been overbuilt by a school, among whose crypt-like under-arches we find the tomb of stone, lying in pathetic and perpetual twilight, where the poet sleeps well without the lethean drug which ruined his life. On this hill lived "Copperfield" with Dora, and at its foot is the stone where Whittington sat and heard the bells recall him to London.

[Sidenote: Grave of George Eliot]

On the slope toward the city is the most beautiful of the London cemeteries, with a wealth of verdure and bloom. Within its hallowed shades lie the ashes of many whose memories are more fragrant than the flowers that deck their graves. In a beautiful spot which was beloved by the sweet singer in life we find the tomb of Parepa Rosa, tended by loving hands; not far away, among the mourning cypresses, lie Lyndhurst and the great Faraday. A plain tombstone erected by d.i.c.kens marks the sepulchre of his parents, and by it lies his daughter Dora, her gravestone bearing now, besides her simple epitaph prepared by her father, the name of the novelist himself and the names of two of his sons. Here, too, is the grave of Rossetti's young wife, whence his famous poems were exhumed. Among the many tombs of the enclosure, the one to which most pilgrims come is that of the immortal author of "Romola." On a verdant slope we find the spot where, upon a cold and stormy day which tested the affection of her friends, the mortal part of George Eliot was covered with flowers and lovingly laid beside the husband of her youth. Wreaths of flowers conceal the mound, and out of it rises a monument of gray granite bearing her name and years and the lines

"Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence."

From the terraces above her bed we look over the busy metropolis, astir with its myriad pulses of life and pa.s.sion, while its rumble and din sound in our ears in a murmurous monotone. As we linger amid the lengthening shadows until the sunset glory fades out of the sky above the heath and the lights of London gleam mistily through the smoke, we rejoice that we find the tomb of George Eliot, not in the aisles of Westminster, where some would have laid her, but in this open place, where the winds sigh a requiem through the swaying boughs, the birds swirl and twitter in the free azure above, and the silent stars nightly watch over her grave.

BY SOUTHWARK AND THAMES-SIDE TO CHELSEA

_Chaucer--Shakespeare--d.i.c.kens--Walpole--Pepys--Eliot--Rossetti-- Carlyle--Hunt--Gay--Smollett--Kingsley--Herbert--Dorset--Addison-- Shaftesbury--Locke--Bolingbroke--Pope--Richardson, etc._

[Sidenote: The Tabard--White Hart--Marshalsea]

If our way to Southwark be that of the pilgrims of Chaucer's time, by the London Bridge, we have on our right the dark reach of river where Lizzie Hexam was discovered in the opening of "Our Mutual Friend,"

rowing the boat of the bird of prey; on the right, too, we see the Iron Bridge where "Little Dorrit" dismissed young Chivery; and a few steps bring us to a scene of another of d.i.c.kens's romances, the landing-stairs at the end of London Bridge, where Nancy had the interview with "Oliver Twist's" friends which cost the outcast her life. Here, too, the boy d.i.c.kens used to await admission to the Marshalsea, often in company with the little servant of his father's family who figures in his fiction as the "orfling" of the Micawber household and the "Marchioness" of the Bra.s.s establishment in Bevis Marks. In the adjacent church of St.

Saviour, part of which was standing when the Father of English poetry sojourned in the near Tabard inn, is the effigied tomb of the poet Gower, a friend of Chaucer; here also lie buried Shakespeare's brother Edmund, an actor; Fletcher the dramatist, who lived close by; and Lawrence Fletcher, coparcener of Shakespeare in the Globe Theatre, which stood near at hand, on a portion of the site of the brewery which Dr.

Johnson, executor of his friend Thrale, sold to Barclay and Perkins. The extensions of this establishment now cover the site of a church where Baxter preached, and the sepulchre of Cruden, author of the "Concordance." In near-by Zoar Street, Bunyan preached in a large chapel near the Falcon tavern, which was a resort of Shakespeare. Of the Tabard inn, whence Chaucer's Canterbury company set out, the pilgrim of to-day finds naught save the name on the sign of the new tavern which marks its site on Borough High Street; and the picturesque White Hart, which stood near by--an inn known to Shakespeare and mentioned in his dramas--where Jingle of "Pickwick," eloping with Miss Wardle, was overtaken and Sam Weller discovered, was not long ago degraded into a vulgar dram-shop.

