Highways and Byways in London Part 24

Ghosts of our own fancy may, and do, wander at their will in London's misty galleries; but ghosts, better authenticated, are popularly supposed to haunt a few of London's old houses. Thus, No. 50, in Berkeley Square has gained undesirable notoriety as the "Haunted House," and many extraordinary tales have from time to time been told as to its ghostly manifestations. Berkeley Square has, undeniably, a solid and old-time look that fits in well with the gloomy tradition; it has the best and most ancient plane-trees of any London square, and its fine old iron-work, with occasional torch-extinguishers (used by the "link-boys" of sedan chairs in Stuart times), are all in keeping with the old-world spirit. Nevertheless, Berkeley Square has other and sadder a.s.sociations than those of mere ghosts. For in No. 45,--a house specially noted for its iron-adornments,--the great Lord Clive, founder of the British Empire in India, committed suicide in 1774. "In the awful close," says Macaulay, "of so much prosperity and glory,"

some men only saw the horrors of an evil conscience; but Clive from early youth had been subject to "fits of strange melancholy," while now his strong mind was sinking under physical suffering, and he took opium for a distressing complaint.

In Berkeley Square (No. 38) is the town house of Lord Rosebery, once the residence of Lady Jersey, and the place whence her mother,--the daughter of Child, the banker,--eloped to marry the Earl of Westmorland, in 1782.

It were, however, an invidious, as well as an impossible task, to name all London's historic houses. What street in London is, indeed, not "historic" in a sense? Houses may be pulled down, but even thus their locality knows them still. Is not even Turner the painter's squalid, dirty house in Queen Anne Street, now razed, yet recalled to the pa.s.ser-by, by the tablet affixed to the houses that have since sprung up on its site? "Unlovely" Wimpole Street is sacred to the shade of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that "small, pale person, scarcely embodied at all." It was from this house, No. 50, that she wrote her impa.s.sioned love-letters, and, after years of chronic invalidism, ran away, secretly and romantically, to marry a brother-poet. The picturesque chambers known as "the Albany,"--a byway out of Piccadilly,--recall Lord Macaulay, Lord Byron, Lord Lytton. Curzon Street suggests the famous parties, in the early nineteenth century, of the sisters Mary and Agnes Berry, the friends of Horace Walpole. In Soho,--a district famous in old days for an artistic, and semi-Bohemian fraternity, whose houses emulated Turner's in dirt,--lived the painters Northcote, Mulready, Fuseli, Stothard,--and Flaxman the sculptor. At 28, Poland Street, lived William Blake, the poet-painter, the half-crazy, but wholly charming, seer and mystic; here he wrote his _Songs of Experience_ and of _Innocence_, and drew his _Visionary Portraits_. (The story of Blake and his wife, "reciting pa.s.sages from _Paradise Lost_, and enacting Adam and Eve, in character," belongs, however, not to dingy gardenless Poland Street, but to Hercules Buildings, then a modest Lambeth suburb). In Poland Street, in 1811, lived also Sh.e.l.ley in early youth, with his friend and biographer Hogg; the latter being attracted, says Sh.e.l.ley, by the name of the street, "because it reminded him of Thaddeus of Warsaw and freedom":

"A paper (says Hogg) in the window of No. 15 announced lodgings.... 'We must lodge there, should we sleep even on the step of a door.' ... Sh.e.l.ley took some objection to the exterior of the house, but we went in.... There was a back sitting-room on the first floor, somewhat dark but quiet, yet quietness was not the prime attraction. The walls of the room had lately been covered with trellised paper.... This was delightful. He went close to the wall and touched it.

'We must stay here; stay for ever.' Sh.e.l.ley had the bedroom opening out of the sitting room, and this also was overspread with the trellised paper."

But every part of London has its historic interest--is, in a sense, a city peopled by the dead. "Where'er you tread is haunted, holy ground." That spot, in that quiet, narrow street,--Mayfair, Bloomsbury, Soho or Westminster,--where you chance to live, and toil, and suffer, and enjoy,--has known many others in its time,--others before you: men in stocks, and wigs, and laced ruffles, and knee-breeches; women in brocades, ruffs, and farthingales; children in long stiff skirts and prim stomachers: who, in their turn, likewise lived, and toiled, and enjoyed, and suffered.... Is it not this romance of London, this mysterious past life of hers, guessed and unguessed, that makes us welcome, and recognise as real friends, the types of a Thackeray, a d.i.c.kens? See, for instance, how a mere allusion to Thackeray puppets serves to immortalise with a touch, the prosaic, if fashionable, Clarges and Bond Streets: Clarges Street, "where Beatrix Bernstein held her card parties, her Wednesday and Sunday evenings, save during the short season when Ranelagh was open on a Sunday, where the desolate old woman sat alone, waiting hopelessly for the scapegrace nephew that her battered old heart had learned to love."

"Here, Baroness Bernstein takes her chocolate behind the drawn curtains; she is the Beatrix Esmond of brighter days and fortunes.... There are the windows of Harry Warrington's lodgings in Bond Street, 'at the court end of the town;' geraniums and lobelias flourish in them to this day, and no doubt they are let to some sprig of fashion; but to me they are Harry's rooms, hired from Mr. Ruff, the milliner's husband; and the 'Archie' or 'Bertie' in possession to-day is a mere interloper, whom Gumbo would have politely shown downstairs."--(_Byways of Fiction in London._)

Not less has d.i.c.kens done with the lower life of the Great City. And has not Miss Thackeray (Mrs. Ritchie), with a touch of her father's picturesque and vivid genius, glorified that "Old Court Suburb," Old Kensington, in her well-known novel of that name? Here, in Kensington, at No. 2, Palace Green, then considerably more countrified than now, Thackeray died in 1863. Here, too, is the red brick Kensington Palace, built by William and Mary in what Leigh Hunt called "Dutch solidity,"

famous as Queen Victoria's birth-place, and also more sadly reminiscent of poor Caroline of Brunswick, the ill-fated and cruelly used wife of George IV.

Holland House is one of the most interesting and historically important buildings in Kensington. It stands near Campden Hill, in beautiful and s.p.a.cious gardens, the same gardens where the youthful George III. used to flirt with the lovely Sarah Lennox; the lady dressed as a shepherdess, playing at haymaking while the King rode by: a youthful and a pleasant idyll, in contrast with the lady's very chequered after life! Holland House, says Mr. Hare, "surpa.s.ses all other houses in beauty, rising at the end of the green slope, with its richly-sculptured terrace, and its cedars, and its vases of brilliant flowers." The house was originally built in 1607, though its characteristic wings and arcades were all added later by the first Earl of Holland, the same who was beheaded in the Royalist wars. After his execution Holland House was confiscated by the Parliamentary generals; being, however, restored in 1665 to the disconsolate widow, who comforted herself by indulging privately here in the theatricals so strictly forbidden by the Puritan Government. Early in the eighteenth century Holland House became a.s.sociated with Addison (of _Spectator_ fame); he lived here for some three years after his ambitious marriage with Charlotte, Countess of Warwick, a marriage which, despite its splendour, report says was not happy for the bridegroom. According to Dr. Johnson, it was more or less "on terms like those on which a Turkish princess is espoused, to whom the Sultan is reported to p.r.o.nounce, 'Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave.'" But the chief interest of Holland House lies in its having been for so many years the centre of a great literary and political _coterie_, and the resort of Whig orators and politicians. In the lifetime of the third Lord Holland, who died in 1840, the house was at the height of its splendour as a world-renowned intellectual centre.

Holland House still exists in its integrity, though Macaulay long ago prophesied mournfully that

"The wonderful city may soon displace those turrets and gardens which are a.s.sociated with so much that is interesting and n.o.ble--with the courtly magnificence of Rich, with the loves of Ormond, with the councils of Cromwell, with the death of Addison."

"The gardens of Holland House" (says Mr. Hare) "are unlike anything else in England. Every turn is a picture.... A raised terrace, like some of those which belong to old Genoese palaces, leads from the house high amongst the branches of the trees to the end of the flower garden.... Facing a miniature Dutch garden here is "Rogers' Seat,"

inscribed:

"Here Rogers sat, and here for ever dwell With me those pleasures that he sings so well."

Lord Macaulay's last residence was, as I have said, "Holly Lodge." In this secluded villa, high walled-in from the outer world, were the two requisites for an author's ideal of happiness, a library and a garden.

The house bears a memorial tablet. Here the great writer died while quietly seated in his library chair, his book open beside him; a peaceful close of a busy life.

I have named a few of our great Londoners; yet they, indeed, are but few among the vast galaxy of the bright particular stars who, even in our day, still enlighten with their spirit their former dwellings and surroundings. It is their human interest that so transfigures London stones; it is the mighty dead of England, the "choir invisible,"

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

To make undying music in the world"--

that lend to their city such enchantment. Surely something of this feeling,--of this enchantment--is ours when we think of the long roll of great spirits who illumined the archives of the past. There is a magic, a glamour, in London streets, that affects the strongest heads and hearts. All honour to them--to poor human nature,--that it is so.