Near St. Thomas's Church in this neighborhood formerly stood the hospital in which Akenside was physician and Keats a student. A little farther along the High Street we come to a pa.s.sage at the left leading into a paved yard which was the court of the Marshalsea, and the high wall at the right is believed to have been a part of the old prison where d.i.c.kens's father was confined in the rooms which the novelist a.s.signs to William Dorrit, and where "Little Dorrit" was born and reared. In this court the d.i.c.kens children played, and under yonder pump by the wall Pancks cooled his head on a memorable occasion. Just beyond is St. George's Church, where "Little Dorrit" was baptized and married, with its vestry where she once slept with the register under her head; adjoining is the church-yard, once overlooked by the prison-windows of d.i.c.kens and Dorrit, where the disconsolate young Chivery expected to be untimely laid under a lugubrious epitaph. Another block brings us to dingy Lant Street--"out of Hight Street, right side the way"--where the boy d.i.c.kens lived in the back attic of the same shabby house in which Bob Sawyer afterward lodged and gave the party to Pickwick. Beyond the next turning stood King's Bench Prison, where Micawber was incarcerated by his stony-hearted creditors, and beyond this again we come to the tabernacle where Spurgeon preached. Turning at the site of Micawber's prison, the Borough Road conducts us, by the sponging-house where Hook was confined, to the Christ Church of Newman Hall,--successor to Rowland Hill: it is a beautiful edifice, erected largely by contributions from America, its handsome tower being designed as a monument to Abraham Lincoln and marked by a memorial tablet. A little way southward, we find among the buildings of Lambeth Palace the library of which Green, the historian of the "English People," was long custodian, and the ancient room where Ess.e.x and the poet Lovelace were imprisoned.

[Sidenote: Thames-Side--Shop of Jenny Wren]

[Sidenote: Old Chelsea]

Recrossing Father Thames and pa.s.sing the oft-described shrines of Westminster we come to Millbank, the region into which Copperfield and Peggotty followed the wretched Martha and saved her from suicide. Out of Millbank Street, a few steps by a little thoroughfare bring us into the somnolent Smith Square in which stands the grotesque church of St. John, where Churchill once preached,--described in "Our Mutual Friend" as a "very hideous church with four towers, resembling some petrified monster on its back with its legs in the air." To this place came Charley Hexam and his school-master and Wrayburn, for here in front of the church, at a house near the corner, Lizzie Hexam--the best of all d.i.c.kens's women--lodged with Jenny Wren. It was a little house of two stories, and its dingy front room--the shop of the dolls' dress-maker--later was used as a cheap restaurant, where we once regaled ourselves with a dish of equivocal tea while we looked about us and recognized the half-door across which Wrayburn indolently leaned as he chatted with Lizzie, the seat in front of the wide window where Jenny sat at her work with her crutch leaning against the wall, the corner to which she consigned her "bad old child" in his drunken disgrace, the stairs which led to Lizzie's chamber,--objects all noted by the observant glance of d.i.c.kens as he peered for a moment through the door-way. Sauntering southward by Grosvenor Road, where Lizzie walked with her brother and Headstone, we have beside us on the left the river, glinting and shimmering in the morning sunlight and alive with every sort of craft that plies for trade or pleasure. It was along these curving reaches of the Thames that the merry parties of the olden time, destined like ourselves to Chelsea, used to row over the miles that then intervened between London and the ancient village, and here, too, Franklin, then a printer in Bartholomew Close, once swam the entire distance from Chelsea to Blackfriars Bridge.

The way along which we are strolling then lay in the open country, with leafy lanes leading aside among groves and sun-flecked fields. But woods and fields have disappeared under compact ma.s.ses of brick and mortar, and the quaint old suburb is linked to the city by continuous streets and structures. Contact has not altogether destroyed the distinctive features of the ancient suburb, and we know when our walk has brought us to its borders. Few of its thoroughfares retain the dreamful quiet of the olden time, few of its rows of sombre and dignified dwellings have wholly escaped the modern eruption of ornate and staring architecture; the old and the new are curiously blended, but enough of the former remains to remind us that Chelsea is olden and not modern, and to revive for us the winsome a.s.sociations with which the place is permeated. The suggestion of worshipful antiquity is seen in sedate, ivy entwined mansions of dusky-hued brick, in carefully kept old trees which in their saplinghood knew Pepys, Johnson, or Smollett, in quaint inns whose homely comforts were enjoyed by ill.u.s.trious _habitues_ in the long ago.