Not only, let us hope, to the mad poet-painter Blake was it given to "meet the Apostle Paul in Piccadilly." We, too, may, if we will, walk with Milton in Cripplegate, may share Byron's t.i.tanic gloom in the quaint Albany precincts, may wander with Charles Lamb in those Temple Gardens that he so loved, and may listen with him and d.i.c.kens to the pleasant tinkle of the rippling water in secluded Fountain Court. We inherit these a.s.sociations, and we may--inestimable privilege--see our London, our "towne of townes, patrone and not compare," through the eyes of all the great men who loved her in the past.

"The dull brick houses of the square, The bustle of the thoroughfare, The sounds, the sights, the crush of men, Are present, but forgotten then.

"With such companions at my side I float on London's human tide; An atom on its billows thrown, But lonely never, nor alone."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Cricket in the Parks._]

CHAPTER XVI

RUS IN URBE

"It is my delight to be Both in town and in countree."--_Old Couplet._

"If one must have a villa in summer to dwell, Oh, give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall."--_Charles Morris._

Oh, London! beautiful London! who would not be with thee in May? Paris should not, surely, be recommended as the only Mecca of that lovely month. When the London street authorities, with unwonted forbearance, have for one brief moment suspended their incessant repairing of the busiest thoroughfares; when the hanging gardens of Park Lane, and the window-boxes of Seven Dials, alike display their "pavilions of tender green"; when Piccadilly is blocked with traffic; when Rotten Row is thronged with the smart world; when the shops hang out their daintiest spring fashions; when the gay parterres of the Parks show flowers of kaleidoscopic brilliance, and their sylvan seclusions suggest the "real country," what can be more delightful than our own often-maligned metropolis?

The Parks of London are, perhaps, the element that most surprises the foreigner unused to English tastes and ways. Here are neither the leafy terraces and regular alleys of German capitals, nor the trim well-clipped boscages and levels of Versailles and the Tuileries; but only mere stretches of park-like greensward, dotted here and there, in charming irregularity, with old trees of n.o.ble girth. Walks there are, indeed, and footpaths, shrubberies, and flower-beds; but the chief area of the London Parks is, ever and always, this fresh, radiant, undulating turf, turf which here, more than ever, suggests the little Board School girl's answer to a question on general knowledge: "Turf, ma'am, is gra.s.s and clean dirt put together by G.o.d."

Of Hyde Park, the largest and oldest of the London Parks, Disraeli said truly in one of his novels: "Hyde Park has still about it something of Arcadia. There are woods and waters, and the occasional illusion of an illimitable distance of sylvan joyance." The history of Hyde Park is the history, generally, of Greater London; first monastery grounds, then royal demesne, then again, the people's. Some of the old trees may even have seen the ancient manor of Hyde; some of them must certainly recall the time when this was a royal Tudor hunting-ground, well-stocked with deer. Many of its fine old timber-trees have, however, disappeared, so that the famous "Ring" of Charles II.'s time can be now but imperfectly traced.

The Parks are, naturally, "the lungs of London." Were it not for these large "open s.p.a.ces," so mercifully preserved to us by the wisdom and farsightedness of former rulers and legislators, the health of the great city would hardly now be what it is. The little town of the early centuries, Roman, Saxon, or Norman, surrounded by country woods and pastures,--dotted with the gardens of merchants and magnates, as well as with frequent convent closes, orchards, and leafy precincts,--had small need of such vast pleasure-grounds. For London, even in Elizabeth's day, consisted (as shown in Aggas's map), of only two tiny townlets, "London" and "Westminster"; beyond, all was open fields. Tottenham Court Road, that dreary thoroughfare of ugly modernity, was the solitary manor of "Toten Court," a sylvan resort for "cakes and creame": Chelsea was a pretty, distant riverside hamlet; Regent Street and Bond Street were cows' pastures, and the "flowery fields" of "Marybone" were altogether in the rural distances.

Who, indeed, would recognise the present Regent's Park in these lines (from an old play called "Tottenham Court"):

"What a dainty life the milkmaid leads, When o'er these flowery meads She dabbles in dew, And sings to her cow, And feels not the pain Of love or disdain...."

But if, to the London of old time, the Parks were not necessary, to modern London, which has more than doubled its population and its area in the last century and a half, they are an unspeakable boon. Our forefathers were wise in their generation when they secured these stretches of the outlying country for public use. We, too, in our own day, make similar efforts, efforts of which the recent preservation of Parliament Fields, of part of Caen Wood, affords sufficient proof. In that far-off day, prophesied by "Mother Shipton," when "Primrose Hill shall be the centre of London," such breathing s.p.a.ces, such oases in the wilderness of bricks and mortar, would prove of quite incalculable value.

Happily, London, even in her rampant growth, is often jealously mindful of her responsibilities. Though our city boasts no such s.p.a.cious boulevards as are to be seen in Paris, trees are often now planted at intervals on the sidewalks in many of the newest thoroughfares, and a few of the older streets are being widened and improved. Very few are the London views, as I have said elsewhere, that are not in a measure enlivened by foliage or greenery.

The colouring of London is a thing peculiar to itself; it requires to be specially studied, even by painters whose eyes are trained to observation. Its wonderful atmospheric effects have been only more or less recently recognised by them. Very few artists have rendered thoroughly the strange cold light on the London streets; cold, yet suffused by an underlying glow, by a warmth of colour hardly at first guessed by the spectator. Even a rainy day of London greyness--what does the poet's eye see in it?

"Rain in the measureless street, Vistas of orange and blue....

Blue of wet road, of wet sky, (Grey in the depths and the heights), Orange of numberless lights, Shapes fleeting on, going by...."

The cold pearly greyness of winter, the blue mist of spring, the silvery haze of summer, the orange sunsets of autumn, when the dim sun sinks in the fog like a gigantic red fireball, all, in turn, have their charm. The artist's fault is that he nearly always paints London scenes too cold, too joyless. Mr. Herbert Marshall, the water-colour painter, to whom we are indebted for so many charming impressions of the London streets, leans, if anything, somewhat to the other side, and hardly allows for the aesthetic value of smoke. Painting, in London, is always a difficulty; but Mr. Marshall, it is said, used to station himself and his paraphernalia securely inside some road-mending enclosure, and thus pursue his calling undeterred by the persecution of the idle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Rotten Row._]

The faint blue-grey mist of the great city often gives to London scenes something of the quality of dissolving views. Seldom is a vista perfectly clear; rather does it often suggest a vague intensity of misty glory. Does not that lovely glimpse of the Whitehall palaces from St. James's Park, seen, on fine days in summer, from the little bridge over the "ornamental water," gain an added charm from distance?

Do not the more or less prosaic Government buildings appear to be the

"cloud-capt towers and gorgeous palaces"

of some dream of Oriental splendour? In such guise, one might imagine, would the deceiving visions of a "Fata Morgana,"--a fairy palace, shaded by just such branching, feathery trees,--appear to the thirsting traveller over the desert sands.

Even M. Max O'Rell, who allows himself to scoff at most things English, has a word of admiration for the peculiar misty beauty of the London parks.

"Nothing" (he says) "is more imposing than the exuberant beauty of the parks. Take a walk across them in the early morning when there is no one stirring, and the nightingale is singing high up in some gigantic tree; it is one of the rare pleasures that you will find within your reach in London. If the morning be fine, you will not fail to be struck with a lovely pearl-grey haze, soft and subdued, that I never saw in such perfection as in the London parks."

The parks of London, like its districts, all have their special attributes, their special place in the social plane. Thus, Hyde Park is aristocratic, and in the season, its penny chairs, from Hyde Park Corner to the Albert Gate, are thronged with the smart world.

Beautiful women, distinguished men, and gilded youths may be seen riding--the best riders and the finest horses in the world--along Rotten Row at the fashionable morning hour; and, in the afternoon, the whole of "Society" appears to take its afternoon drive round the magic "Ring" or circle of the Park, enjoying seeing and being seen. Three times round the Ring is a common afternoon allowance; exercise, surely, that habit must render, in time, not unlike a treadmill. In Hyde Park, too, takes place the yearly meet of the "Four-in-Hand"

Club, extensively patronised by rank and royalty; on which the popular sentiment is delightfully echoed by the refrain of the c.o.c.kney song of _The Runaway Girl_,

"I'd have four horses with great long tails, If my papa were the Prince of Wales!"

Here in the Park, on Sundays, takes place the famous "Church Parade,"

so paragraphed in the society papers; here, also, are often ratified on May mornings, the season's matrimonial engagements; and here fond mothers with pretty daughters keep a watchful outlook for "detrimentals."