[Sidenote: Walpole]

Our stroll beyond the Grosvenor Road brings us to the famous "Chelsea Physick Garden," presented to the Apothecaries' Society by Sloane, the founder of the British Museum, who was a medical student here; it was to this garden that Polyphilus of the "Rambler" was going to see a new plant in flower when he was diverted by meeting the chancellor's coach.

At the adjoining hospital dwelt the gifted Mrs. Somerville, whose husband was a physician there; and the ancient mansion of dingy brick, in which Walpole lived, and where Pope, Swift, Gay, and Mary Wortley Montagu were guests, is a portion of the infirmary,--the great drawing-room in which the brilliant company met being a hospital ward. A little way northward, by Sloane Street, we come to Hans Place, where, at No. 25, the sweet poetess Let.i.tia Landon ("L. E. L.") was born in a tiny two-storied house; she attended school in a similar house of the same row, where Miss Mitford and the auth.o.r.ess of "Glenarvon" had before been pupils. Along the river again we find beyond the hospital a pa.s.sage leading to the place of Paradise Row, where, in a little brick house, the witching Mancini was visited by Charles II. and poetized by the brilliant Evremond. Here, at the corner of Robinson's Lane, Pepys visited Robarte in "the prettiest contrived house" the diarist ever saw; not far away a comfortable old inn occupies the site of the dwelling of the historian Faulkner, in the neighborhood where the essayist Mary Astell--ridiculed by Swift, Addison, Steele, Smollett, and Congreve--had her modest home. Robert Walpole's later residence stood near Queen's Road West, and its grounds sloped to the river just below the Swan Tavern, near the bottom of the lane now called Swan Walk. It was at this river inn that Pepys "got affright" on being told of an eruption of the plague in Chelsea.

[Sidenote: Homes of George Eliot and Rossetti]

For a half-mile or so westward from the Swan, picturesque Cheyne Walk--beloved of the _literati_--stretches along the river-bank. Its many old houses, with their solemn-visaged fronts overlooking the river, their iron railings, dusky walls, tiled roofs, and curious dormer-windows, are impressive survivors of a past age. At No. 4, a substantial brick house of four stories, with battlemented roof and with oaken carvings in the rooms, are preserved some relics of George Eliot, for this was her last home, and here she breathed out her life in the same room where Maclise, friend of Carlyle and d.i.c.kens, had died just a decade before. No. 16, a s.p.a.cious dwelling with curved front and finely wrought iron railing and gate-way, was the home of Rossetti for the twenty years preceding his death. With these panelled rooms, which he filled with quaint and beautiful objects of art, are a.s.sociated most of the memories of the gifted poet and painter. The large lower room was his studio, where one of his last occupations was painting a replica of "Beata Beatrix," the portrait of his wife, whose tragic death darkened his life. Around the fireplace in this room a brilliant company held the nightly _seances_ which a partic.i.p.ant styles feasts of the G.o.ds.

Through the pa.s.sage at the side the famous zebu was conveyed, and reconveyed after his a.s.sault upon the poet in the garden. The rooms above were sometime tenanted by Meredith, Swinburne, and Rossetti's brother and biographer, who was also Whitman's editor and advocate.

Later, the essayist Watts, to whom Rossetti dedicated his greatest work, resided here to cherish his friend. The garden, where Rossetti kept his odd pets and where neighbors remember to have seen him walking in paint-bedaubed attire for hours together, is now mostly covered by a school. At first, many luminaries of letters and art came to him here,--Jones, Millais, Hunt, Gosse, Browning, Whistler, Morris, Oliver Madox Brown, whose death elicited Rossetti's "Untimely Lost," and others like them; later, when baneful narcotics had sadly changed his temperament, he dwelt in seclusion, exercising only in his garden and seeing such devoted friends as Watts, Knight, Hake, "The Manxman" Hall Caine, and the gifted sister, author of "Goblin Market," etc., who was pictured by Rossetti in his "Girlhood of Mary Virgin," and who lately died. In his study here he produced his best work; here he revised the poems exhumed from his wife's grave and wrote "The Stream's Secret" and other parts of the volume which made his fame and occasioned the battle between the bards Buchanan and Swinburne; here he wrote the magnificent "Rose Mary," "White Ship," etc., and completed the series of sonnets which has been p.r.o.nounced "in its cla.s.s the greatest gift poetry has received since Shakespeare."

[Sidenote: Carlyle's House--Smollett--Gay]

[Sidenote: Kingsley--Herbert--Dorset]